On October 8th, 2013 my uncle received results of an ultrasound he had done at brampton civic. He had gotten the ultrasound done due to swollen lymph nodes in his neck that are very obvious to anyone who looks at him. No one front the hospital contacted him regarding a biopsy that they told him he needed. He waited and waited, until I found out about the issue. I contact diagnostic imaging and asked what was taking so long as my uncle also had symptoms of fever, fatigue, weakness. (I am a nurse and these symptoms are indicative of possible lymphoma). Guess what DI said: “no one has triaged these papers, and your uncles result is in the pile. How does October 28th work?” I said you have got to be kidding me, this ultrasound is marked urgent. Finally after getting my point across and them realizing their mistake, they showed the result to their supervisor. The biopsy was booked for Oct 16. The same day of the biopsy I took my uncle to ER so that they could run some more tests such as CT’s to make sure nothing spread (I am not a DR but really no one thought of this? As well as blood work that had not been done.) The CT showed there were also some enlarged nodes in the abdomen. The ER dr told us the only thing we can do is wait for the biopsy results and that the oncologist my uncle got referred to would see him when he got the results. Well my uncle also was referred to a ENT specialist whom he say OCtober 21st, 2013 and he stated the sample the person drew for his biopsy was not enough to indicate if he has cancer or not and that he has to wait for another appointment to be booked for a repeat biopsy.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? What kind of hospital is this. And where is the communication. There is no team, nothing is getting done. I called the secretary for the ENT specialist and was told my uncle will most likely have to wait until this friday or probably next to have another biopsy. If it is lymphoma what stage will it be? I really hope the best for him and I am going to do the best I can to help him, but god forbid if it is bad news and his illness is worse due to the timing of all his tests, biopsies etc. I will definitely be taking this to the media.

My uncle has not been admitted to the hospital, and no one really cares how long it takes for all these tests to be done even though they are the ones who made the mistake of not taken a big enough sample. Ridiculous. I wish I had gone to credit valley or a hospital in Toronto instead.