From her blog -

As for me, I just had my own experience with funny things. I found out around Sept 1st that my body has the illusion of renal cancer. I had been finding blood in my urine since May, but the doctor thought it was an inflammation of the cervix and put me on antibiotics for 2 months. So I screwed around all summer waiting for something to change. No go. So I went back to a different doctor at the end of August and he ordered a cat scan.

A few days later they told me that my right kidney had an enormous cancerous tumor.
It was hilarious. So off to the urologist I go, and you know I'm thinking, "I'm not going to let those guys cut into my kidney" I'm a tree hugger - I'll just cure this with "positive thinking" and feeling very stubborn about it.

But when I saw the CAT Scan with my own eyes, my left kidney was a perfect little egg, and the right kidney had mutated into a monster from ALIEN. It was so scary looking and it was no longer functioning as a kidney and I was like "get it out - get it out"....

3 days later they operated and took out my right kidney-monster. As it turns out you only need one kidney and people even sell them on the black market. (I should have sold mine before it changed, darn it!!!!!)

So a week in the hospital, a month of recovery, and I'm back to work and have a
60/40 chance that the cancer won't return. It all seems so surreal.

I was astonished to find I had cancer. I am only 49, (God, 50 on Thursday),
don't smoke, don't party, lead the most boring and conservative lifestyle imaginable.

Everyone in my family croaks from Diabetes - no one has cancer. Its the strangest
thing. The doctor states they don't know why it happens. They have 3 suspects...
one is 2nd hand smoke, (dad was a heavy smoker), the 2nd is an unknown
chemical exposure in some household product as yet unidentified, the 3rd is a gene,
as yet unidentified that somehow goes wrong. But they really don't know.

They know something is off because there are more cases of kidney cancer every year.

I am pretty lucky in that kidney cancer doesn't respond to chemo so I don't have to
deal with that kind of nonsense. I do have to have a cat scan and some other tests every 3 months for 2 years and I've joined a kidney cancer study. There are 3 groups - 2 have new cancer drugs, 1 gets a placebo, and its all done at random by a computer.
With any luck I will get the placebo and have no nasty new drug symptoms to deal
with and yet still feel I am contributing to the study.

I feel okay about the whole thing. I'm probably more apprehensive about turning
50 than I am the cancer. lol....