Procedure

Eric has a kidney tumor. We have known about it since March when he was admitted to the hospital with pancreatitis. I just chose not to blog about it until now. Too scary.

As awful as Eric's ordeal was in March, the blessing of it was that the tumor was discovered during one of his many scans at the hospital. It was also discovered early. The tumor is 3 centimeters which classifies it as the lowest level, or stage, of cancer. (From what I understand, anything under 7 cm. is considered Stage I, which is where you want to be if you have cancer.) If he hadn't been sick or hospitalized, we might never have discovered the tumor until there was blood in the urine or until it was too late.

Eric has been to many appointments since March to figure out what to do next. The doctors have told us that kidney tumors are cancerous 90 percent of the time. Given that fact, Eric had a bone scan to rule out cancer anywhere else in his body. That was negative, thank goodness.

We know that the entire kidney will need to come out. Because of where the tumor is located, they can't just cut out that part. However, Eric had to have a procedure done today to determine if the tumor is just in the kidney, or if it is also growing into or from the ureter, which is the tube leading from the kidney to the bladder.

The procedure Eric went through today determined that the tumor is just in the kidney, which is the result we were hoping for. They had to put him to sleep and insert a contrast dye to see where the tumor was growing.

Eric is in a lot of pain. I won't go into details, but he's hurting.

I truly did not enjoy being at the hospital, even if this particular hospital does look more like a doctor's office than a hospital. I saved my tears until the doctor told me he was okay, then he thought I was a nutcase for crying. I told him that it's been a tough month. I could have said a tough 6 months, but why be melodramatic?

After a minor mess up with the medication (it got sent to Longs instead of Vons), Eric is resting and trying to eat. I am trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

Kidney cancer has been on my mind since March. I'm tired. I'm scared. I'm trying not to be. I'm trying to thank God that we found this early. I'm trying to turn my brain off for a bit to give me a break from thinking.