Going under the knife tomorrow

DebsGirl said:

GOOD luck GOD bless
will be praying for you... for your health and safety in your journey through surgery may god bless and guide the doctors steady hands and may he put guardian angels around you and your O.R. during your surgery and throughout your recovery... every night through my childhood my mother sat by my bed and prayed and part of that prayer was always for god to put guardian angels around my bed... i could never sleep peacfully until she did so... i do the same now for my sons... my mother is scheduled for her surgery the 13th...

to icemantoo
we recieved some good news and made a somewhat grim realization over the past 24 hrs... good news is that although my mother has 2 kidneys fused together creating one joined mass... the two kidneys seem to be functioning at 100% as separate organs...
so i sent a list of questions to my mom to ask the doc for me as i have learned that they plan to remove her entire right kidney rather than just doing a partial neph... said questions being...
because her tumor is 5cm inside of an 8cm cyst that exists and is attatched to and on the outside of the kidney and not within why is a partial not being considered as an option as opposed to a radical of the entire kidney... given that its a relatively small tumor as far as rcc goes why not try to preserve as much healthy functioning kidney as possible rather than removing the kidney in its entirety..
also... if a partial is an option and is decided apon at the time of surgery based on the grade and agressiveness they discover could they go ahead and separate the healthy remaining portion of the affected kidney from the non cancerous healhy left kiney as means of prevention against spread and or transfer of cancer from one kidney to the other should the cancer return in the remaining healthy portion of the affected kidney...
this to me seams to be the obvious choice for this reason... lets say cancer returns in the same kidney later... ok... its already separate from the left lowering risk of spreading the cancer... remove it... she still is left with one good complete kidney...
on the flip side... say the cancer returns in the left kidney... and they have to remove the entire thing... or even half... either way she is either left with 2 halves of a kidney or one half (being the right) if they decide to remove the entire right kidney with a small only stage one rcc on it unnecesarily they are leaving her with fewer options should left kidney ever become diseased or cancerous... she would be put in the position of almost certainly needing a transplant should it ever return... which leads me to the bad news...
my mothers blood type is rare... A-... none of her kids or2 other living blood relatives share this blood type... putting her in an even more dificult position should she ever need a kidney... she has 8 living blood realatives not including her 7 grandkids whom are currently too young to donate one of which isnt even born...
i know i tend to ramble but this is all weighing heavily on my mind... just thought i would update everyone

EarthMama said:

good luck today dude! come
good luck today dude! come post on here when you are able to, I wanna know how your surgery goes! hopefully after today we will both be well on our way to recovery!

JSR said:

Im back
Got back from the hospital on Sunday, so was there for 5 days, had lapro on the right kidney, he took about 10% of the kidney, no complications, the first day was soso, mostly gas pain since with lapro they pump you full of air, and it does not have any easy place to go out, the pain from the gas was close to unbearable, for 2 days I was a constant 8 out of 10 on the pain scale, I have been taking vicodin 1-2 PER DAY for knee surgery for a couple of years now, and that has really come back to bite me in the ****, my pain snsitivity is really high, the morphone was doing nothing for me, so lesson learned, GET OFF THE FREAKING VICODIN because later you will pay for it. It took me 3 days to burp or fart, and I felt like I was going to explode the whole time.

So now I am at home for 2 days, taking vicodin about every 7-12 hours, its hard to sleep, been trying on the couch, the bed is just way too flat and when I wake up in the middle of the night the pain and stiffness is at its worst, been walking a LOT trying to get things worked out inside me.

I saw the doc before I left on Sunday, he said all went well in the operation, he said the GROSS diagnosis (meaning the prelim "unnofficial") was that this was POSSIBLY cystic in nature with some brown material inside of it, but he sounded like he did not want me to get too excited yet, he said the sample was sent off to johns hopkins on the east coast, so please keep me in your prayers for a little more, and thats to all of you for the positive thoughts.

Von55 said:

So glad, JSR!
Great news that your surgery is over & that you're alive & (maybe?) kicking....I agree, don't worry about the lab report, just concentrate on your recovery. I was taking codeine for a few weeks (same problem as Vicodin, I think) and found that drinking heaps of water & adding LSA (linseed, almond & sunflower seed mix) to cereal etc really helps move things along. We hope to hear from you in a few weeks with astonishment at how well you're doing!
Take care,
Von

EarthMama said:

How is everyone doing? Did
How is everyone doing? Did they find out anything else JSR?

Im having a rougher than expected time recovering from my surgery. ( I have had some other health issues this past year that have contributed to my problems) Hoping to see a light at the end of the tunnel... ( not in a dying way either haha) Still taking pain meds.. still having a hard time sitting/standing blah blah.. I wasn't prepared for the surgery. There are many things that I wish I had of known before I went in, about the recovery process, I plan on writing a blog to help others with all the little things..