Michael Mordent

Michael Mordent’s father had kidney cancer. It was never that big of a deal because he had surgery to remove a kidney, but seemed to do well afterward. But when blood in the urine showed up one day, Michael was worried. He went to the doctor right away and when he was initially worked up, the said he had kidney stones. In addition, he was told that he really only had one working kidney. His other kidney was very small (about the size of a cherry tomato!). When the blood persisted, he underwent more tests and was found to have a more rare type of kidney cancer called high grade urothelial cancer of the kidney. This was a serious problem now given that he only had one functioning kidney. He tried treating his tumor with many ablative laser surgeries, chemotherapy and still the tumor just kept coming back over and over. Finally after many opinions, Michael and his team decided to remove the kidney surgically which put him onto dialysis. Now he has no sign of disease. Michael now needs to be observed for sometime to make sure the cancer doesn’t come back and then he hopes to get a kidney transplant.