I was first diagnosed with kidney cancer in spring 2019. I had a chest X-ray because I’d recently quit smoking. My lungs were OK, but the scan caught a tumor on my kidney. Dr. Christopher Wood cut out the baseball-sized tumor with clean margins, and I didn’t worry about anything for another year.

In March 2020, I learned the cancer, renal cell carcinoma, had returned and spread to my spine. This time, everything has been very different...