How Do They Know What I’ve Got?

Abstract

The diagnosis of cancer is virtually always made from a patient’s initial history and confirmed by scans and a biopsy. The scans and the biopsy are generally a finessing of what is already clear from the history. A patient will give a description of pain or bleeding, weight loss or cough. From these descriptions, the cause for the symptoms is generally obvious to the grey haired pompous old fart of a clinician who thinks he knows everything but, if he is any good at all, is frequently astonished by how little he knows, and is neither pompous nor an old fart.