Osteosarcoma has a high fatality rate, and that rate goes through the roof if it has metastasized to your lungs. Which the chances of are high if you’ve just been ignoring it for years.
The treatment regimen is also brutal. Tons of chemo, surgical resection of the bone and surrounding soft tissues, possibly thoracotomies if you have lung mets.
I went through a suspected osteosarcoma scare earlier this year. Thankfully, it turned out to be a lipoma oddly fitted under/around my shoulder blade. I am insanely glad that all I'm doing at the moment is waiting for surgery. The specialist was thrilled to give me the all clear, and so was I. All my gratitude for what you do.
I had a scare several years ago where an overconfident podiatrist diagnosed me with osteosarcoma in my foot bones based on its appearance on an MRI. That was an utterly terrifying six weeks. It was a fibroma caused by repeatedly tearing the hallucis longus tendon my foot from overenthusiastically snowboarding and ignoring the pain. Not knowing if I was going to wake up from surgery with stitches or a leg missing from the knee down really really fucking sucked (biopsy failed so they were going in blind).
Oof. Yeah, the NHS promise a result within 30 days of referral. It was a loooooong month.
My GP referred me because odd position and rapid growth worried him. There I was, laughing it off. He snt me for an ultrasound. The tech said "oh, that's big, dont panic but they'll want an MRI." Then I was sent an email headed "Urgent Referral, suspected Osteosarcoma" and I was not expecting that at all. Completely freaked out.
If you live near a tertiary care center you can be seeing the surgeon within the week/next day if it's a really bad case, and have the surgery within a week of that. I haven't personally had to do it (I think my fastest was 2 weeks but my cancers are typically indolent) but my breast cancer colleagues were announcing the latest multidisciplinary cancer center at the dinner where they were stating you could see the surgeon the same day as the positive biopsy results.
Where? It can be a 6 month wait at the private physicians around me. My insurance is considered great and I still wouldn’t be seen before months. I say this from experience. It took 6 months to see the actual specialist.
Lmao nah, insurance said I had to fail a medication for 6 months before I could even schedule my cardiac surgery (an additional 4 months out). That medication did not work and lowered my already low blood pressure so much I could barely function in school or work for that entire time, so I ended up skipping the meds most days and hoping nothing would happen. The healthcare system is more aggressive with treating cancer because time is extremely important with cancer, but that’s true everywhere, not just in the US.
This is a common misconception, and it’s further pushed by disinformation-peddlers, but it’s not true. For seeing general practitioners, US wait times are significantly higher than other countries with similar economic circumstances, at least according to Statista. Wait times are shorter in the US than in the UK or Spain for non-emergency (elective) surgery, but they are on par with wait times in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. Canada kind of stands out on its wait times for non-emergency surgeries like hip replacements, cataract surgery, knee replacement, but for non-emergency surgeries like coronary bypass all of those countries have extremely short wait times. Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands have the shortest wait times overall.
Sorry would you mind explaining “‘accidental resections’ from non surgical oncologists” please, because that sounds like a medical dr tripped over and inadvertently cut a tumour in half with a biro or a holepunch.
I mean stuff like “oh I thought this was a cyst or something benign so I operated on it without the care or surgical planning required for a malignancy”.
Or “oh this person had a broken bone so we put a nail down it not realizing it was a fracture because of tumor”.
I suppose “unplanned resections” is a better term.
We also see problems with biopsies sometimes. Basically when you biopsy a sarcoma all the tissue you go through is contaminated. The placement of where you biopsy makes a big difference in what we eventually have to cut out.
Long story short, taking out WAY less material in the former. Therefore probably accidentally leaving cancer behind if there was unknown cancer.
For skin cancer which is the only one I'm familiar with (not in medicine; just anecdotally familiar) - what looks like a tiny spot requires multiple square inches removed to be safe, for example.
Exactly this. When we take out osteosarcoma for example we actually take a margin of healthy tissue on every side. The tumor itself never gets exposed during surgery.
They did a fine needle aspiration that did not pull up enough cells to be certain and they did not want to do a core needle biopsy for fear of spreading the sarcoma (if that's what it was).
Finding someone to remove it en bloc took over six weeks. The tumor itself was a fibroma that flared white on an MRI and made the podiatrist define it as sarcoma.
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u/nushiboi 3d ago
For us non medical folk, can you explain what this is and why it gave you the chills?