Update on "embolizing kidney tumour"
If you remember my posting, my wife experienced severe pain in her right thigh which turned out to be a tumour - her team made the decision to embolize the tumour, insert a distil nail in her thigh to strengthen the bone, then zap the tumour with radiotherapy. In the course of various consultations, we had the impression that it was the kidney cancer, they were talking about, but not so.
Just to post an update in case it proves helpful to someone - my wife has now had her three procedures - namely, embolization of her femur met. a follow-up strengthening of the femur, and finally radiotherapy. Quite a traumatic series of procedures in the course of three weeks, as you can imagine. All seems to have gone well, I know it's early days, but it should work.
It is now six weeks since the surgeons did their work, and two weeks since the radiotherapy - my wife is in a lot of pain though this is subsiding with the help of Oxycodone Hydrochloride. Neither of us is too happy about her having to take Opioids, but they do the job. What I hope will spread confidence is the general state of her Stage 4 RCC. Over the course of deciding what to do, and trying to schedule the various procedures, she had to miss a total of three sessions of immunotherapy. The overall status of her cancer over the past two years has been "Stable Disease" so we were very worried that missing so many infusions would lead to her Kidney cancer growing. This despite her oncologist trying the re-assure her that at this stage, her own body was fighting the cancer, not so much the immunotherapy - it sounded too good to be true, but I can now tell you that her latest full-body scan revealed further confirmation that her Kidney is still assessed as being "Stable Disease", not only that, but it also showed a slight reduction the size of a few of the associated mets. Not hugely significantly, but very encouraging in so far as her own immune system seems to be targeting the cancer despite missing so many sessions of immunotherapy.
Her Stage 4 RCC was first discovered nearly three years ago - at the time, she worried whether she would last more than three months, but here she is, with a diagnosis of "Stable Disease". She has been on Ipi/Nivo treatment, now Nivo only (I think - not sure which one was dropped)
So, a bit of a long-winded way of saying "the treatment works", but I hope it is encouraging news.
Best Wishes to all, Bodger
