All sorts of tests and no diagnosis

[Jimmy2x]

My dad has been sick for a while with headaches, nausea, stomach pains (middle torso). He did scans in the past that never saw anything. We always thought he had digestive issues. Fast forward a few years and he started to get sick a lot more. All he would do in those cases is just lie around the house. They went away on vacation and he started to get those same symptoms but started to retain water. Finally my mom forced him to emergency and they did all sorts of scans and blood tests. Results came back that he had a 6cm tumor on his upper kidney which they kept going back and forth on debating if it was on the kidney or adrenal. Either way they found out it was on the kidney.

Urologist said to fly back home and get the surgery done there. They got back into town and found a great urologist at a local hospital. He looked at all the documents, scans, blood tests and ordered even more because he wanted to make sure with what he was dealing with. After doing more tests they found his Alkaline Phosphatase was at around 1,000 U/l, some others were high as well but that was the one most out of wack. All scans showed nothing on the liver except for a fatty liver that was inflamed. They did a contrast MRI and still couldn't tell anything. They've done multiple MRIs, CT scans of the whole torso, ultrasounds, multiple blood tests and finally they did a biopsy of both the kidney and liver. My dad said what they got from the liver looked like a strand of angel hair pasta that was dark reddish in colour.

Does anybody have a clue what this could be? With the kidney they mentioned from the get go that it could be RCC or later that it is RCC but for the liver they never mentioned the word cancer only that they really weren't sure what was wrong and before removing the kidney they wanted to see what was wrong with the liver.

At this point his legs/feet are slightly holding water, his abdomen is large and he gets an upset stomach, sometimes vomit but not often, he is fatigued but shows no signs of jaundice, no spider veins on the abdomen, when he isn't sick to his stomach he does really well and has a tremendous appetite. He just feels that the liver is big enough to be pushing onto other organs and giving his pain. They also checked his heart and all other organs and mentioned nothing. They did say the spleen and galbladder were unaffected.

[Jimmy2x]

The tumor was benign which the doctor originally gave a 1% chance it ends up being benign. He was diagnosed with Amyloidosis which is pretty rare. We find out if it is primary or secondary tomorrow but he had Ankylosing spondylitis back 20-30 years ago which was never fully treated so we are thinking it might be secondary.

[Paderla Anitha, DNB]

Hello and hope you are doing well.


A biopsy facilitates a histologic study of cells, which gives you a definite diagnosis. So, what did it report? Was it RCC? did the liver show secondaries? based on this his therapy will be planned. Also, he could have co existing conditions like fatty liver changes or cirrhosis of the liver which could be causing his symptoms of fatigue, abdominal bloating and nausea/vomiting. So, please discuss in detail regarding his clinical condition and the prognosis with his consulting doctor before consenting for surgery. Good Luck.

Hope this helped and do keep us posted.