Is there a doctor in the house? Feeling OH is lying about serious medical issue

[Tamz77]

Will try to keep this brief, but it's complicated.

Last Thursday my OH went into hospital to be tested for bowel cancer. Apparently, about a year ago he had a similar scare, had some tests and they proved negative. However the symptoms have reappeared and he was referred again.

My doubts have been raised by the following:

1. OH was referred in early December, having had renewed symptoms for a while, and didn't tell me until the week before he went into hospital.

2. When he did go in he asked me not to visit, he did text me while he was there, periodically, but didn't phone me at all.

3. The tests he was having supposedly involved the camera down the throat (having had the rectal camera test last year). However, when he came out he said this had involved him being under general anaesthetic for 18 hrs. When he said this I made a joke in reply, "That's not an examination, that's separating Siamese twins." A couple of friends I've mentioned it to have said quite seriously though that there's no way you could or would keep someone under that long unless it was indeed major surgery.

4. He said when he got out that 3 biopsies had been taken. Today he was called back to see the surgeon and told it WAS cancer, that they had completely removed a cyst during the 'op'. This is the first I've heard of any cyst removal, and anyway, could they do this without actually opening up the abdomen?

5. When he was in, he texted me to say the surgeon would be talking to him when he did his rounds on the Saturday. Everyone's telling me surgeon's don't do rounds at the weekend. This may be a minor detail.

TBH he's told me so much about his hospital stay, what he ate and who he chatted to etc, that if he was lying it would make him a complete psychopath. I'm not usually this paranoid but I HAVE caught the guy lying about several small things in the time we've been together, mostly to do with past relationships or things he's done, nothing huge just a bit of bullshit IYKWIM. I feel awful doubting a potential cancer sufferer but friends are outright suspicious and the 18hrs of anaesthetic issue in particular is one I can't get past. It was his birthday the day he went in, I'm wondering if he was actually away for a rude weekend with someone else and his alibi has just kind of snowballed.

Any advice from medical-type people would be appreciated!

Oh, he's also never mentioned having the barium enema, which maybe he's left out for reasons of personal discretion, but it is a routine test for bowel cancer and I thought he might have mentioned it.

yes cyst can be used to refer to something where they don't know what it is yet.

I need to do more thinking! But yes, surgical wards usually do have ward rounds at the weekends.

even if it was being used as a reassuring term, and he was told something cancerous was removed, then surely there would be more follow up and info than 'see oyu in 3 months'

when i was diagnosed with crohns, i saw consultant a lot quicker than that !

18 hours anaesthetic for a routine endoscopy (camera down the throat) is rubbish I'm afraid. It is normally done under sedation, unless there is a really good reason for it needing to be done under GA, and even then it wouldn't take 18 hours. It is frequently done as a day case - where you go in in the morning, have the procedure, and go home later in the day when you've recovered.
A cyst is not a term normally used for a cancerous growth, but doctors do use all sorts of euphemisms (cyst, lesion, growth, lump etc) to avoid using the word cancer - particularly before the diagnosis is made.

To give the guy the benefit of the doubt, it is possible he had pre-cancerous changes and he misunderstood, just heard the 'cancer' bit. In which case treatment is less urgent... Though in an endoscopy, the number of those conditions are few, and in the most part there is no reason to want to delay treatment by 3 months.
He may not have had a barium enema if other investigations (such as CT colonoscopy) were performed.
His surgeon may well have come round on a weekend morning, it's not unusual. Discharges on a weekend are less usual for various reasons, but I'd guess not impossible, just unlikely.

If you want to really make excuses, maybe he's in shock, not thinking straight, people given bad news tend to take in very little of what is said to them... Or he's making it up, in which case, I think he either needs help, or a wide body-swerve!

last message bit of a garbled mess am feeding DS
the thing that really sticks out for me is him saying he has bowel cancer but they looked down his throat. its not possible to diagnose bowel cancer this way unless he has a very rare lymphoma of duodenum and then he def wouldn't be out on a sunday and have no follow up for 3 months!

Hello , I'm a nurse and used to work on the ward that covered bowel surgery. 18 hours is most likley untrue, certainly never happened in my carer they normally only take 2 hours lax to remove the whole bowel! Also if he had bowel surgery the bowel would have been paralysed for 24-48 hours and the doctors don't let you eat until you have passed wind( a sign that the bowel has resumed hworking), and then on the 3rd day you can only drink and eat v watery soup and on the fourth day a very light diet.
Polyps removed from the bowel would have do be done rectally, you can't get to the bowel from the mouth! And you would only be mildly sedated for this not aneathetised!
His story sounds v dodgy and if it was cancer he would now have to have part of his bowel removed involing major abdominal surgery and poss a colostomy bag.
Hope this helps.

Sorry for spelling mistakes typing too fast.

He's phoning me in a wee while so I'm going to ask a lot of friendly questions while trying not to freak out completely.

The lies he's told before haven't directly affected our relationship so I haven't pulled him up on any of them. Things like, "I was going out with X for a year," then the next time he mentions her, "I was with X for a year and a half." Also he's been mentioning marriage a lot recently and told me he'd never been engaged before, apparently forgetting he'd told me previously about being briefly engaged to the mother of his child. He laughed that one off saying it wasn't a 'proper' engagement.

