Nile Rodgers just beat cancer a second time.
For the past few months, Nile Rodgers was fighting cancer. Again.
And pretty much no one knew.
Word started circulating in December when Rodgers shared his story on the website for the Wilmot Cancer Institute at the University of Rochester in New York.
Already a survivor of prostate cancer, Rodgers was treated for early-stage kidney cancer at Wilmot after a growth was found during a test at Strong Memorial Hospital nearby. He was being treated for E. coli at the time, which he’d contracted from contaminated food.
“He’d been having fevers and tremors and thought he might have a bacterial infection,” the Wilmot page says. “After visiting a few different hospitals to figure out what was going on, his attorney recommended Strong. Nile, a multiple Grammy-winning musician and producer, had rerouted from the tour and went to Rochester, while his band CHIC, touring with Earth, Wind and Fire, continued on to their concert destination in Canada. Nile’s doctor insisted he stay at Strong to receive an IV drip for two days and miss his scheduled show in Toronto.”
If you were there that night and wondered what happened to Rodgers, now you know.
Rodgers went through surgery instead of waiting to see how things turned out, returning to Strong for the procedure in November and the doctors confirmed it was actually not one but two types of kidney cancer.
“I’m grateful for the people that I met, I’m grateful for the care that I got, but at the end of the day I guess if you were putting on a tier system, is the fact that I’m alive,” Rodgers says in a blog post announcing his health scare. “Had I not found this, who knows what could’ve happened.”
He details not just this cancer episode but his previous one in 2011.
“This situation has delayed some big plans for this year, but what will happen next year is beyond any of my wildest dreams,” he writes. “I’ll discuss that soon—in my next blog.
“After the last seven years of amazing life, I would never have believed that my body would be invaded by another cancer. CANCER REALLY? I’m done. 2018 here I come!”
By the way, his prognosis? “100% recovery. (You can start dancing, singing and cheering now!),” he says.
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