(Background reading all this is new to you.)
A few weeks ago I had one of my regular six-monthly CT scans. It showed that the metastases in my lungs have grown a bit each, although not a great deal (2.2 up to maybe 2.8cm across). However, it also showed up a 3-4cm lump in my left kidney which needed further analysis. I had an appointment this week about that. Basically, there are three options:
- Metastasis (spread) of my existing cancer
- Benign lump
- New kidney cancer
3) is apparently very unlikely, both because of how it looks on the scan and because of how relatively slowly it’s growing. So they want to do a biopsy to distinguish between 1) (leading to an operation) and 2) (which would require no operation).
If surgery is required, they hope to do a partial (rather than full) nephrectomy (kidney removal), and it’ll probably be in September or October, after my wedding and honeymoon :-). The fact that a partial nephrectomy is possible is very encouraging, because it means if it turned up in the other one in a few years in the same way, I’d have two half-kidneys, rather than no kidneys! But I continue to be amazed by the carefully-designed redundancy in the human body.
I have silently followed your Planet Mozilla posts for some months and just want to wish you good luck.
I am not a Christian but I strongly believe in God and appreciate all people that peacefully share their belief, as you do, in a world that usually gets confused identifying faith only with old religious practices. You say the right word by telling us the human body is amazing. Indeed it is, the more I study, the more I get impressed…
Thanks for sharing, Gerv.
Vito
Good luck with the biopsy. And congratulations on your engagement!!!
Good luck for both your health and your marriage, Gerv.
Praying for you Gerv.
-c
Psalm 55:22
From your marriage website :
« I (Gerv) was a bit unimpressed with some parts of the John Lewis Gift List website. They give very bad descriptions of items, despite the fact that they do have better ones available. So, I wrote an modification for Firefox to switch out the bad descriptions for the good ones. If you use Firefox as your browser (and if not, get it here), you can install the Greasemonkey addon and then get the modification script here, and it will improve your gift list buying experience for our wedding and all future ones. Let me know if it doesn’t work. »
LOL ! That’s really the way a Firefox hacker should handle his marriage.
Congratulations