Out, out damn spot

Well, it's a good thing I got pneumonia.

I saw the urologist yesterday, and he said the spot on my kidney is indeed cancerous and needs to come out. He will make a small incision between two ribs, cut out the lesion and the margins, and then that will be that and I will be cured. Easy peasy.

If I had not received a CAT scan to find out the extent of my pneumonia, it would not have been found at such an early stage. Kidney cancer is otherwise difficult to diagnose until it has spread. My kidney numbers are good, which also bodes well for me.

I will probably spend two days in the hospital (Brigham and Women's) and then have a couple of weeks of recovery at home. I am going to schedule it for sometime in July, after I have totally bounced back from the pneumonia. I saw Melissa today and she said my lungs sound clear and I look good.

I had an easy drive in yesterday but a hard time getting home after I spent the night in between appointments at Margaret's. On my way out of town from Dana-Farber this morning, I could barely make it to Diane's, where I stopped and took a nap. The traffic was terrible on the turnpike, and even though I had a coffee, I got tired again and stopped in the Framingham rest area for a nap. Then it started to pour shafts of rain. I ate my way through the rest of the trip and arrived home without incident.

I am not happy to have something else to deal with, but I am good with the way it has been presented to me. Shit happens, and having had cancer once is no guarantee that it won't happen again. When compared to what I've been through, this is nothing. I am thinking of this as cancer lite, spot removal, whatever.

As my father used to say even when he had something to complain about, I can't complain.