Cancer in both kidneys

cindiboy

I was diagnosed 5 weeks ago with a complex cyst about 7cm on my right kidney, 95% chance it is cancer. Have a tumor on my left kidney also 95% cancer. In 3 weeks I am having surgery on right kidney with cyst that covers the center of right kidney. Doctor says I will have dog ears after cyst is removed and he will try to fuse the pieces together. After I recover, 6to8 weeks, I will have surgery to remove the tumor in left kidney. Has anyone out there had anything like this?

I am concerned that it has taken so long for me to have surgery. I also have had hip pain in my right hip for about 4 mo.
Thanks in advance for any info

icemantoo

That smile helps
Dear cindiboy,

Its nice to see that you still can smile with such a tough diagnosis. Each of your surgeries is enough by itself. Most of us have gone thru only one. Hopefully with the recent advancements in RCC surgery they will be able to take care of both with only minimal problems. When I started my journey 9 years ago they were not doing partials or some of the newer procedures where only the tumor is removed such as cyro and RFA. If you haven't had a second opinion get one. Not that the diagnosis will change, but with such a unique diagnosis you should have the benefit of more than one doctor's opinion. As for the hip pain it very well may go away after the surgery. Mine did.

Best wishes,

Icemantoo

niprut

One step
Hi Cindiboy,

I don't have any great wisdom to offer you on your upcoming surgeries, mine was a pretty straight forward one. I hope someone here has some info for you. Keep us updated as to how you are going if you feel up to it.

Good luck on the information highway.

Take care,

Jo

Jamie1.3cm

Type of surgery
The fact that your doc wants to piece the two sides of the kidney back together suggests that he or she is probably planning on an open surgical procedure -- at least on that one. But I would be interested to hear alternatives. Can they cryoablate the tumor? What about the one on the other kidney? Can the second surgery be done laproscopically?

These are extremely important questions as they affect your recovery, comfort, and future. You want to be as "kidney sparing" as possible, especially when there are issues on both kidneys.

I, too, have cysts/lesions/tumors (all the same thing) on my other kidney -- not the one I just had surgery on last month. But the lesions on the other kidney are "stable," meaning that haven't changed in size and thus are not yet significant.

I'm betting your 7cm cyst was found on a random ct scan. Did you have any previous ct scans to compare it too? As in, did you have a ct scan several years ago and the cysts weren't there at that time? Or was this your first scan? When was this scan? Have you had a follow up scan?

The kidney tumor I just had removed, we saw it in a scan in December, probably cancer. We knew it was cancer when we did a follow up scan in May and it had grown 1 mm. (Kidney cancer is a very slow-growing cancer.)

So, my suggestion is that while the c-word is scary, if I were you, I'd want more answers before surgery. And whatever you hear, we'll be right here to talk you through it.