Retired NBA player Dwyane Wade vulnerably shared the fear that he had when diagnosed with cancer on a new episode of “TODAY With Jenna & Friends.”

On Tuesday, March 11, Wade sat with host Jenna Bush Hager to discuss his 2023 kidney cancer diagnosis. That December, the 43-year-old underwent surgery to remove the tumor on his kidney.

During an opening segment, the father of five expressed that prostate cancer runs in his family, specifically from his grandfather and father. “I just started to be like, okay, well this is probably a part of my genetics and my history, let me go get checked out. When I turned 40, I went into the doctor and I was like, ‘Listen, I want to know everything.’ And in the midst of that, I was like, ‘Here are a few things that I’ve been feeling.’”

A symptom that the former athlete noticed ahead of his cancer diagnosis was a slow urine stream before a doctor contacted Wade with an “uncertainty” in her voice. “They thought they saw something on my kidney. They were like, ‘Well, we don’t know if it’s cancerous, but there’s something on there,’” he expressed.

In confronting the possibility of having cancer, it wasn’t until a third doctor was “very honest” with Wade and encouraged surgery to prevent it from spreading. “He was like, ‘Listen, we’ll not know unless we’re able to go in and have surgery and then we’re able to test it. We want to get it off, because we don’t want this to spread,’” Wade recalled. “So now, yeah, now I’m scared and that’s when I knew it was really serious.”

Wade reached out to his father, Dwyane Wade Sr., who was “very nervous” about the outcome of his son’s surgery, but besides pain, Wade was comforted by the presence of his family. “It sounds crazy because those are supposed to be the ones you want to be there in those moments of weakness," Wade continued, referencing his wife of 10 years, Gabrielle Union. “But you don’t want them to see you in that space.”

Wade also expressed that he wanted to uphold the image of being “the strong one,” with his eldest son, Zaire, calling him “Superman” as he recovered.

Now over a year following his procedure, which removed his stage 1 cancer, Wade is thankful that the illness was detected early. “Now I’m back. I’m strong, I’m healthy. I feel great. I’m just a little more cautious,” he said.