You really never know what is around the corner!

Sisters…

My sister went to have her bloodwork done a few weeks ago. When she got the results her doctor thought her liver enzymes were a little unusual and sent her off for an ultrasound.

She had the ultrasound done the following week and fortuitously the results found that her liver looked fine. However, the doc said that she had a small lesion on one of her kidneys.

My sister then had to book in to have a biopsy of the lesion to determine whether it was cancerous. She had to reschedule as she caught a bad head cold the week prior to the biopsy and was still unwell the day before.

They got her back in within the week, which indicates that they were fairly concerned about the lesion. My sister wasn’t too freaked out as she trusted the urologist and oncologist, mostly because they kept her informed and were reassuring. She was a little nervous the night before and the day of the procedure, which is understandable.

She finally had the biopsy last week and got the results a couple of days later. That appointment was via Telehealth because in her town they still do a lot of online medical appointments due to another wave of Covid.

The outcome was that the lesion was cancer, more precisely it was a ‘renal cell carcinoma‘ – you can read about that if you click the link. The good news was that it was very small and had not spread anywhere else. The specialist is booking her in for surgery in January to have a ‘partial nephrectomy‘ which is surgical removal of part of the affected kidney. Again you can read about that procedure if you click the link.

I had to google all the terms as they were unfamiliar and I am now far more informed. My sister is fortunate that due to the small size of the lesion, she can have ‘robotic surgery’, rather than having ‘open surgery’. The recovery time from robotic surgery is a lot quicker and the surgery itself is far less invasive.

She has been reassured by her specialist that they will be able to remove the entire lesion and that she (likely) won’t need further intervention. Although I guess she will have regular scans to ensure she stays in the clear.

She’ll be in hospital for a couple of days and then home to recover. I am planning to send over a care package for her when she gets home. We live in different cities on opposite sides of the country, so I can’t get over to see her easily.

Please look after your health and wellbeing, have your bloodwork done (I know I am well and truly overdue for mine and will book in asap!), eat well (as much as you can), exercise well (as much as you can) and take care!