Beleynn

Who is your surgeon at Jefferson? I've had kidney surgery there twice.

Cancer.

I'm genetically predisposed to this particular type of kidney cancer (the specific genetic disorder is called HLRCC, it's apparently pretty rare - especially in 33-year-olds).

The "good" news is that the tumors in the right kidney were newly grown because I'm predisposed to growing them, so there wasn't any spread of the cancer to other organs, and the surgery removed it entirely.

The bad news is that since I'll (probably / maybe) keep growing new tumors, I'll eventually lose what kidney I have left. THIS TIME, they were able to take both tumors out while only taking 5% of the kidney mass, but if new ones grow deep in the kidney, or too near a major artery, I'll need a transplant.

Yep. They took out my entire left kidney in 2015 because there was a 7 cm (baseball-sized) tumor on it, then they took out about 5% of the right kidney last month to remove two small tumors.

I actually did ask them about this (and got a second opinion too). All the docs agreed - since I'm young enough to survive surgery, they thought surgery was the better option. They're of the opinion that ablation is both less likely to get everything, and more likely to make future tumors hard to spot.

Are the Hawaiin Islands distinct volcanic mountains, or just different peaks from the same volcano? From a technical perspective, how are volcanic peaks/vents differentiated from one another?