IIIB Recurrent spread to kidney - surgery

• By Chum
• Posted January 7, 2008 at 10:48 am
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I think like you - if you know it's there and can cut it out - do so! It is so inconsistent to treat mets one place and not another! I've told my surgeon that if I have mets, I want to have them cut out - take me apart piece by piece if necessary! I want to be as aggressive as possible. The argument I have heard against such action is - "why do it when you will have additional mets somewhere else?" First, having more mets is not a foregone conclusion. Until the new outbreak is checked - it could be another primary tumor. Also - if there is a next time (which there might not be if no action is taken), that one could also be cut out... and so on.

The critical point is, will surgery kill me or damage me enough that I would want it to kill me? But I WANT TO MAKE THE DECISION - not have some knee-jerk reaction from an oncologist who read the "correct" response from a book. To have any quality of life - you need "life." Let me be the judge of how hard, long and in what manner I fight.

Power to you Kathy! Whatever your decision, I applaud you for taking responsibility for your own life! Let me know if you need any research in your fight against the beast. I have read lots of reports where surgeons "mistakenly" did surgery to deal with mets (staging someone at 1 or 2, opening up the lungs and finding more than they predicted - and then doing what they could anyway). We are all with you.

Courage

Chum

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• By kosby
• Posted January 7, 2008 at 2:11 pm
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Chum -

It's all about the fight - if we are scared to lose we are scared to win. I am in excellent health beside the LC and I will search out everything I possibly can to keep on living.

I have not found any good information on mets to kidney and am told it is not very common. Do you have any information on that?

Miracles & blessings -

Kathy

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• By Chum
• Posted January 8, 2008 at 9:30 am
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I found only a few articles. The one below mentions how rare such secondary tumors are. Below is the abstract and all of the information necessary to access it. (PMID: 16485580 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

It appears that this is a rare thing. Your oncologist might be able to make more sense from the article than either you or I. This is a Japanese (I believe) article and I could not get the original to translate.

FDG PET in solitary metastastic/secondary tumor of the kidney: a report of three cases and a review of the relevant literature.

Kaneta T, Hakamatsuka T, Yamada T, Takase K, Sato A, Higano S, Kinomura S, Fukuda H, Takahashi S, Yamada S.

Department of Radiology, Graduate School of Medicine, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. kaneta@rad.med.tohoku.ac.jp

Metastatic tumors or secondary lymphoma of the kidney are rare and can often be missed on conventional computed tomography (CT) imaging. On the other hand, many types of metastatic tumor or lymphoma can be detected clearly as hotspots of elevated uptake on FDG PET. However, excreted FDG present in the urinary tract mimics these findings and interferes with image reading. Careful investigation of the renal cortex by FDG PET and review of anatomical images, such as the findings of CT and MRI, have important roles in the detection of renal tumor. Here, we present three cases of solitary metastatic/secondary tumor of the kidney, and discuss the features of the lesions on FDG PET in comparison with their appearance on CT.

Courage

Chum

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• By kosby
• Posted January 8, 2008 at 11:17 am
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m -

Thank you so much - I am talking with the doctor on Thursday.

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