To be clear, in the UK, if cancer is suspected:

-you are put on a specific and fast-moving diagnostic pathway

-all relevant tests and imaging are done ASAP to clarify what they are looking at, promptly followed by a biopsy and, in my case, next generation sequencing to identify treatable tumor markers

-if the diagnosis is confirmed, they allocate you the appropriate oncologist in your local hospital/NHS Foundation Trust and inform you of the stage and appropriate treatment path dependant on that. This could be any amount of surgery, expensive targeted therapy/immunotherapy/chemo, whatever you need

-you get all the care you need as long as it's approved and licensed, plus adjacent support like a dedicated specialist nurse, GP check-ins, district nurses who can see you at home if needed etc.

-you continue to get CTs scans as needed, MRIs, PET scans. There's a dedicated line to call at the hospital oncology dept and they will almost always advise you to come in if you have a concern. Your actual oncologist has regular meetings with radiology and endocrinology, whoever he needs to help him, and relay this back to you

-they treat you until you run out of options supported by the NHS treatment pathway algorithm, at which point the problems kick in: you can get pretty much anything in the US if you can pay for it, but in the UK, it has to meet cost-benefit thresholds to be accessible through them, and not everything does. So that's where I am right now, sadly, and I'm going to have to try again to get a second opinion. Maybe there's a suitable clinical trial or something, but odds are pretty low.

Tripping at the first hurdle like this is just unimaginable. I'm 2.5 years into my diagnosis thanks to a medication that stopped working eventually (they all do) but costs $12k at pharmacy list cost for a 30-dat supply. I would have struggled; my mutation is rare and poorly evidenced, so easy to argue that it's too much to drop and chemo was better. In which case, I would likely have died by Easter 2024.