Kidney Cancer Surgery and my life thereafter
I was diagnosed with Kidney Cancer on October 1st of 2009. Only a few weeks before that, I was shocked when I saw dark red blood while I was passing urine. Of course, I went to see an Urologist immediately. We both thought that I had a kidney stone and in order to confirm our presumption, he sent me for a CT-Scan.
However, the CT-Scan came back with a totally different result. There was a huge black spot which turned out to be a tumor of 2.5 inches in size. Also, there was no way to save the organ and therefore I had a radical nephrectomy - the removal of the entire kidney - done via a minimally invasive procedure on November 30th.
This is a short report on how I feel two weeks after I had the surgery done.
To my surprise, I am doing very well and I can’t complain. Apparently, it’s too early at this point to start working out again. I also have to be careful with lifting up heavy items, or just in general all activities that could put strain on my abdomen. But what I really couldn’t understand at first: the doctors told me, that I will have no or only very limited dietary restrictions.
Knowing that I only have one kidney left, I thought it will take a while until my remaining kidney and the other organs will get ready to compensate for the loss of one of their compainons. But apparently, that’s not the case, every thing seems to work perfectly okay. There some foods I was told to better be careful with, things like red meats and bananas. Basically anything, that contains potassium or causes the body to produce high levels of uric acid.
Well, I personally have a slightly different take on that. First of all, I don’t eat meat at all. I was never a big meat eater to begin with and started completely staying away from any kind of meat shortly after my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. I also don’t eat any sweets, I never had a sweet tooth, so that’s no real sacrifice for me. And as for the alcohol, I stopped drinking completely as of February of this year.
The uric acid levels in my body where alarmingly high a year ago. Not only that, but I had gout attacks as a result. Anybody who ever had to experience a gout attack knows what I’m talking about. The pain is excruciating and so far only the stent that was inserted into my body after the Cystoscopy, has topped in terms of experiencing pain.
I weighed my options and the decision was made quickly. I had to stop consuming anything that could cause my body producing high amounts of uric acid. And how did I do that? Very simple. I just joined my wife and adopted her new eating habits. A lot of fresh veggies, a lot of green stuff like green smoothies; fruits, green tea and healthy grains like brown rice, amaranth and millet. And of course, trying to avoid processed food as much as possible.
I always ate a lot and I probably will keep doing that in the future. That’ just me. But you know what’s cool? Since I only eat good quality and healthy stuff, I lost quite some weight over the past few months. I am now back at 180 lbs (I am 6′ tall).
Well, I guess the point is: I feel good and the only thing I miss at this point is to work out again. That, though, is not possible, yet, because it would be certainly detrimental to my recovery process.
The bottom line is: I am fine.
The author Tony Ulrich provides kidney cancer info on ‘My kidney cancer’ , a website where he talks about how his own and his wife’s cancer diagnoses have changed their lives.
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