One kidney

Hi Ian and welcome.

Mine wasn't exactly the same as yours, as I had two kidneys still and on 1st April had a robotic partial nephrectomy. My mass was discovered two years ago when scanning just before my hysterectomy for endometrial cancer, and it was 2.7cm at that stage. My urology consultant didn't want to do surgery at that time due to my hysterectomy, and by the time I had recovered from that, gone on my hols, had staffing problems at work, gone on more hols, came back to flooding and then had to deal with roof repair, water leaks repair and all my taps and drains being replaced, and my boiler sorted out - it ended up as a two-year active surveillance. Scans approx every six months and at each scan the mass didn't appear changed. (A Bosniak 4 from the start)

But I always had this hanging over me and whilst it wasn't changing, and I knew kidney cancer is slow-growing, I knew it might change at any time, a little or even a lot in between scans. So I bit the bullet and had the surgery finally. When it came out (T1a early-stage) it was actually 3.3cms. So I was very relieved I hadn't left it any longer.

If it's less than 5cm they probably won't be in a hurry to do surgery. However, as it's your only remaining kidney, the amount they need to remove could impact your kidney function if it should grow a lot in between forthcoming scans. My kidney function was >90 pre-surgery which is excellent for my age. Immediately post-surgery it had dropped to 75, which wasn't too bad all things considered.

It's not pleasant to contemplate surgery for it but the more kidney they can preserve, the better for you. 

Sometimes it seems they do a biopsy. My consultant didn't recommend that for me as it was 85-90% chance of being cancerous and he didn't want to risk disturbing it and preferred to just remove the lesion. If they are not quite sure what yours is, they may opt to do a biopsy. Do you know if it's a Bosniak 3 or 4, for example? Bosniak 3 has less chance of malignancy, despite looking "not normal". 

There's other things they can do instead of surgery, and it really depends on your consultant's view and on your own general health and age, whether they will choose to offer a less invasive procedure. Mine didn't want to give me those alternatives. 

Give yourself time to talk through all the options with your consultant. It sounds like they feel that this is still slow-growing enough to wait for a further scan at least, which indeed is reassuring. If it's taken from 2019 to get to the stage where it is now changing/growing, that isn't a bad sign at all!

Hi

Many thanks for the response. I have been through cancer before and this doesn't seem as bad. I'm also in pretty good health. Thanks again x

They have mentioned surgery, but only in general terms, I'll know more in July.