Mike Jacoubowsky said:
Real-life example of why that's a bad thing to do. A good friend of mine, 37
years old, went to the doctor because he'd been feeling fatigued lately. The
doctor does one test, then tells him he's got liver cancer. Don't know what
you know about that sort of thing, but liver cancer is pretty much a 95%
death sentence. My goodness, we (and he) really thought he was going to die,
and his decline had been pretty rapid, so it looked like it might be soon.
THREE DAYS LATER more tests were done... tests that should have been done
IMMEDIATELY when the first test indicated something was seriously amiss,
most-likely cancer.#1: My friend shouldn't have been told he had liver cancer until the doctor
was positive, which isn't the case until a different type of test comes back
indicating so, and then followed by a biopsy. You really need to be POSITIVE
of something like that before you tell someone they need to get their
affairs in order 'cuz they're not going to be around much longer.#2: The doctor being so positive about what the initial test meant ended up
delaying the appropriate treatment for three days.But getting to your point about a "cancerous biopsy"- even those are checked
out by more than one person. There's a lab tech who initially reports on the
findings (the section on the slide), and then an oncologist who verifies it.
As I've been through this thing twice (wife & father), I've got a pretty
good handle on the procedure.
You're not going to believe this, but exactly the same
thing happened to a guy I know. The docs told him he had
finger cancer.
Ben