RPLND Incision

[nzsteve]

Thought Id start a new thread for this rather than confuse the other one I have up on pain relief.

I had my bilateral RPLND on the 15th. When I came to in the recovery room I had a bit of a panic when I saw the incision was horizontal rather than 'top to bottom' - not what I was expecting to have done! Has anyone had / heard of this?

Its about 40cm total, level with my belly button on the ends, arcing down to about 2cm below it. The surgeons decided to change the plan based on the latest CT image when I was on the table, deciding that this would give them better access to the tumour (fist sized, very close to left kidney), and that my recovery would be better from this incision than what they would have needed to do to remove it with a 'top-bottom' cut.

Theres not much I can do about it now, and Im certainly recovering much quicker than Id expected, but im interested in anyones thoughts on it!

Ta,

Steve

edit - added a picture, should be more helpful than my description

[justinsmom]

My son Justin's incision goes from way under his right arm curves over to his midline and then goes vertically down. But we were told his would be done like that to get a better access to his large teratoma and access incase the right kidney had to be removed. I guess in your situation they made a last minute decision???? Justin's surgery was Nov 21 and the scar looks SO much better now it has healed up nicely....God Bless, Lanette

[dadmo]

nzsteve:
I haven't seen that particular style before but from your post the doctors thought it was best to det where they needed so I would be fine with it. It certainly seems like it will be less noticable. Plus don't your toilets spin backwards, your winters are in the wrong season, and your all dangiling from the earth upside down, it might just be another one of those southern hemisphere things.

[nzsteve]

cheers, good to see nobody has any obvious issues with it!

You might be onto something with the southern hemisphere stuff aswell Dadmo. To make it worse I *think* the surgeon was left handed, which must have complicated it even more. I'll check it out when I see him in a few weeks

Ta,

Steve

[wolken]

It's kind of strange that they did not do RPLND before chemo if you only had one "big" lymph node before starting chemo.

[nzsteve]

That ones another 'perk' of living in the southern hemisphere

They avoid doing RPLND like the plague over here - New Zealand as a whole only does 2 or 3 of them each year (Australia, our closest neighbour does around 15). Its mentioned during talks with the oncologist as 'you may oneday need an RPLND' but its not given as an option unless it is the ONLY option.

I looked into going to Indianna to get it done, or flying over to Aus, but was going to cost far more than I could afford. The top 'local' surgeon wasnt comfortable doing the op, so they flew the guy that does most of NZs RPLND's down from Auckland (NZs biggest city) to my local hospital. While only doing a couple of RPLND each year he's a very experienced surgeon (mostly liver and kidney transplants), and convinced me he was upto the task!

and then I woke up with the scar going the wrong way


cheers,

steve

[nzsteve]

I should add to that... even if given the choice before I started chemo I probably would have chosen to have chemo rather than RPLND. As I see it, at that stage there should have been a pretty good chance that chemo would get rid of it all and I wouldnt need surgery, while there was a strong chance that if Id had RPLND to remove the mass I still would have needed some chemo after it.

The change I probably would have made would be to have completed the 3xBEP and then have the RPLND rather than swap to 2xVeIP. Unfortunatly I wasnt 'with it' enough at the time to think along those lines, and even at that point the RPLND wasnt offered to me.

ta,

steve