6 month follow up Ct question

I have not had my follow-up yet, but it sounds like you have a great doctor that is keeping a close eye on you. 

My doctor told me (stage 1 grade 2, 2.2cm), that a reoccurence generally wouldn't be visible under a year out anyway. 

His thoughts on the 6 month follow-up were that it is generally just a good time to establish a baseline for future scans, and to make sure you healed up properly from the surgery.   

foxhd said:

follow up spots

I think that you are asking if anyone ever had mets show up after having their kidney removed. But afraid to say it that way. Well yea. Probably most of us. Otherwise this forum might not exist.  I must be missing what you really want to know. Because after having my kidney removed and being told, "We got it all." I found out after my 6 month scan that I had over 20 "spots."  Lungs, bones, liver, lymph nodes.  It's only classified as a "spot" until it is biopsied in pathology and determined to be cancer or not.

and nsb, I think you may be mislead into thinking mets don't show up that soon. That is not accurate. I was a dead man for sure. "Maybe 6 months to live." That was my prognosis 180 days after being told "They got it all."  Keep in mind that I had opinions from 4 cancer centers confirming this. I am here now only because I found one more oncologist who was able to get me into a clinical trial of what is now known as nivolumab. This was then followed up with Il-2.  I am alive. I am not cured. And my cancer is still present. Let me also add that I am clear cell carcinoma which is considered the easiest to manage.   Also keep in mind that nivolumab is not available except in clinical trials. And few if any openings exist in this country.

I just don't think sugar coating this infomation does anyone any good. As patients we need to be aggressive in determining our treatments and life expectancy.

Fox,  you bring up a good point.

I should clarify my position.  My statement was based strictly on my own situation, and the information that that was given to me by both my oncologist and surgeon.

In my case, I was an incidental finding and small tumor/ low grade.  While mets are obviously a concern for anyone diagnosed with RCC, both of my doctor's have said that  my risk of mets is extremely small.  They said that a more likely concern would be reoccurence in one of my kidneys (also a pretty small chance). 

The only reason I responded at all, was because I was fairly certain that the original poster was also a similar sized/grade tumor to mine. 

I am in no way saying to ignore things like this, and to not be super vigilant, I just think that, given the odds for that type of tumor, she should try to relax until/unless there is actually something to stress about.