Tissue is the issue

They just took Bryan to radiology for the biopsy. They said it could take anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours.

We talked with an internal medicine doctor this morning who helped me understand this "waiting game." It is impossible to know what type of tumor Bryan has until we have a tissue sample from a biopsy. A tumor may look solid on a CT scan, but once they get in to biopsy, it may not be solid & therefore a CT guided needle biopsy may not be able to capture enough of a sample. If that is the case, a more invasive biopsy (using general anesthesia and inserting a telescope into an incision and cutting out a piece of the tumor) is needed and we have to wait all over again (wait to schedule the biopsy, wait to be taken for the biopsy & wait for the results). As we've found out, this could be a long process. As the doctor said, "tissue is the issue."

The radiologists think the tumor resembles characteristics of two different types of tumors. The internal medicine doctor cautioned us that it could be more than 20 different tumors and what you see on a CT scan is not accurate enough to make that determination. (I'm still researching those two types of tumors in preparation.)

Sooooooo as much as I want answers, I am calm about this process. It could be several days before we know what we're dealing with. That is part of the journey.