'I Dodged A Couple Of Bullets:' Doctors Shocked To Find 30-Pound Tumor Growing Inside Man's Abdomen

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- In a medical story you have to see to a believe, a tumor the size of a beach ball -- originally thought to be a beer belly -- was found growing inside a man's abdomen several months ago.

It weighed a whopping 30 pounds, and all started out when Kevin Daly was told to lose some weight after heart surgery.

Daly is 6'2" and fit for his 62 years. Up until a few months ago, he just couldn't get rid of what everyone thought was a beer belly.

"But I never drank beer," he said. "Don't like it, always been athletic, never had a belly."

He managed to drop 34 pounds, but his pesky pot belly stuck around. That's when things got interesting and scary. He fought his insurance company to get a CAT scan, which showed his so-called beer belly was really a massive mass taking up most of his abdominal cavity.

"Not a good thing," Kevin recalled.

Within days, he found his way to Dr. Julio Teixeira at Lenox Hill Hospital who scheduled him for surgery right away.

"Although these tumors are large and malignant, they grow slowly and tend to not metastasize," Dr. Teixeira said. "Often there's a very good prognosis."

It took six hours of careful dissection to get all of it out in one piece. It turned out to be a 30-pound liposarcoma, a low grade, fatty cancer which was also wrapped around an organ.

"We had to take a kidney because it was invading and had to make sure we got it all," Dr. Teixeira said.

Fast forward two months, Kevin says he's feeling great and very lucky.

"I dodged a couple of bullets," he said.

Kevin will not need chemotherapy or radiation because it's a slow growing tumor with little tendency to metastasize, but he'll be monitored with regular MRIs just in case.