Hello, my name is Jamie. I am a 31 year old wife and mother of three. On Monday I was diagnosed with RCC. It has been a crazy week. I finally was released from the hospital friday. Colitis put me in the hospital and testing while there found the cancer. I go Aug.7 for my first appt with the nephro/oncologist. I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed and my family members are very upset. I joined this site to find out more info and find out how others have delt with this.

Hi, my name is Brian. I am a survivor of Papillary Kedney Cancer. I have been now cancer free since 9 March 2006. It was pretty rough for me when I found out that I had cancer, although my dr told me the only way to be 100% sure was to biopsy. They found a 4 inch in diameter tumor. To my understanding, or should I say what the doc told me is Kidney Cancers are slow moving cancers. I had never seen a nephro/oncologist. The Navy sent me to see a urologist and he preformed a radical nphrectomy on 9 march to remove the Kidney, tumor and a rhib. The reason the took the rhib was to make sure that the cancer did not spread to my bones. Honestly after what I went through I would take one step back and take a deep breathe. Being that Kidney Cancers are slow moving, honestly just tell yourself you are going to beat this. Its scary at first yes, but the more knowledge you read about Kidney Cancer and what stage you are in of the disease, the light at the end of the dark tunnel will start to shine through. I am living a productive, and healthy life with just one kidney and I will kick cancer in the ass again if it should ever return. I am a survivor!! One thing I have to mention is the Nephrectomy. There are two ways the doctor can perform the surgery. He can do a flank incision (which is 7 to 7 1/2 inches long) on your side, or do it laproscopic. For my love of history, I researched the proceedure and came to the conclusion that I wanted the flank incision. Little longer heal time, but it left me with the piece of mind that they got it all! http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3062.htm the link is some great info that I found when researching Kidney Cancer and the Surgery.

God Bless you and your family.

Keep your head up and kick cancer in the ass!!

Respectfully

Brian

Thank you so much for your post! It is very comforting to talk to someone who has been through this.

I am feeling more confident since my first post. It has now been a month since my diagnosis. I will be going into surgery in three days. I am dealing with the idea of having cancer better. But now life seems to be giving me the most trouble. By that I mean the mental process of my life changing.

I am dealing with anger, for the first time through this process. It could be the waiting? Maybe nerves? I'm not sure. But I'm madder than hell that this cancer takes up so much of my time and thoughts and I am so ready to get back to life. Life where my world does not revolve around doctors, appointments, scans, and bloodwork, etc.

I know that I will have follow ups, but those won't be weekly.

My doctor has chosen to do a robotic surgery due to trying to save a portion of my kidney. It turns out that my right kidney isn't as strong as they would like to see, and so the are going to try to reconstruct a portion of the kidney after taking out the cancer. They will look for an area called negative margin, to determine that they were able to get all of the cancer.

Once they reconstruct the kidney, time will tell if it will function. If it does not work, they will go back in and take it out.

Thanks for responding to my post! God Bless you and thank you for your service to our country! You are a hero.