Emotional time of year to begin with

lawmanmike said:

January surgery too
Thank you for starting this thread Flatlander (and GaryM for your encouragement!) Sm4Pack - good luck with your surgery on Jan 9th. I just recently joined the club too and have a 3cm mass on lower right kidney and scheduled for open partial nephrectomy just after you on January 12th. I was offered the procedure mid-December but the surgeon suggested I enjoy the holidays and shcedule it for early January and I am very thankful I did. My son is 3 now and this was his most exciting Christmas yet - couldn't imagine missing that. I will be thinking of you and your kids on January 9th and hoping all goes well for both of us!

flatlander said:

Back in ER waiting 45
Back in ER waiting 45 ;minutes after surgeon said come back in.

Texas_wedge said:

Lap. v open
Brother law man Mike, I'm sure you've made the right decision. You've been given a cogent and persuasive explanation of why it's to be open (and it's probably a matter of ease of access and minimal tissue damage that indicates the side access - if you find out I'd be glad to know). Beyond that, you've decided to trust your man and that's crucial in giving you the positive attitude that so greatly helps in every way. I was not wanting to call into question the advice you had received, but was just being academically curious.

My primary objective was to further buttress your positive attitude. In that cause, may i give you a cheering comparison?

Like you, my lesion was low on the right kidney. My consultant is one of the world's top laparoscopic surgeons and he had hoped to carry out my op. laparoscopically but knew it would be tricky. I was confident that I was in the best of hands and also had the backup of being in the hospital that pioneered lap. surgery in the UK and is leading the way in robotic surgery in the whole of Europe. So that was as good as could be hoped for and my Wife and I acknowledged that there might be a need to switch to open surgery if the practicability of completing laparoscopically proved to be insuperably difficult. In the event, they had to switch, with copious bleeding, and the op. took around four hours longer than had been anticipated, involving a fourth incision about ten inches long.

On 5th Dec. I had a radical nephrectomy, you're having partial. My adrenal gland was left untouched, as were all my lymph nodes but you are going to have those benefits plus having both kidneys still in play. Your tumour is 3cm. so its cubic size is 3 x 3 x 3 = 27 cc. Mine was 8 x 8 x 8 = 512 cc i.e. 19 times the size of yours. You're 41, I'm 69. I had the benefit of being very fit and strong and healthy (apart from the little RCC problem) and maybe you're not a physical wreck. Thus, overall, compared with me you've got everything going for you!

So how's it going for me? I'm just after 4 weeks post-op and feeling fine. I'm off all medications, eating well, look much as I did, except for the scars (fading fast and giving no trouble) and a slight residual swelling. I'm walking a fair amount and busting to get back to my golf, rowing and weightlifting and hope eventually to get back into shape to run the London Marathon again. I'm giving a lot of (free) help to a friend with complex easement, wayleave and prescription issues in a squabble with the adjacent landowner (his Brother), helping another golfing buddy and his Wife and their neighbours in a long-running planning permission battle. I'm trying to finish a comprehensive legal analysis of a seminal golf damages case (in Scotland) decided in November but am having to spend many hours each day on issues with my Mother-in-law and a cousin of my Wife's, both of whom are much more seriously ill and close to death than most of us here.

Garym has good grounds for encouraging you to believe that you can be up and running (metaphorically!) in less than three months. I reckon my cognitive functioning was back to near normal by a couple of weeks post-op, at most. As long as you don't overdo it physically in the next few weeks, you should have no real work problems. (I must admit that's easy for me to say because I'm no longer practising law, being based at home and now in computer software.) Gary was also shrewd in observing that "court-room drama will never be as important as it used to be."

I reckon you've got it made and you'll know that all here will be pulling for you too.

