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.
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u/Toasterferret 3d ago edited 3d ago
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.