Dwayne Wade tearfully reflects on his cancer diagnosis.
What seemed like a routine check-up for the NBA star quickly turned into a diagnosis. In a recent interview, the retired basketball player shared that when he turned 40, he went for a check-up with his doctor. Despite not having any noticeable symptoms, he mentioned to his doctor that he had started noticing changes while urinating and experienced stomach pain.
“I talked about just having a slow stream, like sometimes when I would go to the bathroom, my urine would come out a little slow,” he said. “I had some some cramps, some pain, a little bit at times in my stomach that I did not understand. But I didn’t think nothing of it. And so once I finally went in, I was like, OK, I just want to know everything.”
Wade said that the doctors urged him to have an MRI done, in which hey found a cancerous mass.
“She [the doctor] expressed to me that it was very early, but they thought they saw something on my kidneys. I didn’t go in for my kidneys. I went in to check what was going on my stomach and my prostate,” he said.
He continued, “Immediately they try to say, ‘Well, we don’t know if it’s cancerous, but it’s something on there, and you’re a young man, and we just want to make sure that you obviously are able to live this healthy lifestyle.’” “So now I’m processing the possibility of surgery on my kidneys. I’ve had it on my knees, I’ve had it on my shoulder, but it’s something that feels a little realer when it’s inside your body. [My doctor said] in the next five or 10 years, if this is cancer, [it can] not only spread through your kidneys, but it [can] also spread through your lungs and eventually to your brain. That’s when I knew that was, like, really serious.”
Wade says 40% of his kidney is removed and he is now cancer free.
“He’s cancer free now. He was smart to delay talking about his diagnosis and the surgery for over a year to give us all a little time to make peace with it and let all of our very intense fears kind of dissipate a little bit, but he’s brave,” says his wife, Gabrielle Union. “He’s doing well. We are proud of him.”
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