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My Father

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In September of 2002, my father was diagnosed with Renal Cell Carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer. Yes, cancer. That word was burned in my brain from that moment until the present. Cancer is a scary word surrounded by fears and myths. My immediate thoughts were “no way, not me, this isn’t happening to MY father” but it was, and it did. Thankfully, he was only in stage 1 of RCC. He had been having the symptoms for awhile, fatigue, blood in his urine, and rapid unexplained weight loss just to name a few. My father has been sick in the past so it took awhile for it to truly hit me. The night before the surgery is when it all came to me; all my fears were coming true. My father was a hero, he stayed strong through it all for all of us. I know secretly he had to be going through what most patients do, depression, anxiety, and just anxious to be healthy once again. My father had a Radical Nephrectomy where they removed his entire left kidney. We all took a deep sigh of relief, the cancer was gone, and my father is ok. He will have a follow up 6 months from when his kidney was removed. They will do a cat scan to contrast his other kidney to make sure everything is working properly. He has to wear a medical bracelet for the rest of his life that says he only has one functioning kidney. He will never be back to normal, and he always has a constant reminder every time he looks at his wrist, or every time he looks at the huge scar across his stomach. I chose to make this website because I wanted to educate people about cancer and its myths. I noticed it to be somewhat difficult to find a good site on Kidney Cancer, so I decided to make one for anyone else who might run into that difficulty. I also wanted to put on display the heroicness my father portrayed and how thankful I am that he is well.