Kidney Cancer

The big one is about 100 millimeters in diameter, about the size of a softball. It’s been growing about 2.5 millimeters per year. Maybe it’s accelerated recently, but doing the math, that’s a 40-year life.
Discovered following a troublesome lump on the head.

Discovered along with innumerable, inoperable, incurable kidney cancer tumors riddling the body.
Life expectancy, six months.

Actuality, 102 days, less than four months.

But mom was a trouper. We knew she was in pain when she asked for Tylenol.

Cancer awareness in America is focused on breast, lung, and skin cancers. All the money goes to finding cures for them.

Kidney cancer?

Next to nothing. It kills fewer than 15,000 Americans every year, about one tenth the deaths from lung cancer.

And I say needlessly because there is a very simple and inexpensive screening process. The same thing they do to look at babies in the womb. Yep. Ultrasound.

My sister-in-law is one of the lucky kidney cancer survivors. They found her tumor while it was operable. She’s got only one kidney today, but that’s really all the body needs. They tripped across the tumor in search of something else.

For what it’s worth, ultrasound technology is very basic stuff. The certificate to become an ultrasound technician is an entry-level position in the medical field. That means the labor cost of doing the procedure is next to nothing. It is non-invasive, there is no radiation, and it doesn’t take long.

It’s not a routine procedure, and I’m certainly not a medical doctor, but, dang, ask for one during your next physical exam.

TRACKING #1-05238152