Dwyane Wade is opening up about his health and what led up to his kidney cancer diagnosis. And what he has to share just might help someone else!
Speaking in a new interview with TODAY on Tuesday, the retired NBA star detailed how he went for a check-up with his doctor when he turned 40 to put his own health fears at rest citing his father’s diagnosis of prostate cancer. Despite feeling fine overall, it was at that appointment three years ago that he told his doctor that he noticed changes while urinating and had puzzling stomach pain.
“I talked about just having a slow stream, like sometimes when I would go to the bathroom, my urine would come out 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.”
Upon hearing that, his doctors advised undergoing an MRI to find the source of his stomach pain. But instead of finding an issue there, they noticed a mass on his kidneys and advised him to do a second test to confirm what they saw.
Unfortunately for Wade, that second test would confirm suspicions that there was something more serious going on with his kidneys and it was there that the doctor’s began discussing options for surgery in case the mass was cancerous. And while Wade had previously undergone surgery on other outward body parts thanks to his long basketball career, the thought of having something nefarious going on inside his body made him a bit hesitant.
“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.
Thankfully, Wade heeded his doctor’s warnings and had surgery to remove the cancerous mass in December 2023. 40% of his left kidney was removed. In a recent interview on “TODAY with Jenna & Friends,” his wife Gabrielle Union spoke out on the scary time but gave a positive update on his health.
“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,” she said. “He’s doing well. We are proud of him.”