David Y.T. Chen, MD, FACS

I wasn’t expecting the doctors to tell me I had cancer. It all started in December of 2020 when I had back surgery. Afterward, I started to feel a numbness in my legs. I’d go horseback riding and couldn’t tell if my feet were secure in the stirrups or dangling uselessly in the open air. Horseback riding is a big part of my life, so I had to figure out what was wrong.

It all started 10 years ago, when I was 66 years old. I went for my annual physical, and when my doctor got the test results back, she told me my urine had microscopic drops of blood in it. She wanted me to see a urologist, so she set me up with someone at my local hospital. It was just supposed to be a consult.

Unbeknownst to me, and without consulting my primary care physician, this urologist did a biopsy of my prostate when he examined me. I didn’t know what he was doing, I only knew it was very uncomfortable.

The fact that we caught my kidney cancer so early is amazing. It was the day before my regular medical exam in 2021, and I was going through some old medical records. I just happened to have them with me because I had changed doctors.

I found a chest X-ray from 2014, and at the bottom of the page, it said that I had a growth on my spleen. That was the first I’d heard anything about that, because nobody ever said anything to me about it. So I took it to my medical exam the next day.

I’m 68 years old and a very active person. When I’m not busy working as a lawyer for a firm in Bucks County, which is just north of Philadelphia, you can find me riding my bike, playing and watching sports, or traveling with my wife, Caroline. I’ve never been the wait-and-see type.