I have had several phone conversations in recent days with Dr. Lerner’s office staff and with staff from Sloan-Kettering, trying to resolve the question of the biopsy results, and whether I will have to undergo the procedure a second time in order to meet Sloan-Kettering’s admission requirements. Slowly the source of the problem has emerged. It appears to have been a simple misunderstanding. Something written on the narrative lab report that was faxed to Sloan-Kettering led their Lymphoma Department to think I had had only a fine-needle aspiration biopsy. I have since learned that what I actually had was both a fine-needle aspiration and a core-needle biopsy (using the largest possible needle, in fact). The Sloan-Kettering people have told Dr. Lerner’s staff that a core-needle biopsy probably did produce a large enough tissue sample for their purposes. They will know for sure when they actually receive the set of slides that was prepared by the pathologist, but they don’t anticipate a problem.
What a difference a small record-keeping glitch can make! I’m feeling relieved that a second biopsy does not appear to be in my immediate future.
Tomorrow afternoon is my bone-marrow biopsy, that procedure Dr. Lerner frankly described as "uncomfortable." I’m not looking forward to it. I’ll have to try to practice that discipline Cindy talked about, of "going to a different place."
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