Seriously?

I haven’t talked about this much – but have alluded to it a bit on the blog. So let me give some history to bring everyone up to speed.


3 weeks ago I had this really weird attack on my way to work. My chest started to hurt – really really really bad. It got so bad that I had to pull over. I was 10 seconds from calling an ambulance. I made it to work where my friends there convinced me to get it checked out. I went to my Primary Care Physician, Dr. Josh Bloom. He is wonderful and rather than have me to go the ER and sit all day he fit me in. He did an EKG and assessed me. He didn’t feel it was my heart – and neither did I. He felt it was GI in nature. So he gave me a GI Cocktail and sent me home to rest. I still had pain later in the afternoon so he had me go and get some blood work done. One of the tests he had done was a D-Dimer test. It came back elevated and could have been a signal that I had a blood clot – so he had me go to the ER for a cardiac workup. I went that evening to the ER and had a full cardiac work up. It was determined at that time that there was no clot – my heart and my lungs were fine. So as a follow up to that I made an appointment with a new GI Doc – Dr. Angela Hutzenbuhler. I went and talked with her – she poked around and asked lots of questions. Her diagnosis “You’re weird”. Yes, thank you, my name is Pam and I am the Queen of Weird. But she was wonderful and fantastic and was concerned about what the pain was and where it was coming from. She scheduled me for an abdominal CT Scan and an upper endoscopy.

This past Thursday I had the abdominal CT Scan. NASTY! I had to drink a berry “flavored” barium sulfate concoction an hour before the scan started. There were some subtle signs during the CT Scan that they had found something out of the ordinary, but I forgot about them quickly and went on with my very chaotic life.

Friday afternoon I got a phone call and I recognized the number as Dr. Hutzenbuhler’s office. When I answered the call it was Dr. Hutzenbuhler herself. I said “Uh – this can’t be good when the doctor calls me herself.” Yeah – it wasn’t. The CT Scan showed a 6x5cm mass on my right kidney. Huh? Crazy GI Doc say what? My kidney? That was so not even on our radar! The whole time she was talking to me I was laughing. She’s like “Well, everyone reacts to bad news differently.” Yeah – this is how the Dempsey’s do bad news – we laugh hysterically at totally inappropriate times. She informed me that I needed to see a urologist. There are lots of good ones in this area, and she didn’t have a strong feeling one way or another about who I should see – so she wanted to get Dr. Bloom involved since it would make sense to coordinate my care with him. She said she had called him, but that it was his day off so she wasn’t sure if she would be talking to him today, etc…

Well, about 10 minutes later I got a call from Dr. Bloom – yes on his day off. Have I mentioned I LOVE THIS MAN? He is a fantastic doctor. He informed me that he actually does have quite a bit of experience in this area and does have a strong feeling about who I should see. He wanted me to see Dr. Mark Jalkut at Wake Urological Associates. He said he is very good and very competent, etc… He is right across the street from my favorite hospital – Rex. So he said someone would be in touch with me to set up that appointment and that it would be ASAP. He was re-assuring and at the same time wanted to prepare me for what was ahead. The treatment for this mass would be surgical. Dr. Jalkut would be the one to decide if they remove the mass, part of my kidney, or my whole kidney. But his feeling was that the mass was large enough that my whole kidney would probably need to be removed.

In about 10 more minutes I got a call from Dr. Jalkut’s office and I have an appointment scheduled for Monday afternoon with Dr. Jalkut.

So that is where we stand right now. Don’t know what the mass is – just know it’s pretty big. Dr. Hutzenbuhler still wants to do the Upper Endoscopy to ensure we find what’s causing me that pain if at all possible. Words that have been thrown around at this time are radical nephrectomy (kidney removal) and renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer). Mass could be benign, but 85% of kidney masses are renal cell carcinoma. If it hasn’t spread then removing the kidney is the treatment and I will not likely need radiation or chemo. Don’t want to jump ahead too quickly.

This brings me to my blessings for the weekend.

1. We found a mass on my right kidney! No really – this is a blessing – we would have never known about it if I wasn’t having chest pain.

2. My friends and family – need I say more?

3. And since it bears repeating … my friends and family.