Hi,
My gran, in her early 80s has been diagnosed with kidney cancer. it's 3.5cm in size and the dr said we had 2 options. full removal of kidney or surveillance.
Our first instincts were to say remove they kidney as then its all gone and we thought it would give the best chances of survival and good quality of life.
However today i googled "kidney removal in elderly" and there's quite a few articles talking about how removing the kidney isnt always the best option and an elderly person is more likely to suffer from their other conditions like heart issues and diabetes than suffering from the kidney cancer.
So now I'm thinking, with infection risks cs of covid, prolonged recovery because of age, complications because of age. Is surgery more risky than surveillance?
She has other health conditions but they're well managed. she's mobile. she cant walk long distances but moves around the house relatively comfortably.
one of the options the dr mentioned was to maybe wait 3 or 4 months before the surgery so that hopefully more people will be vaccinated and that would reduce covid infection risks. at the time we dismissed it thinking we didn't want to waste any time as we don't want it to spread. but now thinking about all the risk factors involved in surgery i wonder if thats actually a good option.
think i'm worried that she's going to be more unwell after the surgery than with surveillance.
Has anyone had similar experiences to share? how was the surgery? how old were you/your person? how was the recovery? particularly interested in people who are older like my gran.
Thanks
Hi Na Aa, sorry you haven’t had a reply yet to your post, I am replying to bump your post, and hopefully someone with experience of this will come along and chat.
I am sorry to hear about your Gran. It’s a very difficult decision. I think you have to be led by her oncology team. They will only put her forward for surgery if they think she is well and fit enough to cope with the recovery.
Take care
