Lovely! They found I have a tumor in my kidney!

[JoseB]

@spamforbrains

Not just MRIs- physicals, period. Getting "checkups’ when you have no symptoms is rarely a good idea and have more or less been dropped from any evidence-based guidelines. The docs love them because they make money off them, but the patients don’t benefit.
Here, the OP is going around saying this a great thing, but most likely if the MRI hadn’t been done the tumor would have started to cause some flank pain in a few months to years, it would have been caught then, and nothing at all would have changed. Huge tumors are almost always benign and are not life-threatening. Plus, please note that the contrast agent commonly used when performing MRIs can cause serious kidney damage.

I already had had some flank pains for a while, but I did not think they were important. They were not particularly bad, and it is only in retrospect that I see that it was likely related to my kidney.

I am still happy that I decided to do this check up. I looked at it as akin to the “5 year tune-up” for my car. I still consider it money well spent. YMMV.