Cancer Diagnosis

I was having some stomach discomfort etc., for about a month so went to see my doctor.

He thought it was likely Gall Stones, so sent me to get an Ultrasound to be sure.

The Ultrasound not only confirmed I had Gall Stones, but also showed a "mass" on my right kidney. I then had a abdominal CT scan.

I had a follow up visit the next day and was told that the mass was most likely (99%) renal cell carcinoma (Kidney Cancer).

They saw a couple of nodules in my lungs so wanted a chest CT scan as well to check them out.

Unfortunately they felt the scan was consistent with metastasization of the kidney cancer.

on 5/3 I had a CT guided lung biopsy. The results were inconclusive.

For the kidney, they said that when a mass is that big, they are almost always cancer, but even if it is not cancer, it is too big and the kidney needed to come out.

On 5/12, I went in to surgery for removal of both the right kidney and gall bladder.

Unfortunately, they discovered that the mass was laying on my colon and would require removal of a portion of the colon as well. They also found a nodule on the Peritoneum (abdominal) cavity wall. They did a test to determine it was cancer (renal sarcomatoid) This is an aggressive, rare transformation of one of the normal types of renal cancer (we won't know what type it transformed from until full pathology results are in)

Because it was separate from the kidney, this indicates that the cancer has traveled somehow to get there (stage 4) and there is likely other spots that we can't see and won't show on the CT scans.

So, they abandoned the surgery and we will wait for full pathology results to determine the best chemo regimen.

I have an apt with the oncologist on 5/20 to plan our attack. This is very rare, so there is little data on how to attack this, but his current thinking is to use an aggressive regimen since I'm young and healthy to see if we can shrink the tumor, then remove it after we know the chemo is working.

So as odd as this seems to say (and it still seems extremely odd...) , the current diagnosis is that I have a rare aggressive, stage 4, renal sarcomatoid cancer in my abdomen cavity and possibly in my lungs.