@ATadScared and @Cantshakeit I have just been through this exact scenario. I had a pain, ended up in A&E, weird blood test results, referred to CT, identified a suspicious mass. Put on the urgent referral list for the MDT review. Had a contrast liver MRI and a contrast CT, and a colonoscopy on Tuesday.
The worst bit of the whole process has been the limbo - all of the above has taken about 5 weeks, so don't be surprised if it takes time. If it helps, it looked like this for me:
Saturday night A&E
Monday morning Kidney CT (they suspected a urine infection)
Monday later told by A&E doc that there was a suspicious mass (amongst other things) in my colon, she mentioned the word tumour, held my. hand and told me how sorry she was, and told me I was on the urgent cancer referral list
It took 2 weeks to be reviewed by the MDT which was an awful time - nobody to ask about how quickly it would take, my assumption it would all happen in a day or so, but the MDT meet weekly and I didn't get reviewed on the first week. There's nobody to call either, and I was terrified I had slipped through the gaps and been forgotten. Our hospital has something called the Cancer Navigator (nobody told me about) - but I found that MacMillan have someone stationed t the hospital so I called them, and they dug into my records and told me exactly what was going on. So that's my advice there - find the MacMillan person if there is one, and they're amazing.
2 weeks later got a call booking for an appt with a specialist colo rectal nurse
Had the appt - she referred for Liver MRI (suspicious cysts in my liver), contract CT (to stage the bowel cancer), and a colonoscopy (identify whether it was cancer or not)
The CT happened that week, the MRI the week after, but it was 2-3 weeks wait for the colonoscopy which was torture.
Colonoscopy wasn't as bad as I thought it would be at all; a day of eating white bland food (chicken, white pasta, white bread, cheese etc.), a day of basically staying within reach of the toilet - wear a dress, no knickers, settle down with TV. Top tip - lipsyl applied as a barrier cream before you take the first dose and after every bowel movement - big help ! Colonoscopy itself - sedation hits you like a rocket, didn't even feel the camera go in, fascinating look at your insides. They tell you THERE AND THEN what they see. In my case - nothing whatsoever where this suspicious mass was. Nothing. Something possibly suspicious in a different area so they've taken a biopsy which I get the results for in a couple of weeks.
I felt awful and flat after that. I thought I'd feel this immense relief. But I just felt flat - I think the drugs affected me (they give you Fentanyl and Midazolam). Plus 5-6 weeks of emotional and physical exhaustion and being overwhelmed.
Now I'm having another blood test, waiting for the results of the Liver MRI and the biopsy, and seeing the consultant in about 10 days for all of that. And hopefully getting the all clear.
So it doesn't look like it's cancer. So as someone else said above - just because someone's saying cancer, it really really doesn't mean it is. My initial CT said something along the lines of "indicative of primary colonic tumour" - can't be much clearer than that. But that bit of my colon is completely normal, based on the colonoscopy.
If you're anything like me, the next few weeks are hard. Really hard. My husband hardly slept, I hardly slept. Are you prepping for the worst, or it's going to be nothing? We read a lot on the MacMillan site which is excellent. It's a slow progressing cancer and very treatable. I lived like a zombie. I couldn't eat properly, I couldn't enjoy anything. You might be different !
Focus on each day at a time, don't take on too much. I ended up binge watching absolutely crap on TV because I needed to stop my mind racing and focusing on the negative. But everybody's different. I beat myself up for a bit too - yes I had symptoms for ages (toilet habits were different) but I hadn't even thought about it - too much else going on in life. What if I had made it worse by ignoring it, what if I had left it too late, I'm not old and only been married a few years, I couldn't leave him yet, I wasn't ready.
Fingers crossed for you both, and for myself tbh - hoping to get the all clear in a couple of weeks, although I still have the symptoms.
DM if you want to chat xx