Medical News Update -4/19/21

The story continues to unfold, but it would appear that the 2cm cyst in my right kidney has continued to grow. I’ll tell you more about that later. But first some good news.

Tamara had a great bit of news from her retinal specialist! She has been seeing a specialist for a while to take care a branch retinal vein occlusion that happened while she was pregnant with Ezra. It’s an “eye thing” so it has been pretty intense as they have to dilate her eyes each visit and then use “super-lasers” to see the veins in the eyeball. She’s a champ and has really learned a lot about eyes and trusting Jesus in the uncomfortable moments, but it’s still not fun. A couple months ago, they decided that the best approach to prevent an aneurysm in the vein (and ensuing partial blindness) was an injection, into the eyeball itself. That sounded like less fun than you might think, so they tried eye drops that “might work.” That was it’s own adventure that left her with a very bloodshot eye and quite uncomfortable, but the treatment was highly successful. When she was back in last week, the vein had returned to looking normal! Praise the Lord!

We’ll keep monitoring this, but the next injection was not immediately necessary. Perhaps needless to state, but there was much rejoicing, as a result of this news.

The other bit of medical news we got last week was less fun. When we started the Josh Has Cancer chapter, we did all sorts of scans and took all kinds of pictures and found out that along with the testicular cancer, there was an “extra” thing growing in my kidney. It was small, 2cm, and just something that the urologist was suspicious of, because I had already been diagnosed. And then we went back to life post-orchiectomy. This would be 3 years ago.

Fast forward to March 2021, and our regularly scheduled scan and oncologist visit. You’ll see naïve me, getting another CT scan and being surprised that I’m being referred back to the urologist and he’s sending me back for an MRI of that kidney. They say it looks like a Bosniak 4 crystic renal cell carcinoma. I could make a lot of guesses about what all that will mean, but even though I’ve stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, I’m still not a doctor, and I still would be mostly guessing. On Thursday we go talk to the doctor and I’ll keep you all updated.

We’d appreciate your prayers as this is a lot to process right now. Plenty of energy, patience, wisdom, grace, and mercy are all high demand around here… Thank you for your prayers!