12 Jun Surviving Kidney Cancer and Melanoma | Dave Herrington

Dave Harrington is a member of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and has been for the last 24 years. He has worked the jail, patrol, investigations, sergeant in the jail, sergeant in patrol and currently the administrative sergeant for the City of Laguna Hills.

In the late eighties he was on vacation in Maui and discovered a black four leaf clover shaped mole on his right shoulder. Turns out it was a malignant melanoma. It was removed surgically and has been followed by years of mole removal surgeries. Several of the moles were found to be pre-cancerous but most, thus far, have not been cancerous.

Round one went clearly to Dave in a near knockout. Round two came in 2007. Dave was putting a piece of furniture together for the love of his life (Michele) and somehow got a staff infection in his right hand. In fact, it was a MRSA infection, the worst kind of staff infection you can have.

While in the hospital, the doctors told him they were gonna do every possible test there was while he was there. The liver test showed abnormalities due to the five different antibiotics he was on so they ordered a CAT-SCAN of the liver to see if everything was alright. Well the liver was fine (the wine intake has yet to take a toll) but they discovered something else. Apparently, Dave had a tumor in his left kidney. The head of Urology for Kaiser called and informed him he was in stage one of Renal Cell Carcinoma and had a golf ball size tumor. Options were to remove the kidney or attempt to remove the section the rumor occupied. Well, not wanting to mess with cancer, Dave had his left kidney removed.

Round Two goes to Dave, kicking cancer’s ass two times in a row. Cancer free for the second time and living life to the fullest, he continues his Law Enforcement career without missing a beat and has a message for other cancer survivors or just people; Don’t let cancer or the fear of cancer control your life, live it the fullest regardless of your situation. Do not ever look back and have to ask the question, “What if?”