Richard Bernstein walked around barefoot a lot at home, so when his right toe started hurting in 2017, he assumed he’d stubbed it. A visit to his podiatrist confirmed nothing was broken and nothing was wrong. He moved on. But the pain didn’t. Five years of pain that no one could explain Over the next few years it crept upward from his toe to his ankle, then to his knee. A sports medicine doctor suggested stenosis and recommended physical therapy. That didn’t help either. Walking became gradually harder. On a trip to Greece, Bernstein had to sit out while his friends climbed to hilltop monasteries. He took his dog to the park less and less. In March 2022, his right leg swelled noticeably. His doctor ordered an abdominal scan. What it found changed everything. What they found when they finally looked Bernstein had a massive cancerous kidney tumor that had grown into his vena cava, the main vein that returns blood from the lower body to the heart. The tumor and tumor thrombus were a foot long and weighed around two and a half pounds. Because the vena cava was almost completely blocked, blood was backing up in his lower extremities, which explained the years of unexplained pain creeping up his right side. His two main coronary arteries had also been compromised, with 99 percent of their function lost. He was referred to Dr. Michael Grasso, chair of urology at Phelps Hospital. Grasso’s assessment was direct. “He told me I had four days to live,” Bernstein said. A 12-hour surgery, three specialists, one chance The surgery required three specialists working simultaneously over 12 hours at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Dr. Grasso handled the kidney and tumor removal. Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Jonathan Hemli performed a double bypass on the coronary arteries, which had been discovered only once Bernstein was already admitted, an unexpected complication that Hemli said they couldn’t ignore. “It would have been really disappointing to cure him of his kidney cancer only to learn in six months, nine months, a year that the poor man had a heart attack and didn’t survive,” Hemli told TODAY. Vascular surgeon Dr. Alfio Carroccio opened the vena cava to remove the tumor thrombus, which extended all the way into the heart. To do the work safely, the team had to cool Bernstein’s body, stop his heart, and run him on a heart-lung bypass machine while they operated. Then they slowly warmed him back up and restarted his heart. Bernstein spent three days sedated afterward, a week in intensive care, and nearly three weeks in cardiac rehab relearning to walk. He lost around 30 pounds. He gained it back. He’s now on ongoing immunotherapy and doing twice-yearly scans. Dr. Grasso’s update: “The cancer hasn’t spread anywhere else, which is amazing, considering where he came from.” Bernstein’s own assessment of how he got through it: “My attitude is ‘it is what it is, and there’s not much we can do about it.’ That got me through.” His advice for anyone else in a similar situation: “If something is wrong and they can’t find it, don’t give up looking. Trust your feelings about your own body.” And on the swollen leg that finally triggered the scan that saved him: “If my whole leg hadn’t swollen up, I would have dropped dead.” The post His mysterious toe pain lasted five years. The scan that finally caught it gave him four days to live. appeared first on Upworthy.