We have posters on bus shelters. We have advertisements on TV. We have leaflets in public places. All encourage men to do monthly checks for abnormal things in the region variously described as “your bollocks” or nuts. Most people think it’ll never happen to them. Right?
Well you could be wrong.
I’d like point the gents reading this to the Testicular Cancer (TC) Resource Center at –
Or the Cancer Research UK’s Testicular Cancer site at –
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/testicular-cancer
Do yourselves a favour and read up on the self-exam and do it once a month.
I had an appointment with a urologist on Friday to get something that had been bugging me for a few weeks checked out. I suspected that I had TC in one of my testes. As an aside – if anything down there is going to get bigger, why couldn’t it be the bit I could use to impress the girls 🙂
Anyway, after some tests (ultrasound, blood, etc.) it transpires that I will be going in for an operation from which I will emerge 50% deficient in the bollock department :-[ Luckily, evolution has given us a redundant system. You only need one. Actually, the surgeon asked me if I wanted to get an artificial one fitted during the operation. I declined. Maybe I could get a battery put in to power my Apple iPod 🙂
Become a Cyborg!!
While the doctors can’t say for sure it’s TC until the testicle is out and examined under a microscope, they are pretty confident it is. I also have to get CT scans and possibly radio treatment or chemo depending on the staging of the cancer.
TC has three stages. Stage 1 is when it is confined to the testes. Cure rates for this are 99% (Will probably be 100% when they have data for the last 10 years). Stage 2 is where the tumour cells have spread to the lymph nodes in the lower back near the kidneys. Cure rates for Stage 2 are above 90%. Stage 3 is when the tumour cells have spread beyond the lymph nodes to other organs, such as the lungs, bones or brain. Cure rates for stage 3 are between 50% and 80%. The CT scan and blood tests are used to determine the stage. I suspect that I will be stage 1 or 2.
So I am going to have an interesting time over the next few weeks and months. Working on the principle that “every cloud has a silver lining”, I plan to use the experience to study the biochemistry behind this. Should be interesting to study the structure of the molecular markers released by the tumour cells. Should give me the impetus to read the sections on cancer in “Molecular Biology of the Cell” (Albert et al.) that I bought last year. I plan to put up info re: treatments, thoughts, etc. on this site.
So the bottom line is get to know your nuts 🙂 Better yet, get your SO to do your monthly check.
If you want a good laugh, check out this personal story –