NEW YORK (WCBS/CNN) - Kevin Daly is 6'2" and pretty lean and fit for his 62 years.
Up until a couple of months ago, he just couldn't get rid of what everyone thought was a beer belly.
"That's exactly what it looked like, a beer belly, and that's pretty funny because I've never drank beer. I don't like beer, and I've always been athletic," Kevin Daly said.
More frustrating, Daly had recently lost 34 lbs. after heart surgery, but he didn't lose the belly.
"Everybody was telling was just 'You're in your 60s, low testosterone, visceral fat. It didn't make any logical sense to me at all," he said.
Finally, Daly fought his insurance company to get a CAT scan. It showed his so-called beer belly was really a huge mass taking up most of his abdominal cavity.
"A mass in your abdomen is not usually on account of being a good thing, so yeah, I'm nervous. I'm scared," he said.
Daly had no pain or other symptoms despite the large tumor size.
Within days, Daly found his way to Dr. Julio Texeira at Lenox Hill Hospital, who scheduled him for surgery right away.
"Although these tumors tend to be large and malignant, they grow slowly and they often do not mestasticize," Texeira said.
It took six hours of careful dissection to get the 30 lb. liposarcoma - a low-grade fatty cancer - out in one piece. It was also wrapped around an organ.
"We had to remove the kidney along with the tumors because the tumors invaded the tissues around the kidney," Texeira said.
Just two months later, Daly is feeling great and very lucky.
"The surgery was great. The recovery was spectacular, and I couldn't be happier," Daly said.
He didn't need any chemotherapy or radiation because it was a slow-growing tumor with little tendency to mestasticize, but he will be followed regularly with MRIs just in case.
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