Ah, Heck Mav..... ya spoiled the surprise! I forgive ya.
OK... I'm not big on mystery so here's the latest:
The Doc called with the results of the MRI; the results are "mixed and unclear".
I have 8 lesions on my liver. The Radiologist classed 3 of them as cysts which are no problem. He classed 4 of them as hemangiomas, the knot of blood vessels which are no problem.
The remaining one is a 1.8cm one that "enhances differently than a hemangioma". I should have asked him what it DID look like, but I admit I was a bit speechless.
The kidney doctor feels I have papillary renal cell carcinoma in my right kidney. IF this hasn't spread, that's a good thing. Papillary that hasn't spread has a bit better outcome IF you get it all when you take the kidney.
Doc Wood feels that it is very unlikely that a single isolated tumor metastasized from this. He says that usually, if it metastasizes, it does so in multiple areas at once. He characterized the chance of this being cancer as "remote" in his opinion and experience. He thinks it is probably benign as as single liver metastase is "very unlikely" and he has "never seen it before".
He then talked about what we do now. If it isn't cancer (in the liver), the laparascopic kidney removal as planned is the best answer.
If it IS cancer, there's a fork in the road.
There is proof that you live longer, even if it has spread, if you remove the primary tumor. So this thing has to come out anyway.
Now, we can get a liver surgeon in and do an "open" surgery instead of laparascopy. The liver surgeon would ultrasound the liver and biopsy the "concerning" mass and then Wood would still remove the kidney.
Or, we can do the laparascopy on the kidney and then in 3-4 weeks repeat the MRI and see if the "concerning" mass has changed. If so, they can biopsy it much the same as they did the hemangioma last time. If it hasn't changed, they just keep watching it. This is what Wood prefers to do.
Here's why: he doesn't think this is a cancer. He thinks it's benign. I guess he wants to see exactly what type cancer is on my kidney before getting too aggressive with the liver.
The other factor here is that IF it is papillary renal cell that has spread to my liver... there's really nothing they can do. It does not respond to either radiation, chemotherapy or immunotherapy. You can sometimes cut it out of the liver, but it will be back.
Bottom line is it it isn't cancer, there's no need. If it is, they can't really help me anyway.
Cool deal, huh? Needless to say, while I was feeling pretty good about this whole deal, this news is definitely a downer. I thought I had found the get out of jail free card and only paid a kidney for it. Now, that's not exactly the deal again.
Anyway, I told him that, as I said, I wasn't going to second guess him. I came here because I figured these guys knew what they were doing.
So we go as planned on Monday, 0730 Central.
I appreciate your prayers and positive thoughts.