Texas_wedge said:

Cube v sphere
Gary - I must confess I should have expressed myself better - I should have acknowledged that for the sake of simplicity I had cancelled out pi/6. I was simplifying it down to the way of comparing the volumes of 2 spheres. The volumes I gave for the tumours were actually the volumes for cubes with sides of the dimension of the diameters of the tumours i was comparing. So the actual volumes are roughly half what I said - when you multiply them by pi/2 - about 14 and 268. As you rightly stated, the comparison was correct at roughly 19 times.

Texas_wedge said:

Cube v sphere
Gary - wasn't looking for a 'Mine's bigger than yours' competition but your arithmetic is, indded correct! ;-)

flatlander said:

attempt at poem this morning
The snow is coming down, the visiting nurse just left.
After measuring the urine coming out of my chest.

Soon we'll pick up the meat from the pigs we grew.
Then drop the Bacon and ham with a smoke house crew.

They lost their daughter a firefighter like me.
As she died of her cancer I CANT complain about pee

Now the world is on loan to me and my bag of pee
So when the big C has got you down, look at the sky and try not to frown

How life is decided we will never know
Until its over enjoy the show.

Texas_wedge said:

Lap. v open
Brother law man Mike, I'm sure you've made the right decision. You've been given a cogent and persuasive explanation of why it's to be open (and it's probably a matter of ease of access and minimal tissue damage that indicates the side access - if you find out I'd be glad to know). Beyond that, you've decided to trust your man and that's crucial in giving you the positive attitude that so greatly helps in every way. I was not wanting to call into question the advice you had received, but was just being academically curious.

My primary objective was to further buttress your positive attitude. In that cause, may i give you a cheering comparison?

Like you, my lesion was low on the right kidney. My consultant is one of the world's top laparoscopic surgeons and he had hoped to carry out my op. laparoscopically but knew it would be tricky. I was confident that I was in the best of hands and also had the backup of being in the hospital that pioneered lap. surgery in the UK and is leading the way in robotic surgery in the whole of Europe. So that was as good as could be hoped for and my Wife and I acknowledged that there might be a need to switch to open surgery if the practicability of completing laparoscopically proved to be insuperably difficult. In the event, they had to switch, with copious bleeding, and the op. took around four hours longer than had been anticipated, involving a fourth incision about ten inches long.

On 5th Dec. I had a radical nephrectomy, you're having partial. My adrenal gland was left untouched, as were all my lymph nodes but you are going to have those benefits plus having both kidneys still in play. Your tumour is 3cm. so its cubic size is 3 x 3 x 3 = 27 cc. Mine was 8 x 8 x 8 = 512 cc i.e. 19 times the size of yours. You're 41, I'm 69. I had the benefit of being very fit and strong and healthy (apart from the little RCC problem) and maybe you're not a physical wreck. Thus, overall, compared with me you've got everything going for you!

So how's it going for me? I'm just after 4 weeks post-op and feeling fine. I'm off all medications, eating well, look much as I did, except for the scars (fading fast and giving no trouble) and a slight residual swelling. I'm walking a fair amount and busting to get back to my golf, rowing and weightlifting and hope eventually to get back into shape to run the London Marathon again. I'm giving a lot of (free) help to a friend with complex easement, wayleave and prescription issues in a squabble with the adjacent landowner (his Brother), helping another golfing buddy and his Wife and their neighbours in a long-running planning permission battle. I'm trying to finish a comprehensive legal analysis of a seminal golf damages case (in Scotland) decided in November but am having to spend many hours each day on issues with my Mother-in-law and a cousin of my Wife's, both of whom are much more seriously ill and close to death than most of us here.

Garym has good grounds for encouraging you to believe that you can be up and running (metaphorically!) in less than three months. I reckon my cognitive functioning was back to near normal by a couple of weeks post-op, at most. As long as you don't overdo it physically in the next few weeks, you should have no real work problems. (I must admit that's easy for me to say because I'm no longer practising law, being based at home and now in computer software.) Gary was also shrewd in observing that "court-room drama will never be as important as it used to be."

I reckon you've got it made and you'll know that all here will be pulling for you too.