Clearing up the staging procedure

Oh my, my CAT scan came back and its clean. I'm so relieved, I feel like a building has been lifted off of me. The dr. believes I am somewhere in stage one. she told me that if its stage 1A, they just sew me up and thats it. Why don't they just do the staging to be sure? Can I request it? I am already open the oncologist is there. I'd just rather be positive I am clean.

Thanks!

Yes, I think you can request it. Or at least ask about it. I don't know if it is written in stone that they can't do staging for stage 1a if this is what you need to feel assured. However, you may find out that the percentage of finding positive lymph nodes or signs of spread is so small that they don't routinely do staging on the earliest stage. I am not sure. And any additional surgery has risks however small. In any case, I hope that is turns out to be the lowest stage possible. Regards, Blue.

Bonnie:

I'm glad to hear that your CT scan is clean! That's great news going into surgery!

As far as further staging, IMHO, you should talk to your doctor and the oncologist about it. Usually if the cancer is further along, it'll show on the CT scan or MRI. Also, as blue said, there are additional risks involved in lymph node removal.

At least you are fortunate that the onc will be there during the surgery to take a look and if they feel it's progressed more or something doesn't look right, the onc will take over and do more staging.

Hugs and prayers that everything goes well for you!

I was dx with Stage 1 Endometrial cancer also, before surgery. After surgery it was upgraded to stage 3. My surgeon did the staging and removed 22 nodes. One was positive.
Please ask for staging, as this is very important with a cancer diagnosis.
You dont want to have to have a second surgery.
Best of luck!

Hi Bonnie,

If cancer is suspected, a gyn/onc should be present at your hysterectomy in case lymph nodes need to be sampled, which a regular gyn cannot do.

The thing with endometrial cancer is that they cannot fully stage you before surgery. My gynecologist was so sure that my cancer was confined to my uterus (Stage 1), but after my LAVH, the pathology indicated it had spread to my cervix, making it at least a Stage 2. I opted for a second surgery to find out if my lymph nodes were clean (they were). You definitely don't want to go through two surgeries.

This is not to scare you, but to let you know of the realities of endometrial cancer staging.

I wish you the best outcome! Let us know how it goes.