Hello am 51 year old Australian woman just diagnosed.Hvnt started trtmnt yet.I dont have an an oncologist just a haemotologist,will she be enoigh? I live in rural area and she visits here to see patients,so far she seems so casual about my treatment plan?Am nervous but hoping this will be a manageable disease.Please advise,friends.
You are here
New to this,need all advice I can get!
Hi Tanya,
Haemotoligists often specialise in cancerous blood issues, and they’re often referred to as a haematologist-oncologist or you’ll see that the department they work in is called Haemato-Oncology or similar. For example, my doctors title is “Clinical Director, Haematological Oncology”.
Job titles and department names are probably not as important as your doctors experience. It would be a good idea to ask them how many CML patients they currently treat. If you feel that she is not as experienced as you’d like, perhaps you could ask for some sort of shared-care with a larger facility in a less rural area?
David.
Tanya,
Even though your doctor seems casual about your treatment plan, you should push to start therapy as soon as you can. No room or need for a 'casual' attitude to this disease. David made a good suggestion... that you may want to share your care with a specialist CML clinic at one of the larger hospitals. You can email one of the best haematologists, who is based in Adelaide, for advice if you need to. Let me know and I will give you his email address. Meanwhile keep us updated.
Sandy
Sandy I would appreciate Adelaide haemotologists email.thatd be great!Yes she is very casual.She has known I have CML for months and she is now waiting for PBS approval for script.Will follow her up again tmorrow.Am feeling very weak and cannot do much now so have no idea how am going to go on the gleevac.Thanks again for advice and that.
David she is in major hospital at Liverpool in Sydney and I dont doubt her expertise but she is treating me like I have nothing to worry about and she has knoen for months I have CML.Will keep chasing her to start on meds asap but she acts like there is "no rush".Thank you for hearin me.
Well, there certainly is a rush! "Watch and wait" is a valid policy for CLL - a different type of leukaemia - but not with CML. With CML is it not a good idea to wait any more time than is absolutely necessary to start to get your disease under control.
David.
Hi Tanya,
I’m living in Australia and your age too. I’ve been diagnosed in July and started with Tasigna a week after diagnosis. It took less than a week for getting PBS approval after my haematologist submitted all documents. Hope you contact other haematologists and can be on treatment ASAP!
Could it be that her blood counts are not too high? Not an excuse of course but could explain why they wont give her meds yet
3 months before diagnosis, a had a blood test that showed 50,000 wbc which he decided wasnt important enough to press the panic button. Which is a shame really because that would have saved my vision issues *sigh*
Wow that was so quick getting you on Tasigna.It took 3 minths for me to ginally get on gleevac and have heard tasigna is better!Where are you if you dont mind me asking?thank you for responses.
No ones ever mentioned and i font know bout white blood counts in fact she said it was my platelet count was rising and only when they found Philadelphia chromosome did she get the gleevac ball rolling.i had no other symptoms and she said only on gind that ph chromo that they knew i had cml.