After embracing “new beginnings, second chances, and hope rising from hard places,” Silva explained, “In November 2023, I started having this strange pain in my flank. It wasn’t sharp, just a dull pressure that never went away. Not horrible, just always there. A quiet but constant reminder that something wasn’t right.

“I saw eight or nine doctors. Most of them said it was gas, a pulled muscle, or nerve pain. But I kept saying, this isn’t normal. We’re not supposed to feel pain 24/7. And even though everyone told me it was nothing, I kept pushing for answers.”

She was ultimately diagnosed with stage 1 clear cell renal carcinoma after getting an MRI and CT scan about one year after her abnormal pain arose, something she recently opened up to Kennedy News & Media, as per the Daily Mail.

Silva also reportedly experienced symptoms such as heartburn, coughing, and vomiting.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Schay Da Silva (Resende) (@schaypsilva)

Further sharing her cancer journey on Instagram, Silva continued, “Eventually, one doctor listened and ordered a CT scan. I got the results through my patient portal with no explanation. It was awful. I cried for weeks. And I found out I wasn’t imagining things. It wasn’t nothing.
It was possibly kidney cancer. We don’t know until we do the surgery on kidney cancers.

“Once I had my surgery I was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma, stage 1, grade 2. It was caught early, and on April 14th, 2025. I had surgery to remove the tumor. It’s gone now. I am cured!”

She added, “And I truly believe that was my miracle. Kidney cancer is known as a silent killer. Most people have no symptoms. It’s either found accidentally or too late.

“But I had pain. And even though every doctor told me it wasn’t related, I still believe it was. God gave me that sign, and I listened. He gave me the strength to keep going. Kidney cancer has a 97% cure rate when caught early. If found late, the survival rate drops to 10%. I know how blessed I am.”

RELATED: 7 Cancer Survivors Share How Gratitude, Faith, & Seeking the Good In Life Help Give Them Strength

Silva says her illness transformed her perspective, replacing fear with determination.

Today, she is focused on making healthy choices as a loving mom and wife, while embracing life to the fullest—and encouraging others to understand how environmental factors play a role in cancer.

She wrote alongside another photo of herself on Instagram, “Current mood: Trying to save the world and raise kids without losing it.

“Here is the loud and clear truth I want everyone to know: 95% of cancers are NOT genetic. We have to start looking at our environment and what we are exposed to daily. Question everything you’re exposed to. Knowledge is power! If I look a little crazy, it’s just passion!”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Schay Da Silva (Resende) (@schaypsilva)

Silva, who was told her kidney cancer arose from “bad luck” chose to check her home for mold, ultimately finding her home ice machine to be “covered” in it.

She then chose to test her blood, and learned she had high levels Ochratoxin A (OTA), a mycotoxin produced by certain molds. Now she firmly believes her kidney cancer derived from the mold.

RELATED: Understanding the Environment’s Role in Cancer Risk — Diet, Exposure & Genetics

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Schay Da Silva (Resende) (@schaypsilva)

Learning About Kidney Cancer

Kidney cancer develops when cells in the kidneys, a pair of bean-shaped organs each about the size of a fist, begin to grow out of control. Renal cell carcinoma is the most common type of kidney cancer. In fact, about 9 out of 10 kidney cancers are RCCs.

According to the American Cancer Center 80,450 new cases of kidney cancer were expected across the U.S this year and it’s a disease which can develop in both adults and children.

“The main types of kidney cancer are renal cell cancer, transitional cell cancer, and Wilms tumor,” the National Cancer Institute (NCI) explains, noting that some “inherited conditions” may increase a person’s risk of getting the disease.

Luckily, advancement in kidney cancer treatment has proven effective for people battling the disease.

Exceptional Responders: Why Do Some People Respond Better to Treatment?

The institute states, “NCI-funded researchers are working to advance our understanding of how to detect and treat kidney cancer. Much progress has been made over the last few decades, especially in identifying genes that can drive the development of kidney cancer.

“This knowledge has led to more effective treatments. Today, about 75% of people with kidney cancer will be alive 5 years after diagnosis.”

As for renal cell carcinoma (RCC), the disease, it “is the most common malignant tumor of the kidney and constitutes over 90 percent of all renal malignancies.”

Here are some signs of kidney cancer to look out for:

• Blood in the urine (hematuria)
• Low back pain on one side (not caused by injury)
• A mass (lump) on the side or lower back
• Fatigue (tiredness)
• Loss of appetite
• Weight loss not caused by dieting
• Fever that is not caused by an infection and doesn’t go away
• Anemia (low red blood cell counts)

According to the National Cancer Institute, the following types of treatment are used for someone battling renal cell carcinoma:

• Surgery
• Radiation therapy
• Chemotherapy
• Immunotherapy
• Targeted therapy
• New types of treatment are being tested in clinical trials

According to UCLA Health, kidney cancer can metastasize, or spread, to any part of the body through the blood or lymphatic system. When that happens, the first signs of cancer may not be specific to your kidneys.

