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Cara’s Story

Site created on November 1, 2023

We are creating a CaringBridge Site for Cara to help streamline all updates and minimize communication redundancy. Cara’s loving caring community is evident by the outpouring of love via text, calls and email.

Hopefully this CaringBridge Site will help Cara keep everyone up to date on her progress towards a successful surgery and recovery.

Her Story: Cara Evans, an amazing mother of 3 boys (Cole 6, Caden 4 and Greyson 2), a wife to Dan, a loving daughter, sister, and friend to so many her journey begins.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Cara's journey, she has been bravely battling autoimmune disease for an extended period. At a routine rheumatology check up in March she expressed how she was having worsening GI issues (GI issues are unrelated to Kidney Cancer) so he sent an ultrasound request for her to have done to check out her internal abdominal organs. Cara pushed the ultrasound off until right before her next visit in August which ended up being a blessing in disguise. Unfortunately, they discovered a tumor on her kidney which they said was an incidental finding and it might not have been there in March if she got the testing right away. After a series of tests, Cara received the heart-wrenching news on September 28th that the tumor is malignant and she has kidney cancer, requiring surgical intervention for removal.

The upcoming surgery aims to remove part of her kidney, and he is confident that he can leave behind 3/4s of her kidney which would give her full kidney function still. Dr Eun is worried that once he gets in for surgery there might be small tumors already developing that scans weren’t able to catch which would lead to a full kidney removal. He also let her know that there is a good chance the cancer can come back- this is why he is aiming to leave as much of her kidney as possible, so he has more of her kidney to work with if the cancer comes back. This situation is further complicated by her autoimmune disease, which alone attacks her organs and tissue and makes the healing process of surgery even more difficult. The potential loss of part or all of her kidney could lead to significant medical issues in the future. Our collective prayers and hopes are for the best possible outcome.

Cara’s surgery is scheduled for the day before Thanksgiving and will be having minimally invasive robotic surgery to try to make recovery as easy as possible with her difficulty healing with past surgical procedures.. They need to run more tests, she is going for a pelvic ultrasound and pelvic MRI soon to see why she is having so much abdominal pain and why her GI issues are continuing to worsen week by week. They are also running more blood work this week to make sure nothing else is going on as well. All of her scans have been abdominal so far so her pelvic area hasn’t been looked at. and then get her immune system strong and ready for surgery.

After surgery she will have a chest ct to look for spread and will be sent to the Fox Cancer Center to undergo genetic testing. Her Urologist is very concerned by Cara having Kidney cancer being a young 30 year old with no family history of Kidney Cancer. He wanted to check for genetic mutations predisposing her to diseases.

We appreciate all the love, prayers and support. Thank you.

Newest Update

Journal entry by Aimee Deraco — Dec 10, 2023

Update from Cara:

UPDATE:

Originally during my appointment today they told me my pathology results weren't in yet.. but just as I was almost finished with this post my dr called me to let me know he heard from them. They won't have the exact pathology results until Monday but they were able to still figure out some things to give a few answers!

The mass measured 3.2 in August and the overall size pathology measured was 5.1cm. They said it is definitely Renal Cell Carcinoma and although they don't know for sure which subtype, stage or grade, they think it's an aggressive form of Papillary Renal Cell Carcinoma. But the most exciting news is they could see I had CLEAR MARGINS! No cancer cells left behind on my kidney. The dr did say with quick growth rate and the tumor now being over 4cm it means there was a higher chance of spread. So now to wait for stage to rule out the possibility of any spread to the brain. 🤞🏻🙌🏼 but I will take a cancer free kidney as a reason to celebrate! 🧡🧡

I have a video call Tuesday to go over the pathology in depth, and will then know what my future/next steps are.

As for me, I am feeling a little better each day! The first week of recovery was honestly brutal, but I have made a full 180 since then.

Now at the two week mark I am able to get up and move about a little more! Help with bedtime, help clean up from lunch, little things. I'm still not able to do much and it will probably be a couple months+ until I am back to full capacity. For now I am just thankful the mass was found when it was and that my margins are CLEAR.

🧡🧡

Read More of the journal titled "December 8, 2023"

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