Nothing like lying about cancer, however! Which I find it hard to believe he actually is, simply because surely only one in a hundred million people would ever do that...!!

Thanks for all advice, knowledge is power and all that, I feel better being a little more informed.

PS We are not engaged! Think he might want us to be but I've been avoiding that discussion lol.

Sorry but Sounds v. suspicious to me. 18 hours under anaesthetic? What did he have? a head transplant?

He is lying, lying, lying.

Tamz77 - was it you that posted christmas time about your DP talking about his stripper ex gf all the time??

Anyway, I can't give medical advice as I haven't a clue - but everything you posted about him sounds so suspicious. You need to talk right NOW!

Even if you decide to give him the benefit of the doubt this time, be very wary of him taking advantage of you financially - in the few cases in the media the two things are very often linked.

DH had a colon bioposy a couple opf years back. He was in and out the same day, only under general for a matter of an hour or two and he was quite woozy afterwards.

If he's told you he has cancer, it would be a natural response for you to be hugely concerned and ask loads of questions.

I think in your shoes I'd just be very very concerned and ask floods of questions: What kind of cancer is it? How can they be sure it hasn't spread anywhere else? Where exactly was the cancer? What's the name of the consultant that you're under? When will you see him/her again? How will you know if it comes back - what symptoms have they told you to watch out for?

He should have immediate answers to all of that type of question.

My theory: He's got something embarrassing like piles and is too ashamed to tell you. Lying about cancer (if he is lying) is horrible though.

I have got floods of questions and will be asking them. Just waiting by the phone atm for him to call.

My head's in a horrible place though, what if all the little lies were just testers, warming me up for the big one? I've never challenged him on anything, maybe he thinks I'm stupid

I'm not really, I remember everything, just have thought up to now he's a bit of a bullshitter sometimes. He's very self-confident, prone to exaggeration. Some people are like that aren't they, without being inherently bad. And I do like the guy.

Unless they go on to fabricate cancer stories!

Thanks again for advice, will update later

Message withdrawn

My dh had precancerous tissue found from a colonoscopy. They immediately scheduled surgery and within 3 months he has his entire colon removed and replaced with a colostomy. Then 3 months later even bigger surgery to replace the colostomy with an ileo-anal pouch. Believe me, he did not come home 'full of beans' on either occaision. These are major surgeries and it is ludicrous for you, as his wife, not to be involved and aware of his treatment. (The second surgery took 5 hours.)

This sounds totally bogus.

OK I'm just off the phone and here's the update:

It was 14 hrs under general anaesthetic, not 18 hrs. Still an incredible amount of time, and I expressed my disbelief, asked what the hell they were doing to him for all that time etc. He said he had expected them to just do an endoscopy but they seem to have done another colonoscopy too (he had one last yr), which he "didn't know about" until they told him they found this "cancerous cyst" at the "top of his bowel" (all these are his words obv).

The surgeon he saw this morning apparently said that he didn't mention the cyst before today because he wanted to get all the results back first.

I did ask my floods of questions, too many prob and OH seemed a bit dazed. I said I'd be asking serious questions about the 14 hrs anaesthetic, what exactly was done in that time, why the discovery of the cyst wasn't mentioned before now, where is the support network etc for the next 3 months (his next appt is supposed to be a follow-up colonoscopy but he seems to have just been left to himself until then). OH said that he hadn't even thought about all these questions, which I guess he wouldn't if he's really under threat of cancer. He says he's going to contact surgeon tomorrow to discuss some of these issues.

I told him I'd been Googling bowel cancer and could NOWHERE find any 14 hr investigative procedure. I'm at a loss, it's so unbelievable, but I have to believe him. Feel bad too as it was only after about 20 mins of interrogation that I asked how he was feeling am probably handling this so wrongly, I feel awful.

Hate to beso blunt (and would love to be wrong) but I can smell the bullshit from here

Tamz, just imagine what the waiting lists would be if people had 14 hour ops for something like this. I know a leading colon cancer surgeon well and he has a thriving research career as well as his surgery. It just doesn't sound remotely feasible, does it. Don't feel bad, you would need to be asking all this even if you weren't suspicious. Have you asked him why they are not apparently recommending chemotherapy or any kind of drug treatment?

overall he sounds like a compulsive liar

But what the heck is the explanation if it's not as he says? Either he's made up THE WHOLE THING which would make him an utter psychopath, or not far short anyway. OR he's been in hospital for standard procedures, which take a day or less from all I can make out, and then has been elsewhere (where? with who?) Friday to Sunday under cover of supposedly being in hospital. And either way, if it's a lie then he's extended it into this week now. He didn't have to add today's visit to the surgeon in, surely it would have made a neater lie to have told me all results were negative as soon as he was 'discharged'. Whether it's true or not, something's wrong somewhere, either OH has got some distorted form of Munchausen's Syndrome or this surgeon's a bit crap: 14 hrs to find this cyst (yes he did call it a cyst, rather than a polyp or tumour).

my x h's mother had a double mastectomy with self-tissue reconstruction and she was under for 15 hours.

she wasn't fully awake for days and certainly not texting or yacking on the phone to anyone.

she had very aggressive cancer and died a couple of years later.

my vote is for: he's a compulsive liar.

Sounds like he is lying - alot.