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Below, week by week, is what OnCo's record of Collecting duct carcinoma of the kidney says about the first two months: the order is typical, the timing is yours to ask about. Collecting duct carcinoma is a rare, aggressive kidney cancer that starts in the tubes deep in the kidney that collect urine. It is treated with surgery where possible and the platinum chemotherapy used for bladder cancer, not the usual kidney cancer drugs, which do not work in it. It is usually advanced when found: 74.4 percent of 286 US SEER patients were stage III or IV. Sections appear only where the record has something to say. Orientation, not medical advice.
Staging tests establish exactly what and where the cancer is. Everything else follows from the answers.
Ask which of these were tested and what the results were; see the report reader for what each value means.
These specialties appear in the standard of care for this cancer. In most centres they meet weekly as a tumour board to agree each plan; you can ask when yours was discussed and what was decided.
A second opinion from a centre that treats many similar cases is normal, not rude; the standard of care tells you what to compare it against.
Each row is a setting from the standard of care, in the order it usually arises. Not all will apply to you; your stage and biomarkers decide which do. The guideline grade, where recorded, says how strong the evidence is.
Nephrectomy where resectable; gemcitabine with cisplatin or carboplatin for metastatic disease, borrowed from urothelial cancer; renal cell carcinoma drugs have little evidence here.
Generated from this cancer's standard of care, biomarkers and open problems. Take the group that matches where you are. To tick, add your own and print, open the one-page appointment sheet.
Much of what helps in the first weeks is free if you know to ask: testing, helplines, rides and lodging, second opinions, trial travel.
Every term links to the glossary.