Prior to being diagnosed with kidney cancer, I’d never heard of MD Anderson. But the more I researched my disease, the more I kept seeing Dr. Nizar Tannir’s name.

The type of kidney cancer I was diagnosed with — medullary renal cell carcinoma — is pretty rare, and most of the other treatment centers I contacted said they had no experience with it. They also told me to find a place offering clinical trials, which MD Anderson...