Outwardly thought we were done but.......

[stexcanuck]

....not yet. After getting DX'd IIIB a year ago and doing a LAR w/ straight connect, finished chemo with bells on, controlable bowels, but went in for follow up scans and have a golfball growing off the left kidney. 1st round went to damn well I guess. Don't see a lot on the combination of the two (rectal / renal) out there in the WWW, anyone have any insight? Gonna mess with my pee AND poop, friggin disease!
Cheers anyway! The fight rages on!

[BrownBagger]

Well that sucks. Are they related?

When my lung thang turned up, I was half hoping that it was primary lung cancer, on the theory that two early stage cancers are better than one late-stager. I think the odds are probably better.

[stexcanuck]

No idea if related yet....too early. Got on here to research and ended up venting, sorry all. 1st day shock and awe, will be back tomorrow with game face on. Mean time, I can do some pizza w/ white sauce w/o too many issues, so it's ordered......some comfy food and soldier on!

[BrownBagger]

Welcome to the board. I think you're going to fit in just fine.

[CRguy]

. Mean time, I can do some pizza w/ white sauce w/o too many issues, so it's ordered......some comfy food and soldier on!

Sorry...SORRY pizza with WHITE sauce.......you be delisted right NOW... !!!
Pizza wit red Sauce >>> WORD..... wot you be tokkin' bout...white sauce ????? just WRONG...jus' bein' WRONG !

Oh Sorry ...you in da CClub ...???
SO...pizza sauce, aside ..... best "club" in da universe.....
Sorry you gotta find us and be here
Pizza lover AND CRC warrior....Yeah...soldier ON....You ARE in the right place.

Takin' off "ghetto mask" now...

I would also wonder about cysts or masses relating to the adrenal glands as well as kidneys, which may be :
1) nothing
2) related to CRC
3) something else...

gotta look to find the answers.

Oh and by the way ...
NO such thing as :

will be back tomorrow with game face on.

When you IN...YOU IN.,,,Here..and NOW...;like my main man says :

Welcome to the board. I think you're going to fit in just fine.

In Harmony on the Journey
CRguy

[BrownBagger]

I was gonna say, "Dude, you gotta meet my Lung Thang Gang associate, CRGuy, because you two appear to be similarly wired)," but I thought, "Nah, he'll be along soon enough and is fully capable of 'speaking' for himself."

Note, I said "wired" not "weird."

[LLVV]

My dad had both colon and kidney adenocarcinoma. He was stage 4 from the start. At first he was diagnosed as unknown primary. After a full body CT to search for the primary the radiologist reading my dad's CT diagnosed him with stage 4 kidney cancer (extensive bone, extensive lung, and soft tissue mets. Liver and upper GI pristine). His first oncologist ignored this and felt that the kidney tumor was a metastasis even thought the radiologist's report diagnosed my dad with kidney cancer. After doing a lot of reading (or lack of since it's very rare to have a kidney met) I wasn't as convinced as his oncologist was and asked the oncologist to biopsy my dad's kidney to be sure he didn't have 2 primaries. The oncologist refused to do so since he found a colon tumor with high grade dysplasia (pre-cancer cells that can point to colon cancer). He said he'd rescan my dad in 3 months to see if the kidney tumor was responding to chemo. If it responded then it was a met. If not, then it was a possible second primary. While begging him to do a kidney biopsy he looked me in the eyes and said, "Even if your dad has 2 primaries it's the colon cancer that is putting his life at risk". I hated this reasoning because if he had both then how could the oncologist tell which one was stage 4? The cancerous soft tissue tumor that was biopsied was so inconclusive that even the chief of pathology at Sloan couldn't figure out what my dad had other than having cancer. The Sloan pathologist ruled out colon and kidney cancer. They said it was coming from either the lungs, liver, gall bladder, or pancreas.

Fast forward 1 1/2 months into FOLFOX6 and my dad's soft tissue tumor pain in the back of his pelvis is getting a lot worse but has yet to develop 1 side effect from FOLFOX6. Big nasty horrible oncologist story behind all of this but to get to the point, four months after the colon cancer diagnosis my dad's new oncologist wanted to biopsy his kidney because he wasn't convinced that my dad had stage 4 colon cancer because of the metastatic pattern, radiation treatments that did nothing to his painful tumor (kidney cancer doesn't respond to radiation or chemo) and his colonoscopy biopsy only showed high grade dysplasia. He basically said what I had in my mind all of the time. He can't give my dad chemo or any treatment until he has a definitive diagnosis. My dad unforunately died a week after the kidney biopsy (not due to the biopsy). A week after he died I called the new oncologist to see what the kidney biopsy results were. It came back positive for renal adenocarcinoma. The new oncologist spent 30 minutes with me on the phone going over my dad's situation with me in depth. She said the colon tumor was most likely a localized cancer tumor/incidental finding and it was the kidney cancer that was stage 4. Two days later I called the first oncologist to tell him what an idiot he was for not doing the kidney biopsy. I think he was pooping bricks after that conversation.

There isn't a lot of research on colon cancer metastasis to the kidney because it is extremely rare. I think I remember reading that it's a little bit more common in rectal cancer but still, it's not as common as liver and lung mets. I had a very hard time finding journal articles about this. I'm not very familiar with rectal canacer as I did most of my research on colon cancer so I don't know if it has the same typical metastatic pattern that colon cancer has. If it has the same metastatic pattern and you do not have liver and/or lung mets. then you may want to push your oncologist for a kidney biopsy so you are completely sure the right cancer is being treated. Treating the wrong cancer can have grave results as you just read with my dad's story.

There are also a couple of benign kidney tumors that have nothing to do with cancer.

[String]

I was diagnosed with Colon cancer and a few days later with Kidney cancer. Two separate cancers not a spread of colon cancer.

Had to deal with both at the same time, as I could not have chemo for both together, they gave me Folfox and just watch the kidney with scans to see if it progressed. Luck it didn't.

The tumour was removed when I had my Liver done, April 2008 . So far nothing else has been done and no signs of more growth.

It has been kind of like the kidney cancer took a back seat to colon cancer, but was told the colon will do me in long before the kidney will. so far they are wrong on both, still here kicking and doing well.

[BrownBagger]

Glad to hear it, String.

Something about the Canadian water?

[stexcanuck]

Been in TX for 19 years but being a 'toban originally, I'll take that Canadian water bit.
My chemo was FOLFOX6. Doesn't seem like its a renal drug but with a 2.5cm^3 lump I'm betting it is a separate vs. met. Good or bad, who knows. Anyway, appear to have the colon under control, so we'll see how the next round goes. Thanks String, CR, and BB