Hi Joe, thank you so much for giving me a ray of hope here! My dad was diagnosed with renal cell cancer last May. It was such a shock to all of us! He had no symptoms except his leg hurt and no one thought to do an xray til we got him into an orthopaedist about 6 weeks after it began hurting! He was treated at the university of iowa at first... they put a rod in the upper femur to stabilize it because the tumor was so large that it had nearly eaten through the entire bone. 4 weeks later, they removed the kidney. Between the two surgeries, they did a 2 week round of radiation on the femur. His first visit to the onc. after that didn't go over so well. They point blank looked at him andd told him that it really didn't matter what he did, he would be gone in 12-18 months! How can you say that to someone? It was so devastatingly painful. My dad is one of those people who is a goer, a doer and will make it happen if it is something he wants to happen... very driven personality. Anyway, he looked at them and said he hoped they didn't mind if he "shopped" that diagnosis around and promptly made an appt at MD Anderson in TX under advisement from family members from the Houston area. Any way, once he got down there, it was a whirlwind of tests and immediately they put him on Sutent and Zumata... that was July. He just finished his 9th round and made his visit to MD And. Results are good except that they see a shadow on right upper lobe of lung...they want him back in 6 weeks for follow up. I truly don't know what to expect from here.
I have been on such a roller coaster over this last year! Had a new baby in Jan of 07, found out my dad was sick in May of 07 and its really been up and down since! We run our own business and my brother and I are meeting ourselves coming and going most days as he also just had a new baby 2 weeks ago and our mom (my step, his real) needs to be with dad alot! We are both so afraid that dad won't be here long enough for our children to really remember him and that thought is just too painful! He is a fighter and I realize that they come up with new treatments every day but really, I guess my question is this... is there hope for remission or is there only management at this point? No one has really answered that for me.
Thanks for listening!
Schelly