A few weeks ago, my oldest brother Dan spent days in our local clinic suffering from severe back pain. After tests and ultrasounds were done, it was determined that he was passing two kidney stones. Due to the high amount of pain he was in, he was out of work and at home trying to push through. We then received word that there was a mass growing on one of his kidneys. This is where all of our minds started to scatter knowing very well what this mass could be. He met with a urologist who diagnosed my brother with cancer. Thankfully, the kidney stones allowed us to catch this cancer early or else this could’ve been a very different outcome for him. He will be leaving for surgery at the end of the month in Anchorage at ANMC. They will be preforming a partial nephrectomy, and it is expected that he will be out of work for a couple of weeks for recovery. My brother is one of the hardest working people I know. He is working two jobs currently to get on his feet. He is out of PTO from his ER visits, and therefore this trip with be leave from work without pay. If you do not have any means to help financially, we can still use all the prayers, healing thoughts, and good vibes through this. We will post updates along the way. Thank you for taking time to read