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Lex,

It is still very small and there is no one right or wrong answer as to when they should take it out. It is major surgery so there will be down time which varies from person to person.  At 59 I was back to a slow normal in about 6 weeks. Others have had different recoveries. Tje first week or two are very hard, Allow yourself time to recover.

icemantoo

The watch and wait approach worked.  Now that there has been growth I hope the conversation with your doctor does lean more towards taking it out.  There are several members that had tumors the size you have and had it removed.

A lot of factors do go into recovery.  This is a major surgery and should be taken seriously.  I had a partial using the Da Vinci method and recovery was fairly quick.  You will need support for the first couple weeks especially if you have to lift your daughter.

Hope this helps.

Stub

Hi Lex.  I was in your position a few years ago.  I had a small lesion on my right kidney that was discovered in late 2013.  It wasn't until April, 2016 that an u/s disclosed some growth, so it came out in June, 2016.  It was a partial robotic.  To try and answer some of your questions:

Mine was originally pegged at 1.5cm.  It supposed "grew" to 1.8cm in the 2-1/2 years of surveillance, but that "growth was between a CT scan and an u/s.  When it was removed, the actual size was 1.7cm.  Despite the fact that the technology is able to measure these things down to the millimeter, it's still just as much art as science in terms of the number they come up with.  Differences in the type of machine (u/s versus CT), the tech doing the scan and the radiologist reading the scan all can contribute to differences in the measurements.  Still, your growth grew, so it should come out.

In terms of surgery versus freezing, I was offered both, but the urologic oncolist strongly recommended the surgery, even though he performed ablations and did not perform surgery.  Ablations are typically recommended for people that are surgical risks.  The success rate in ablations (at least in 2016 when I was making my decision) was about 90%.  At the same time, surgeries for lesions my size had a success rate of 99%+.  In 2019, I would assume the success rate for ablations would likely be a little higher, but not to the level of the surgery.

Since you seem to be in pretty good physical condition, I would think your recovery from the robotic surgery would be faster than most.  Ice's post was that he was back to a slow normal in about six weeks, but remember, he had an open surgery, not robotic.  That does make a difference.  I had robotic surgery and I was back to a slow normal in about three weeks and I think I was back to lifting weights and doing crunches (albeit more lightly for a while) in about six weeks.  The key, as many people have pointed out in other posts, is to listen to what your body tells you in terms of how fast or slow to take things.  I took things pretty slow, just to be safe, and it seemed to have worked out ok so far.

Being a lot less invasive, the ablation technique would have a much shorter recovery period.  My main issue was that I figured that getting the tissue out of my body, even though it would be dead tissue after the ablation, would be a better thing than letting it sit in there while my body gradually eliminated it.  I don't know if that's what actually happens and how fast or slow it might occur, but that was my thought process (assuming one can trust my thought process).  The main reason for you to consider it would be if you don't think you can get the care neded for your adult child.

Whatever you decide, the one thing you'll know is that with a growth of your size, there is an excellent chance that the procedure you undertake will completely take care of the cancer with the only followup care being periodic CT and/or u/s.

Hi, Oaklee is right, no sense to compare US to CT. You should only compare CT to CT. And about freezing - less invasive, yes, but there will be no chance to get a full pathology report after that, if I’m not mistaken. I would definitely want to know what I’m dealing with, so I would take surgery anytime :-) 

Good luck, you are VERY lucky to discover it so early!

I too was told that ablation is for much older people and/or for those who could not physically tolerate surgery. The "gold standard" is surgery. I had open partial surgery and was up walking the same day, and home on the third day. While not fun, it was not nearly as bad as I had feared. If it's true that lap/robotic is even easier, then you should be even better off than I was. I was told no treadmill and certainly no weight lifting for quite a while. I think it was six weeks before I was back to my normal exercise activities. Try to find somenone to give you a hand the first few days, especially with your child. You shold not be bending or lifting. All the best to you!

Like everyone said above, you're in a good position.

As far as recovery goes, in my case, I felt like I recovered pretty quickly after the nephrectomy. But when it came to actual work-outs and vigorous exercise, I wasn't ready. I had the okay to start back on the treadmill after four weeks, but my body just wasn't ready. It took me closer to six weeks before I could work out again, eight weeks before I could do everything physically I could do before the neph. 

You're gonna do great - you've got this!

My kidney tumor was quoted at 1 CM on my original CT. I was put on active surveillance and 8 months later I had another CT. The new radiologist quoted it at 1.3 cm to 1.5 CM with a 2 mm growth in 8 months so you can see he saw the original CT different from the other radiologist as far as the starting point.  Like other said above and beyond that comparing an ultrasound to a CT I would take with a grain of salt. I have also heard that final pathology could be quite different weather bigger or smaller than what the CT scan report shows. I agree with the discussions about the freezing as I went down that same path. I don't know why my doctor even suggested it considering I'm 51 and healthy and never would have known what it was because he said it was so small he couldn't guarantee a biopsy on it. I am having a partial nephrectomy in a week or so via The DaVinci so I will let you know how it goes