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A serious sports injury may have saved a 17-year-old boy’s life, after doctors discovered he had a rare form of cancer while treating him.
Westley Peterson, of Fort Mill, South Carolina, was at soccer practice in March when one of his teammates kicked the ball straight into his stomach.
According to FOX News, Peterson soon began noticing blood in his urine, so his parents decided to have him checked out by a doctor.
As it turns out, the injury itself didn’t harm Peterson, but a CT scan discovered an alarmingly large mass in his kidney.
After a few tests, doctors concluded that the mass was actually a Wilms tumor, the most common type of kidney cancer in children, according to the American Cancer Society.
“I went in because they thought it was kidney stones and came out knowing it was cancer, so that was definitely a very shocking moment,” Peterson told Fox46 Charlotte.
Just four days after the shocking diagnosis, Peterson underwent emergency surgery to have his right kidney and the tumor removed.
According to a Go Fund Me page set up by friends and family, Peterson started undergoing chemotherapy and radiation just two weeks after the tumor was discovered.
Although he already had his final radiation treatment on Monday, Peterson will have to undergo chemotherapy for the next 21 weeks.
"At that point, it went so fast that we really didn't have a whole lot of time to think about it or process it, which was probably good," his mother, Janet Peterson, told Fox46. "I think everything happens for a reason, and I think getting hit with the soccer ball led us down the path to find the tumor before it spread.”
