MIAMI — Having kept the matter private for many months, Miami Heat icon Dwyane Wade revealed on his podcast this week that he had a cancerous tumor removed from his kidney on Dec. 18, 2023.
A seeming picture of health when he was honored with a statue of his likeness on the steps of the Kaseya Center in October, Wade revealed on his “The Why with Dwyane Wade” podcast that 40% of his right kidney was removed during that procedure.
“My own journey to have that surgery, I think it was the first time that my family, my dad, my kids, they saw me weak,” Wade said during the episode of his podcast titled “A Men’s Wellness Conversation.” “That moment was probably the weakest point I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Wade, 43, said he was told the tumor could not be biopsied, so therefore the surgery was required.
“I had a personal decision to make, and what it was was, ‘If this is cancerous, if this tumor, this cyst is cancerous, on your kidney, you’re 41 years old, you probably need surgery because it’s something that needs to be removed so it doesn’t spread,’ ” Wade related.
Wade said the kidney screening was part of an exam he felt he needed after turning 40.
“I went in to get myself checked out, turned 40 years old, and I went in and I was like, ‘Doc, I want to know everything about my body, head-to-toe. I’ve got some things that I’m feeling, I’ve got some stomach issues. These are the things I want us to check, but also check everything,’ ” Wade said.
Wade said his father’s health problems led to his decision to turn proactive.
“Thank God that I did do the surgery, because the tumor was cancerous,” he said. “So I have one kidney, and I have another kidney that is 60 percent. They took 40 percent of my kidney to make sure that they could get all the cancer off of it.”
Wade said he is now cancer free.
Prior to Wade’s arrival to the Heat, Alonzo Mourning, another Heat player with a jersey retired by the franchise, was felled by kidney illness, missing extensive time and ultimately undergoing a kidney transplant before returning to the Heat and sharing in the team’s 2006 NBA championship with Wade.
Wade, now a minority owner of the Utah Jazz, said he consulted with Mourning, now a Heat executive, about the health scare.