3 months scan results not so good

Are you seeing a medical oncologist or a urologic oncologist? You will get the best care if you can find a medical oncologist with expertise in kidney cancer. It's not a common cancer and you really need someone very experienced with kidney cancer.

A metastasis to the far kidney is not very common.

Small spots (masses) in the kidney are quite common. If it's very small, it may very well be a cyst. They are common and get more common as we age.

If you are seeing a urologic oncologist, I'd advise finding a medical oncologist that does research and sees kidney cancer patients regularly. Urologic oncologists are urologists first (surgeons) and do not generally treat metastatic disease nor do they normally keep up on issues related to metastatic kidney cancer. There've been a lot of advances in this field in recent years. A good medical oncologist that specialists in kidney cancer will see 10-20 kidney cancer patients a week. A regular medical oncologist may not see that many in a year or even in a career. A urologic oncologist will see even fewer and will generally not follow anyone that gets tumors in other parts of the body, because that's usually the job of a medical oncologist (that uses drugs to treat metastatic disease).

Keep your chin up. It always seems worse than it is, particularly in the beginning. The dread and worry can make things so much worse.

Best,

Todd

Cysts are very common. I have on on each kidney and we're simply monitoring them for growth/changes. So far so good. As Todd said, mets to the other kidney and/or cancer in each is very uncommon. Don't assume the worst. I know it's easier said than done but there's a very good chance it's a cyst.

In regard to the finding on the other kidney, very often small cysts are found on kidneys.  Personally, I have a ton on mine, but the scans I took both before and after my partial neph have categorized them as just that, fluid filled cysts.  Someone else with more knowledge of scans might want to jump in, but I would assume that the scan your husband took was done without contrast, to be as gentle on his remaining kidney as possible.  Is it possible that without the contrast material, it's harder to differentiate between a fluid filled cyst and something more complex?

In regard to taking care of the 1cm "thing" on his remaining kidney, I did a decent amount of research on the method your doctor was describing.  It's called ablation therapy and there are two modes that are currently used.  The "burning" one you mention is called radio frequency or RF ablation.  Using needles that are guided by ultrasound (or CT or MRI, depending I guess on the radiologist and the doctor), the radiologist "cooks" the tumor or lesion and that kills it.  The other method is called cryoablation.  It's the same theory, but instead of cooking the tumor, they freeze it multiple times and that kills the cells.  It's generally done on an outpatient basis and I'm told it's imilar to getting a biopsy in terms of discomfort level.  As an aside, my 90 year old mother-in-law had a kidney biospy about three months ago for a different kind of kidney situation.  I was allowed to stay in the room with her (gowned and masked of course) and saw how they performed the biopsy.  She had absolutely no reaction to it and 24 hours later, she was fully recovered from that experience.

You should also know that the wait and see approach is the standard of care in kidney spots that size.  Mine was originally diagnosed in late 2013 and I didn't have anything done until mid-2016 when the little guy grew from 1.5cm to 1.7cm.

I'm not going to be foolish enough to say not to worry, because that's impossible.  But your doc seems to be on top of this.

Hi.  We were also told by my husband's urologic oncologist that more than 50% of people have cysts on their kidneys and aren't even aware of it.  Please try not to worry.  I know it's easier said than done, but it may very well be just a cyst.

What did his pathology report say?  What type of RCC was it?