Day 0 of Interleukin 2 treatments, Kevin's journey with Renal Cell Carcinoma and IL-2 treatments

In March of 2013, our life was turned upside down to say the least.  My husband urinated blood, so we went to the hospital expecting to hear something as simple as “he has a huge kidney stone”, but what we heard was something completely unexpected.  My husband is a black belt, he eats right, exercises, doesn’t smoke and drinks occasionally, all in all; he is a big strong healthy man.  But nonetheless, my husband was diagnosed with Renal Cell Carcinoma (Kidney Cancer).  He had two types, clear cell as well as papillary cell.  The treatment was a radical nephrectomy (his entire kidney was removed) due to the cancer taking up most of his right kidney.  He was clear of cancer for 14 wonderful months until it reared its ugly head again in May of 2014.  We weren’t totally surprised when it came back, although the news was crushing.  After his radical nephrectomy the doctors told us he had a 40 to 60 % chance of recurrence.  But being a positive person, I thought for sure after a year had passed that he would be safe and we could breathe easy.  Today is October 19, 2014 and my husband will be starting a type of chemo therapy called Interleukin-2 on the 20^th, tomorrow.  His treatments are being done at Duke University Hospital in Durham NC.

I decided to write this blog as a day by day, week by week, month by month account of how he does, what the side effects are, and all the good and ugly in between.  I do this mainly because there aren’t a lot of “real people” stories out there.  As a care giver to my husband, I feel kind of lost and scared about this whole process.  The doctor’s told us what to expect the best they can, after all, they can only give us numbers and statistics, there are no definitive answers as each person is so different.  But we all know when it’s your loved one the numbers and statistics don’t mean a thing, you want that crystal ball that can tell you that he will do well and make a full recovery.  But as far as I know, they don’t make crystal balls.

I am hoping that this blog will be informative, useful, insightful, maybe a little silly as I love to laugh, and most of all it may help to put others minds at ease and to empower others with the knowledge that I will learn and pass on to you.  I hope you don’t need to be empowered, but if you do, I hope this blog can help you in some way.

Thanks for reading