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Businesses and landmarks across Baltimore are being asked to light up in orange in March to raise awareness for kidney cancer.
Cancer survivor Tracy Poyneer, of Pasadena, hopes her survival story will help others dealing with the disease.
“(COVID-19) saved my life,” she said.
That’s a statement people would not expect to hear often, but for Poyneer, it turned out to be the case.
She was admitted to Baltimore Washington Medical Center in 2020 with COVID-19, and a scan for a possible blood clot revealed a mass on her kidney. Her neighbor, who just happens to be an emergency room doctor, was in the hospital at the time.
“It was picked up a lot earlier than it would’ve been. If she had not come in for (COVID-19) and had she not had that scan of her chest, the lesion or the tumor on her kidney would not have been found at that time,” said Dr. Todd Rosen, the attending emergency physician.
“I was completely shocked because with kidney cancer, the signs and symptoms are just, for a woman, normal symptoms that we face are during menstruation,” Poyneer said.
Kendall Pace Monroe, chief advancement officer with the Kidney Cancer Foundation, said because symptoms can be sometimes hard to identify, awareness is crucial.
“Blood in your urine, back pain, anemia,” Monroe said.
She said men are twice as likely to be diagnosed as women.
“(That includes), primarily, older white men and African American men,” Monroe said.
While Poyneer’s left kidney was removed, she has been diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer that’s not responsive to typical treatment methods. She’s now in clinical trials, and her tumor is being studied by the National Institutes of Health.
“It’s going to mean that there’s hope for the future,” Poyneer said.
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