...from one old fart to the rest of you old farts, and what the heck, you younger guys too.

There are any number of life threatening/altering ailments out there, none of which we look forward to encountering. Perhaps the most common and daunting is a diagnosis of cancer. The "Big C" as the Duke used to call it.

Early last month I got up at my usual time, went to take the morning whizz and out comes some blood with it. I go back into the bedroom, wake up the bride, and say to her, "Happy Birthday dear.....we need to go to the ER....now". Yeah, it really was her birthday...….blew about 11 hours of that day with the exercise. Upshot of that whole deal was a relatively simple UTI, treated with antibiotics for 10 days. But, in the examination process, a CT scan was done of that lower body area. The Doc who reads the scan images covers pretty much all that he sees, so the report talks about the appearance of the blatter, prostate, my messed up lower vertebrae and discs and so on. Of note was a small growth on the right kidney. That seemed to get the attention of all the attending staff, not a panic response, but a litany of possibilities from low key to oh shit. That led to the scheduling of an MRI which gives a more definitive image. Apparently they do a lot of MRIs as that appointment was a couple weeks out. I've noticed that if the Docs see something at the more dangerous range of possibilities those schedules get shortened so I took that as a relatively positive sign.

Upshot of that was an identification as a level 3 Bosniak lesion. Stern look from the Doc reviewing the results with me while saying "We need to operate as soon as possible to remove that". Again, the schedule thing, and again, not in a panic so how bad could it be? Well, according to the internet info (Docs hate that to a degree) a level 3 has a history of 84% malignant. Okay, it's gotta go.

So this past Monday (btw, my brother's birthday, I sense a pattern) was the operation. They used a robotic system (not autonomous) made by a company named Davinci where the surgeon operates a couple joystick devices to manipulate all the hardware. They cut 5 holes in my belly area; one for a drain, one for a light, one for a camera, the others for tools. Minimally invasive, but the body still doesn't like being disrupted like that. They just cut out the afflicted section and patched the kidney. The lesion was about the size of a quarter, and no biopsy results yet, though the surgeon said to his eye it looked like the malignant type. The good news, so far, is no need for further chemo or radiation, and not much of a likelihood this sort of tumor would repeat or pop up somewhere else. Two and a half total days in the hospital and now at home just chillin' out letting all the stuff heal and waiting for the daily bodily functions to return to normal. Not allowed to drive for a couple weeks, no lifting of anything over 5 pounds for 4 weeks, and other restrictions out to 8 weeks, dependent on follow up observations. In the spectrum of awful things in general, and cancer specifically, this one ain't too bad near as we can tell. As Mike pointed out in his carpal tunnel posting, restricted activities are a bit of a pain for those accustomed to activity.

So, after that long blather, the advice is, if you see a Doc with some level of regularity try your darndest to get them to do a CT scan on your core body where most of the important hardware is. My growth was discovered by accident during such. Had it not been found now (that early detection thing) it might have grown to a level 4...……..which would have been one of those "operate this afternoon" things.