# Lovely! They found I have a tumor in my kidney! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 18, 2016, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lovely-they-found-i-have-a-tumor-in-my-kidney/746436 "2016-02-18T10:37:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 29
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2016, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lovely-they-found-i-have-a-tumor-in-my-kidney/746436/29 "2016-03-14T19:38:43Z")
> [@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. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lovely-they-found-i-have-a-tumor-in-my-kidney/746436)._