I expect it in the ring; but I would have never thought my shoulders would be flat on a hospital bed instead, as I was wheeled into an operating theatre to remove a tumour from my kidney.
‘Adil,’ she said firmly, ‘You have to see a doctor.’ I brushed it off at first but her insistence stuck with me, and when I saw blood again a few days later, I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
The surgery was physically and emotionally gruelling – my abdomen was bandaged up, I was still high from the anaesthesia and sat in an empty ward with no friends and family around me as lockdown restrictions were still active.
But the macho wrestler in me decided to leave it for a few more weeks, ignoring the daily image of blood in my urine.
From that moment on, everything moved fast: blood tests, urine samples, ultrasounds, a cystoscopy, CT scans, and finally a biopsy.