Symptoms of metastatic kidney cancer may cause symptoms in the newly affected areas of the body including:

• The lungs, causing cough and shortness of breath
• The bones, resulting in bone pain or fracture
• The brain, presenting as headaches, confusion or seizures

That being said, all of these signs don’t necessarily mean you have cancer. Still, you should always bring up any changes to your health with your doctors.

“Traditionally, kidney cancer was diagnosed in people coming in with blood in the urine, a mass (in the) belly that was big enough that you could feel, or pain on that side,” Dr. Geoffrey Sonn, a urologic oncologist with Stanford Hospital and Clinics, previously told SurvivorNet.

“More recently because of the great increase in the use of imaging with ultrasound, CAT scans, MRI most kidney cancers (are) diagnosed incidentally, meaning a scan is done for another reason,” he added.

Dr. Sonn said that doctors finding a mass seen on imaging done for another reason is “the most common presentation” of the disease. Some patients without symptoms might discover their cancer through scans done for unrelated reasons, and other might discover the cancer after a scan to investigate abdominal pain.

Either way, it’s important to stay up-to-date on check ups and speak with your doctors about any possible signs of something being wrong.

“For localized kidney cancer, for relatively small masses that have not metastasized, most often patients feel nothing, and this is found on a scan done for another reason,” he explained.

“For larger masses of the kidney they may have pain on that side, they may see blood in the urine or a routine urine test may show a microscopic amount of blood in the urine that’s not enough to be seen visually but still will prompt further testing with imaging that shows the kidney cancer.”

Provider Bias in Healthcare

It’s important to understand that while your doctor has undergone years of training and practice, she or he is ultimately still human and may come with their own set of biases that can impact how they treat patients.

For other young women, it’s not unusual to be ignored at the doctor. And the same goes for many groups of people, including Black people, older people, the LGBTIQA+ community, and anybody who is lacking on education and money.

To combat these biases, known as provider biases, and really get the most out of your interactions with your doctor, you should provide her or him with plenty of information about your life and ask plenty of questions when things aren’t clear.

To better understand how you should approach conversations with your doctor, SurvivorNet previously spoke to Dr. Dana Chase, gynecologic oncologist at Arizona Oncology.

RELATED: Avoiding Provider Bias – Is Your Doctor Understanding You?

According to Dr. Chase, physicians, like many of us, can be a bit biased when seeing patients. Dr. Chase makes clear that these biases are rarely sinister, but rather unconscious and more subtle.

Dr. Chase says, “We have certain beliefs that we don’t know about. We might look, for example, at an older woman, and just by the way she looks we might make certain assumptions, and we might not even know that we’re making these assumptions.”

Sometimes, these assumptions can lead to differences in the care that doctors provide. That is the point at which you, the woman, should advocate for yourself and clear up any misconceptions the doctor may have, says Dr. Chase.

“Say things to your doctor like, ‘I may not seem healthy because I’m 92, but I want you to know that I play tennis three times a day,’ ” she explains. This type of discourse can be really helpful when building a relationship with your physicians and even more important when it comes to creating a treatment plan.

To sum things up, Dr. Chase says, “In order to avoid situations where potentially the doctor is making assumptions about you that you don’t even really know about, reminding yourself to tell the doctor who you are, to explain your life situation, I think is really important.”

Provider Bias in Healthcare: How To Change The Dynamic

Clearing up misconceptions is important, but so is understanding what your doctor is telling you, says Dr. Chase. In order to do so, she advises women to speak up and ask questions when they don’t understand something.

“It’s never a bad thing to ask for something to be repeated, or to ask the doctors to explain it in different terms.” So next time you go to your physician, we think you should feel empowered to speak up, both so she or he understand you and you understand them.

Being Your Own Advocate

It’s important to practice, something many SurvivorNet experts often recommend, being your own biggest advocate.

“Every appointment you leave as a patient, there should be a plan for what the doc is going to do for you, and if that doesn’t work, what the next plan is,” Dr. Zuri Murrell, director of the Cedars-Sinai Colorectal Cancer Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview.

“And I think that that’s totally fair. And me as a health professional that’s what I do for all of my patients.”

WATCH: Why advocating for your health is important.

Getting a second opinion is another way to advocate for your health.

Doctors do not always agree on whether your symptoms might warrant further testing. It’s during moments like these that having a second or third medical professional’s opinion might be able to catch something before it worsens.

Dr. Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute supports patients getting multiple opinions.

“If I had any advice for you following a cancer diagnosis, it would be, first, to seek out multiple opinions as to the best care, because finding a doctor who is up to the latest information is important,” Rosenberg previously told SurvivorNet. “And it’s always important to get other opinions so that you can make the best decisions for yourself in consultation with your care providers.”

WATCH: Cancer Research Legend Urges Patients to Get Multiple Opinions.

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

---