Life-Changing Renal Cancer Diagnosis: Nancy Whitley’s Story

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06/26/23

In 2011, Nancy’s daughter took her to the doctor after she had been complaining about flu symptoms all week. After a few tests and scans, they found a tumor that had grown around her kidney and up her Inferior vena cava, or IVC, the largest vein in the body. Doctors estimate the tumor had been growing for two years without being noticed.

For more, visit http://blog.uvahealth.com/2018..../12/20/a-life-changi

Kim Rowland: Nancy he is one of those people that when you try to describe her people always say she's such a nice lady.

Matt Linkous: Very loving, caring, really she kind of took me and like a mom that's really Nancy in a nut shell. Nancy Whitley: I started feeling bad kind of flu symptoms I was nauseous and short of breath and I thought I had either a virus or the flu.

Melinda Lephew: We thought it was something minor we went to the doctor and I remember when the doctor came in he was very serious and I still thought it was maybe something big but nothing life changing like a cancer diagnosis.

Nancy Whitley: I have stage four renal cell cancer. I had a mass that was 10 by 6 by 4 inches. It was one centimeter from my heart when I went into surgery.

Robert Dreicer, MD: Metastatic kidney cancer or disease spreading from the kidney to another location as in Mrs. Whitely's case is a pretty serious disease.

Nancy Whitley: Doctor Kern was the heart surgeon who did the part of surgery for my heart.

John Kern, MD: The type of operation that Nancy needed to remove her tumor is about as extensive of an operation that we do. It really involved mobilizing all of the internal organs particularly the liver being able to get at we call the inferior vena cava which is the largest gain vein in the body but is also the most inaccessible vein in the body because the tumor was completely filling that vein.

Daniel Whitley: Surgery was nine hours long and she was in the ICU for days.

Melinda Lephew: I mean it's all kind of a blur it was you know a lot of doctors from different departments coming in and we were just there trying to support her through the process. It was. it was terrifying waiting it out.

Kim Rowland: When you hear Nancy talk about her family, she just lights up and can turn it around, she talks about her family, her grandchildren.

Rodney Whitley: She loves those two grand-kids and they are beautiful. I think they are therapy for her. To have that going on. We don't sit around the house and worry about things. We get out and do things. Luckily our kid live close enough. We see them very regular.

Dreicer: I think compared to when I started practicing urologic oncology almost thirty years ago if you would have said to me would Mrs. Whitely have been alive on the basis of therapies that we had for the same duration the answer is clearly not.

Nancy Whitley: The doctor told my family I had twenty percent chance of survival and if I did I might live five years. Well we're in year eight so I just decided I would write him a letter and thank him for being so knowledgeable and skilled and just tell him I was still around and because of his wonderful work, that I got to see a lot of things that I would not have otherwise.