How BJJ Saved My Life

I’ve had a nagging rib issue that comes and goes. Nothing I ever thought was a huge deal.

Then we were working knee-on-belly in BJJ, and it flared up again.

On June 30th, it was really bothering me. So we ran over to the ER by our house. Honestly, it’s usually easier than trying to get into a doctor’s office, and there’s rarely anyone there.

They decided to do a quick CT scan.

The good news was that there was nothing serious going on with my left side. That was especially good to hear because I previously had a 3½-inch cyst removed from my left kidney.

But then they found something else.

Something on my right kidney.

A small mass, initially measured at about 1.7 cm, suspicious for renal cell carcinoma.

Not what we went there looking for. Not even close.

And yet, I’m incredibly thankful they found it.

The next morning, Candi, who I can’t thank enough through all of this, went straight to my urologist’s office next door. She got me an appointment within a week.

And that’s when I went down the rabbit hole.

AI. Google. Medical studies. Survival rates. Tumor sizes. Staging. Surgery. Recurrence.

Everything I could find.

When I finally saw my doctor, one of his first questions was:

“Why did you get the scan?”

I knew exactly why he was asking.

Kidney cancer can be one of those cancers you find accidentally while looking for something completely unrelated. If it’s found early, the outlook can be very good. If it isn’t found until it starts causing problems, it can be a very different situation.

I got lucky.

Stage 1.

He wanted a more detailed MRI.

My response?

Nope. Not happening.

I can’t do MRIs. I freak out in them.

So, back to another CT scan.

Candi went downstairs that same day to try to get it scheduled, but the order wasn’t in the system yet. The next day, she got it scheduled for the following week.

Meanwhile, my doctor told me he wanted to see me again within two weeks.

There was another reason for his concern. Looking back at my previous imaging from November, this mass hadn’t been identified then.

CT scan done.

Now came the follow-up.

The doctor walked in and confirmed what I already feared.

Yes. It’s cancer.

He explained pretty much everything I had learned during my rabbit-hole research.

Then he added something I wasn’t expecting.

The new scan measured the tumor at 2.1 cm.

He explained the surgery, the follow-up care, oncology, future scans, and what happens after the tumor is removed.

The upside is a big one.

When kidney cancer is caught this early and treated surgically, the outlook is very good. But the tumor still has to come out, and then pathology will tell us exactly what we’re dealing with.

The grade. The cell type. How aggressive it looks.

I won’t know those answers until after surgery.

And that’s a story for another day.

But there was one sentence that hit differently than everything else:

I have cancer.

Damn.

I lost both of my parents to cancer.

For years, I used to say that I just wanted to outlive my dad. He was around the age I am now when he passed away.

Suddenly, that thought wasn’t some distant thing anymore.

There are a lot of emotions that come with being told you have cancer.

Even when the numbers are heavily in your favor, your mind doesn’t always care about the numbers.

I’ve had good days.

I’ve had angry days.

I’ve had the why me? days.

I’ve been frustrated.

And there have been days when I’ve just flat-out hated the fact that this is happening.

Unless you’ve heard the words “you have cancer,” I don’t know if you can completely understand what those words do to your head.

I’m looking forward to getting this thing cut out of me.

At the same time, I’m already dreading the years of scans that come afterward.

Every scan.

Every wait for the results.

Every time wondering if this is the one where they see something again.

But I keep coming back to how all of this started.

A nagging rib.

Knee-on-belly.

BJJ.

Had my rib not been bothering me, I wouldn’t have gone to the ER.

Had I not gone to the ER, I wouldn’t have gotten that CT scan.

Had I not gotten that CT scan, nobody would have been looking at my right kidney.

And that little tumor could have continued growing silently.

So when I say BJJ saved my life, I’m not being dramatic.

The sport that has given me so much gave me something I never expected.

It gave me the chance to find cancer while it was still small.

I went to the ER because my rib hurt.

I walked out knowing I had kidney cancer.

And as strange as it sounds, I’m incredibly thankful for that rib pain.

Now there’s only one thing left to do.

Get it out and keep moving forward.