Well, it was a week ago when I was laying in the ‘Recovery Room’ in the Milstein Building of the Columbia University/Urology section, on the 3rd floor. I remember that my throat hurt terribly because of the tube that was inserted through my month to help me breathing during the laparoscopic nephrectomy. I recall saying to myself: “here I am now, a kidney cancer patient with Renal Cell Carcinoma, who just had his left kidney removed, and all I’m worrying about is my darn throat.” I’m happy to report that things continue to get better. Laughing and coughing is a little bit of an issue. Yesterday, I was watching the Pink Panther (the cartoon version) and surely enough I had to crack up a few times. Eventually I had to turn off the TV because I couldn’t stand the pain anymore from laughing. On Thursday I will get back to the City to meet with Dr. Badani and discuss the pathology and the next steps. During the nephrectomy, he also removed three quarters of my ureter and sent the most remote (from the kidney) part of it to the lab checking for malignant cell occurrence. I’m used to the drill by now. We went through the same thing with my wife three times in total, waiting for the pathology to come back and after the third time, we eventually got clear margins. In case you’re interested, you can read up on my wife’s breast cancer story here: www.ourbreastcancer.net. So I guess it all depends now on whether the cancer was entirely confined to the kidney, or has made its way already out into the surrounding tissue. We shall see, I’m prepared for either way.      

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