Byron Rosenstein, MD

My diagnosis was partially functioning massively dilated right kidney. This thing was twenty two by eighteen sona meters. It was a massive cyst, it was pushing on my guts over the side. And it was a completely asymptomatic finding. I was clueless about this beast in my abdomen which I probably had from childhood. Luckily my other kidney was normal and functioning well and with a little bit of hypotrophy, that is a littler bit bigger than normal. So, its been doing double duty and as we know you can live with just one normal kidney. You know, after I got over the shock of having this beast inside me and deciding I need it out I called some of my surgical friends. I called some of the nephrologists, who are the people who medically mange kidney disease who work with Scott the most. I called some of the surgeons around the medical center and to be honest I didn’t need to make very many calls. I sort of made up my decision right away But there’s one particular surgeon who’s actually a partner of Scott’s and I was operating on him , he was in the office, I was draining his knee or we were in the operation g room, I cant really remember exactly where. And when he found out about my situation he stopped and froze and he said “Byron this is not optional, there’s only one person I’m going to permit you to go to, I don’t care if you have a relationship with another surgeon, this is the guy” I’m very grateful, in fact I threw a dinner party for him to thank him and afterwards included Scott. I was so happy with the recommendation.

The urologist that I had seen before Scott is a great guy and they took good care of me and their standard recommendation was for what’s called a Han, H-A-N. Which stands for hand assisted nephrectomy. Which is done thorough a transperitineal approach. That means they open up the abdominal cavity and they make an incision big enough to put your hand or fist in and assist with the surgery. That’s a very standard procedure specially for something this big and difficult. Scotts approach was entirely laparoscopic, that is though small incisions and retroperitoneal, means not entering the cavity, the abdominal cavity. This was huge for me because being a busy surgeon I wanted to go back to work as soon as possible. And indeed his efforts were helpful in that regard. I had my nephrectomy on a Thursday and I spent one night in the hospital and went home the next day. And was sore for a bit but much less than I would’ve if they would’ve opened me up. And I’m very proud to tell you that on the second week anniversary of my nephrectomy that fourteen days from surgery I did five total joint replacements. I’m not gonna tell you that I was happy that day, well I was overjoyed to be working but it was sore. But just as an example of how quickly you can get better. Obviously every ones problems are different, Mine was technically very challenging fr him because he had to peel this mass of f my inferior vena cava, which I s the main vein rating to my heart. And it ws at very high risk of bleeding. And a lot of bad things could happen and the way my luck was going at that point I fully expected to wake up with a big bleed in the ICU and sick as can be and I just did fine. And I will be forever grateful to Dr. Miller for his expertise. This is a surgery that very few doctors are skilled at doing. You need to go to someone that is skilled at this procedure. I deal with lots of surgeons all the time, there’s some good ones there’s some bad ones and Scott is an unusually gifted surgeon. He has clinical judgment of when to do things. He has magic hands and I cant recommend him highly enough.