Tennessee Med School Student Volunteers for In-Class Ultrasound And Is SHOCKED When His Classmates Discover He Has Cancer

"We didn't have standardized patients because of COVID, so the next best thing was for my classmates and I to act as each other's patients," Almatari said. "One day, we were learning how to do abdominal ultrasounds. I volunteered to be scanned first. We were supposed to find our liver, gallbladder, spleen and both kidneys. We were having trouble finding my left kidney and identifying the spleen."

It wasn’t until the professor came over to help that Almatari knew something was wrong.

"He looked at my left kidney, at my right kidney, and repeated that a couple of times," Almatari said. "After going back and forth, I could see the serious look on his face, and at one point it just clicked. I said, 'my left kidney isn't supposed to look that is it?' and he said no."

Almatari had just moved from Knoxville to Memphis, so he didn’t have a local doctor. Luckily, his professor swiftly connected him with the school’s dean who set him up with a primary care provider.

After scans and a visit with a urologist (a doctor who specializes in the study or treatment of the function and disorders of the urinary system), Almatari was diagnosed with kidney cancer.

He then had surgery to remove the kidney over Thanksgiving break. Thankfully, his cancer was slow growing, but Almatari is not sure if he would have caught his cancer for a long time since he didn’t have any reason to suspect the disease.

"The variant of cancer I had is very slow growing," he said. "There haven't been any reported cases of it metastasizing, but it was only reported as its own variant in 2016. There isn't extensive research on it yet. Maybe 20 or 30 years down the road it would have spread. I don't know, but I'm thankful I don't have to find out."

Despite the pandemic forcing him to handle all of this away from his family, Almatari thanks his girlfriend and fellow students along with the university for helping him through such a difficult time. He only missed one lab during his recovery.

"I had the support I needed," he said. "The college helped guide me in what the next steps were and helped communicate what was going on to the professors, who were extremely understanding and made sure I knew they were there to help with whatever I needed."

Fast forward to today and Almatari is a cancer-free, second-year medical student with a newfound empathy for his future patients in a urology department.

"Leading up to my surgery I was losing my mind, so I truly understand the fear associated with masses and cancers now," he said. "I'll always empathize with what my patients are going through. I've experienced it firsthand."

Understanding Kidney Cancer

Kidney cancer develops when cells in the kidneys a pair of bean-shaped organs each about the size of a fist begin to grow out of control. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common type of kidney cancer with about 9 out of 10 kidney cancers being RCCs.

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It is estimated that about 79,000 new cases of kidney cancer (50,290 in men and 28,710 in women) will be diagnosed in the United States for 2022, so here are some signs of the disease to look out for:

• Blood in the urine (hematuria)
• Low back pain on one side (not caused by injury)
• A mass (lump) on the side or lower back
• Fatigue (tiredness)
• Loss of appetite
• Weight loss not caused by dieting
• Fever that is not caused by an infection and doesn't go away
• Anemia (low red blood cell counts)

That being said, these signs do not necessarily mean you have cancer. But you should always bring up any changes to your health with your doctors.

"Traditionally, kidney cancer was diagnosed in people coming in with blood in the urine, a mass [in the] belly that was big enough that you could feel, or pain on that side," Dr. Geoffrey Sonn, a urologic oncologist with Stanford Hospital and Clinics, previously told SurvivorNet. "More recently because of the great increase in the use of imaging with ultrasound, CAT scans, MRI most kidney cancers [are] diagnosed incidentally, meaning a scan is done for another reason."

Dr. Sonn says doctors finding a mass seen on imaging done for another reason is "the most common presentation" of the disease. Some patients without symptoms might discover their cancer through scans done for unrelated reasons, and other might discover the cancer after a scan to investigate abdominal pain. Either way, it's important to stay up to date on check ups and speak with your doctors about any possible signs of something being wrong.

"For localized kidney cancer, for relatively small masses that have not metastasized, most often patients feel nothing, and this is found on a scan done for another reason," he said. "For larger masses of the kidney they may have pain on that side, they may see blood in the urine or a routine urine test may show a microscopic amount of blood in the urine that's not enough to be seen visually but still will prompt further testing with imaging that shows the kidney cancer."

The Change that Comes with Cancer

A cancer diagnosis will change your life. But as we've seen in the case of Almatari, that change does not have to be bad.

"I don't think I would have gone into urology and learned about the field if this hadn't happened," Almatari said of his new career path post kidney cancer.

Take Marecya Burton, for example. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at just 20 years old. Burton was a college student-athlete looking forward to graduation at the time, but all that had to change when she was forced to move home to start treatment.

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"That was definitely challenging for me," Burton said in a previous interview with SurvivorNet. "I was looking forward to graduating."

She also had planned on pursuing a law degree after graduation another dream she had to give up.

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"I really had to, in a sense, put my life on hold," she said. "Sometimes I look at where I am, and I can't help but wonder, would I be further had I not had my diagnosis?"

But instead of law school, Burton found a new passion: teaching. She became a high school teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, and she's since made peace with her new direction in life.

"I wouldn't change my career for the world," she says. "It's so fulfilling."

Other survivors, like Fernanda Savino, have said that cancer changed their whole perspective on life. Savine, for example, adopted a new way of thinking that’s allowed her to appreciate both her body and her relationships more than ever.

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"I'm a lawyer, and I used to be such a workaholic," Fernanda previously told SurvivorNet. "I would work for long hours, and I would never make room for doctor appointments or anything like that.

"I started to take care of my health and be more respectful to my body, to me. I started to exercise more."

Like so many others, Fernanda also said she relied on a lot of support from her loved ones something she'll always be grateful for.

"I had all the support … my family, my friends, even the ones that weren't so close, they always were present," she said. "I don't know how I would have gotten through all of this without them."

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