It was a bit of a rollarcoaster this week. After my MRI they said that the surgery had to go off and that my tumor had worked it's way too far up this vein that goes to the heart. Laproscopic just couldn't get it all with the small incisions. I had to have "open" surgery. Going after all the tendrils and going up a heart vein sounded risky to me and I was a bit shaken by that. I emailed the oncologist, Dr. Quinn, that maybe it's too risky and we should go right to IL-2.

We went and saw the surgeon, Dr. Schuckman, 10am on Wed., 12/16, and she said that it is major but that it's routine for her, a "no brainer" and not that risky. She says once they control the vena vein (it had a longer name), that they just pull the piece out of the vein that was partially blocking it. Dr. Quinn reviewed the MRI and texted Dr. Schuckman, while we were there, and said that he recommended going ahead with the surgery.

Depending on the opportunity available, since they are in the chest too (and remove one rib), they may remove the two tumors in the right lung. This may aid the high dose immunotherapy that will probably start late Jan. or Feb., to have less large tumors to deal with so that it will just be attacking tumor cells and small tumors they couldn't see or didn't have access to.

She, Dr. Schuckman, said that my lung tumors won't give me symptoms unless they grow a lot (I'm always wondering if my cough is related to them and she said "no"). She said that there was no invasion into any bones (which is very good). They will take out some lymph nodes around the kidney just in case since a couple are swollen a bit which could be invasion or infection from being next to a tumor.

I asked about the weight loss and she didn't feel that it was related to the cancer in that it was too slow over too long of a period. She said they are not sure why kidney cancer would cause weight loss but it might be that the growths are inefficient high energy tissue that burns more calories that one might think for their size.

I go into the hospital for some preliminary stuff Monday, 12/21, and 7:30 on Tuesday they start the surgery which may take about 6 hours. I'll be in for 5-7 days with the first 2 being in intensive care. Then it's about a month at home for recovery from this type of surgery.

She also said that between the 12/9 MRI and the 10/22 CAT scan that the visible tumors had not changed in size. This is, naturally, good news.