Ninel Dragan is a foreman on a building site, he lives with his wife and his dog in Elm Park near Dagenham. He felt perfectly healthy, but earlier this year he thought it would be best to visit his GP.
“I’m in my 50s now and so I thought I should visit the GP and ask to have my liver checked out. I wanted to make sure that my drinking when I was younger hadn’t had left any lasting damage.
“I felt perfectly healthy, so I didn’t expect any problems, I just thought it was better safe than sorry. It was a big surprise when the scans showed that I had kidney cancer.”
A few weeks after he had received the results from his scan, Ninel received a call from a TUF-trained surgeon, Mr Ravi Barod.
Ravi received robotic surgery training thanks to funding from The Urology Foundation. This means that Ravi uses robots to perform minimally invasive surgery; he can now do everything he could ever do with open surgery and his patients recover far quicker than before.
Ninel underwent a robotic partial nephrectomy which saw Ravi remove the cancerous lump on Ninel’s kidney through robotic surgery.
“The procedure went well, I had a little bit of pain because of all the nerves involved in the procedure, but Ravi only kept me in the hospital one night. The surgery took place on Friday and I went home on Saturday. On Monday morning the guys picked me and I headed out to work.
“Now I’ve got no more pain and I feel perfectly fine.”
Because Ninel’s operation was done robotically he was in hospital for only 1 day, compared to 4-5 days for open surgery. He was also in less pain, required fewer pain killers, and lost less blood.
“Ravi is an angel. The guy is unbelievable. I don’t have the words to express how grateful I am to Ravi for what he’s done for me. I’m a religious man and I thank God for sending me Ravi.
“Whenever I was with Ravi, I felt safe. The way that he explained everything and how he spoke to me, it just made me trust him. I felt I was in safe hands. Now he feels like family.”
Life has completely gone back to normal for Ninel and he’s enjoying going fishing, he’s enjoying cooking, and he’s enjoying spending time with his wife and his dog.
At one of his recent check-ups, Ravi noticed a spot on Ninel’s lung and so Ninel is having another op to remove a cancerous lump.
“I’m confident that my experience of Ravi will be replicated when I go in for my next operation.”
If you're worried about kidney cancer, you can find out more here.
