Dear Testicular Cancer

I got the first dosis of paraplatin three days ago. I went up to the hospital with my girlfriend at around 9am. The doctor said I wouldn’t feel anything and I should not prepare anything of any sort. They gave me some anti-nausea medicine and then I had to wait for an hour for the drug to kick in. Then I walked into a room with a bunch of beds with people in them getting their chemo. The last one in the row was mine. A nurse hooked my arm up to the IV bags with more anti nausea drugs and also the paraplatin. The needle barely hurt. The whole process took about one hour then the bags were empty. Two old elder men in the beds next to mine were talking about getting a few beers after the chemo. Seems like they are regulars at this place.

Back home I started to feel tired, so I took a little nap after a very rich lunch. When I woke up I started to feel a slight muscle pain, similar to flu symptoms. I was able to sleep nevertheless. Then it started… not the nausea, as it turns out they gave me enough of those anti nausea pills, but no one mentioned the constipation. I was never so full of shit. I could barely sit. My father got me some laxative. I stuck up 3 dosis of that stuff up my rear end and 2 dosis of the liquid version through the mouth. After 8 hours of tremendous asshole pain I finally was able to extract some junk.

They really could have warned me. Next time I will only eat vegetables and fruits.

Alright I don’t like any of those three options. Who would. Making a decision is stressful especially when there is no good option available.

After long dicsussions with my girlfriend, my family and my doctors, I came to the conclusion that chemo was the least worst option for my case.

My Beta HCG Values have dropped from a 14 to a 2 after 4 weeks which is a great sign that things are going better. There is a chance that the values could drop to zero but it might not which would mean that some micro cancer cells could be still floating around my lymph system.

So I will receive two dosis of about 700mg Carboplatin (Paraplatin for IV). And a bunch of antinausea medicine. The second dosis will follow three weeks after the first one.

There is a slight chance of infertility caused by the Chemotherapy. For this reason I will need to have my sperms checked to see if there’s enough skilled swimmers in there. That should be interesting

Read Article on urotoday regarding the new carboplatin option for seminoma stage I patients.