My kidney cancer was found purely by accident as a lot of times they are. I had an abscess tooth and went into the dentist. Seconds after getting into the dental chair, she found a lump on the inside of my cheek. She sent me directly to an oral surgeon who did a biopsy. It came back cancer of the salivary gland. I was sent to see a top ENT (ear, nose, throat) doctor who did an upper CT scan and performed surgery on my mouth. After that surgery was performed, the CT scan came back with something on my kidney. Well, what it saw was the top of a 10 cm tumor on my kidney. I went in a year ago on Valentine's Day and had my left kidney removed. It was removed laparoscopically by a top transplant surgeon. I was very lucky. Both cancers turned out to be very rare forms, acinic cell carcinoma (which only 3% of the population gets), and chromophobe renal cancer, which only 3% of the population gets. Both have few statistics on them, but my prognosis is very good. Thank goodness I had a good dentist who checked my cheeks! Published: August 27 ::

I was at work one Friday when at lunchtime I went to the bathroom and passed blood. I thought, “This can't be good.” I went back to my computer to look up what it could be and decided to drive myself to the emergency room. I told the doctors I had passed blood and by then I had a terrible pain on my right side. They gave me a CT scan and said I had a "renal mass." This was all within about three hours of passing blood. My regular doctor came by on Saturday and said he saw the scan and he thought it was kidney cancer. By then, a urologist had been contacted and he scheduled a radical nephrectomy for the following Thursday. It turned out to be kidney cancer - stage 3 - because of the size of the tumor he said. I was in the hospital a total of 11 days. That was about 15 months ago. Thank God for that urologist. I've told him he saved my life. I go for periodic X-rays, and a CT scan is scheduled for next week. I keep praying that none of that cancer ever comes back. Published: August 27 ::

My aunt was diagnosed with stage IV renal cell cancer in August of 2008 at the age of 39. After having her kidney removed, she went through a series of treatments including radiation. Her team of doctors decided it would be in her best interest to try a new form of immunotherapy called Interleukin. Her doctors were quite optomistic and felt really good about her response to the treatment; while some CT scans showed several lesions that appeared on her lungs, they were confident that they had it under control. Soon the cancer foundo its way to her bones. She had surgery on both femurs to stablize fractures caused by lesions. This was then followed by more radiation and chemo pills. It then traveled to her spine and threatened to paralyze her if it grew too large. The lymph nodes in her neck also became infected and often became enlarged and hardened. Again, her doctors treated these lesions with more radiation and chemo. Up until about seven weeks ago, her doctors were still so optimistic about her treatment and told her she "had nothing to worry about." Seven weeks ago, I would have never though my aunt would be closing in on her last days. She was making progress with physical therapy and looked phenominal. Practically over night the masses in her neck swelled so severly that she could no longer eat and swallow. So quickly, everything spiraled out of control. My aunt fought like hell for a year and lived to see her 40th birthday. Three days later, on August 14th, she lost her battle with cancer. Published: October 06 ::