I thought I cheated cancer

Back in 2002 when I was much younger and not yet a wife or mother, I found out I had kidney cancer. It was devastating at the time but looking back, it was kind of a breeze. The tumor was only 4 cm and encapsulated within the kidney so treatment was pretty simple. Just remove the kidney – you can function fine with just one anyway. It was laparoscopic surgery and I was back to work in 2 weeks. Aside from some scars and follow up scans, that grew less and less frequent over time, it always felt to me almost like I never had cancer at all. The prospect of actually dying from it never crossed my mind. In fact, when I did my first Triathlon in 2006 I didn’t want to register as a “cancer survivor” because I didn’t think it was fair that I should be in a heat with women who had “real cancer”. Women who had chemo. Women who had radiation. Women who lost their hair. I never had that. I cheated cancer.