Second Opinion

I spoke to the rounding nephrologist this morning during dialysis. Today it was Dr. Amer Jabara. I believe he currently the medical director for all the inpatient and outpatient dialysis treatment at St. Joseph Hospital. I was originally referred to him by my primary physician but was directed to another nephrologist at his office. I also saw him several times while I was in the hospital for heart surgery and he made the decision to take me off PD and back on hemodialysis.

I gave him a brief update of the drama at UCLA Transplant Center. I’ve been updating the rounding nephrologist each week and they regularly update their notes so I think he knows the story. He said if would be super easy to biopsy the kidney once they take it out of the donor, and even if the tumor/legion/cyst is malignant, the transplant center can remove it prior to transplanting it into the recipient. If it’s benign, the usually do the same. Since my sister is a perfect match, he thinks we should go ahead and pursue the transplant and see what happens.

If what he said was true, and there’s no reason to doubt him, then why did we wait two years? They could have done the transplant two years ago with the tumor/legion/cyst only at 10 mm and removed it from the kidney as part of the procedure. Maybe they’re afraid that it’s malignant and if they don’t remove all of it, the tumor may spread in me after transplant? I think the odds are super low in that case. More questions for our meeting with the transplant medical director. All I know that the two years on dialysis were not good for my health.