NOT ASKING FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. JUST CURIOUS.
An ultrasound shows a kidney lesion. The patient is 59 years old, about 20 pounds over weight. No diabetes whatsoever. Mildly anemic all her life. High blood pressure. High cholesterol. Other than that, she’s pretty normal.
What is the likelihood that the lesion is NOT cancer of some sort?
The patient in question is my mother. She had the ultrasound last week and the CT scan about 12 hours ago. I know we’ll have an answer soon but I’m up and bored and I can’t find shit on google that doesn’t say lesion=cancer.
My mother is convinced that it IS cancer and based on what the internet has to say, and her family history, I can see why. I’m still holding out some hope that it’s something stupid and easy to fix.
As to her family history, her father and sister have both had kidneys removed for cancer.
Update. The kidney is bleeding. The seemed much more concerned about this than anything else. They still haven’t said whether or not there’s cancer but my mom is seeing a urologist at 1:30.
I am going through this now. I will tell you that most kidney lesions end up being cysts and are not malignant. I have a mass that is also non malignant but due to its size and its growth, I will have to have my kidney removed, Hopefully the CT of your Mom will show a simple cyst that is nothing. Most of the time that is the case when lesions are found on the kidney during an ultrasound for something else. I am surprised you found that most are cancer when googling because that really isn’t the case at all. If it is kidney cancer most of the time they take the kidney and no chemo or radiation is needed. No cancer is good to have but after speaking to many a specialist in the last year, Urologist, radiologist, nephrologist, kidney removal is a pretty simple procedure if caught early.
Well, you asked.
Given the family history, and the fact that your mom has blood in her urine, and the presence of a “lesion” on the ultrasound, I’m afraid there is a high chance of it being cancer.
That being said, if it is ‘cystic’ and not ‘solid’, the chance of it being cancer goes way down (but, alas, the reverse is also true). Do you know if it is ‘cystic’ or ‘solid’?
I will not patronize you and talk about “with the things they can do nowadays, there’s lots of reason to be optimistic”. Still, kidney cancer is most definitely NOT an automatic death sentence. Indeed, the fact that (if this is a cancer) it was found incidentally (as opposed to causing other problems) is a good prognostic sign.
Ahh, I knew I’d forget to mention something. She went to Urgent care 2 weeks ago because of bad left back pain and near fainting spells.
The doc checked her urine and found no blood. The fact that she had no blood in her urine seemed to indicate to the doctor that her kidney was fine and she had pulled a muscle. Luckily, she has pulled a muscle before and knows that there’s a really big difference between kidney pain and muscle pain (I’ve had a severe kidney infection and pulled muscles - there is definitely a difference) so she insisted on further testing than just the urine test.
That’s why she had the ultrasound, where they found the lesion. She should be in the urology appointment right now. I should hear something soon. So, it wasn’t found incidentally and that’s why we’re worried. Normally we don’t get this worked up about medical stuff. Of course, the fact that my boyfriend’s boss was dizzy last week but otherwise seemed fine and is right now in surgery with a very large, very fast growing glioblastoma (wasn’t there a month ago), has us all on edge medically. Oh yeah, did I mention that my mother and I both witnessed a fatal accident on Sunday? Mortality is on our minds a lot this week.
The good thing is that with our family history, we know that kidney cancer isn’t a death sentence. Hell, my aunt has many chronic and congenital health problems and spends a lot of her time at death’s door. But, her kidney cancer was like just another day at the office. My grandfather didn’t even think it was important enough to tell us about until a few years after the fact.
Anyway, I don’t know if it’s cystic or solid. They just said it was a lesion and then today they said her kidney is bleeding.
I wouldn’t call it patronizing to tell me it’s not a horrible death sentence. Actually, it’d probably make more sense for this to be in MPSIMS so I can get happy anecdotes instead of cold medical facts.
It would seem that she is ok.
The urologist said that they’re considering every possibility and they don’t think cancer is one of them. She also said that they have no clue what the lesion is from but that it is not causing the bleeding. The bleeding is apparently coming from something below the kidney but they don’t know what or why. It seems that having something else random bleeding isn’t as big an issue as having a kidney bleeding.
They did blood work to make sure she’s clotting properly and they’re doing a CBC to check all her other levels. At her last appointment, most of her CBC levels had dropped but were still well within acceptable ranges so they’re just making sure they’re still acceptable.
She also said that they aren’t concerned with the pain at this point in time because it’s not bad - more annoying and constant than bad.
They want her to come back immediately if the pain gets worse or if she has any other symptoms but otherwise she has an appointment in about a month and another CT scan in 2 months.
I wish they knew what the lesion was though. My mom said the doctor did use the word cyst but not cystic or solid. Apparently she didn’t ask for clarification.
She is happy and relaxed now. She doesn’t seem concerned that something in her body is bleeding and the doctor doesn’t seem overly concerned either. I’m glad they think it’s nothing major and that she can go on with her life.
What excellent news!
(and thanks for the ‘follow-up’)
KG
Considering that the factual aspects of this would seem to have been addressed, I am moving this to MPSIMS.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
This kind of pain sounds a lot like a kidney stone. I imagine they thought of this at the urgent care center and dipsticked her urine, which you say showed no blood. That would dissuade them from the diagnosis, but it doesn’t absolutely exclude it. The blood may have shown up later. I imagine they also looked for a stone in the ultrasound, which would be the standard next step. Since you didn’t mention that they saw a stone, I assume they didn’t. But that doesn’t absolutely exclude that either. It could have passed, or settled down. (I had a stone for at least a year - nagging pain off and on until it finally made its big push. That was painful!) But then they did see “the lesion”. So… more tests. CT scan. Still inconclusive.
Common story. That’s why I don’t like to go to doctors!
Here’s a site with a big list of benign kidney “lesions”. (Of course, stay away from this page.)
All this may be superfluous now. Glad to hear the patient is OK.