Stuart Latham

“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him,”
‭‭Nahum‬ ‭1:7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

If you are wondering how we got here, this is the story...

I will be covering a lot of ground to paint the whole picture. This information is also posted as my first journal entry on April 24, so if you are trying to keep up with us, you won’t need to read it both places.

Stuart has had multiple episodes of painfully passing tissue from his kidney since January. The second time this happened was in March. Providentially, we had an appointment with his urologist immediately after it happened. The Dr looked at the tissue, said ‘that is not good’, and ordered tests and a biopsy. From the CT he told us that Stuart had Transitional Cell cancer of the kidney and we needed to get his kidney and ureter out quickly, but he would be out of town for 2 of the next three weeks. So we would end up waiting close to a month for the biopsy. 😬

When we got the pathology report and it indicated the cancer was low grade, we were very relieved. But when we took the test results to Vanderbilt for a second opinion they said the pathology reading of low grade did not seem to match with the CT scan, so they wanted to biopsy again after a few more weeks. They told us the official name for this cancer is Upper Tract Urothelial Cancer and it is rare to have this in the kidney, because of that the treatment protocol is not well defined. The Vandy Dr reviewed the CT with us and explained that Stuart’s ‘good’ kidney is small and has a bite taken out of the top of it. Pray that little kidney is a warrior like David! (I am not implying that Stuart is Goliath. 😉). We still don’t know what stage or grade of cancer we are dealing with. They said that if the cancer is invasive they would want Stu to have chemo prior to removal (Nephroureterectomy), the reason being that he would not be able to have chemo after the kidney was removed. Hearing this made us relieved we didn’t allow the Dr in Owensboro to remove the kidney at the time of biopsy, which was his recommendation. We need more information to make the best plan of action.

After praying for direction we decided to contact MD Anderson. They got us in before we could even get the repeat biopsy at Vanderbilt. And will keep us there for 3-5 days to get the testing done while we are there. They will have a team of people assigned to us from patient advocate, oncological nephrologist, dietician, etc... We leave this Sunday for Houston and our appointment is Monday morning, April 29. We believe they will get this process moving quickly. The Dr we will be seeing specializes in the rare type of cancer Stu has, UTUC. We are very thankful to be going to MDA! Please pray the cancer is contained, that they can get an accurate picture of the situation and plan the best course of treatment that will be effective to restore Stuart’s health while we are there next week.

We have been waiting for a month and a half since we were first told he has cancer and that it needs to be addressed quickly, it seems like a very long time to wait when you feel there is urgency to act. The waiting is one of the things that pushed us toward MDA, which we believe is a huge blessing! We are thankful to our church for repeatedly bathing us in prayer, it has resulted in palpable peace! We need to keep going to the Lord to receive grace for the day and sometimes the moment.

Thank you for caring and praying for us! We love you, you are our people and we thank the Lord for each of you!