Dear Testicular Cancer

I signed up with this online support group:

TC NET Support

I have received great help and mental support from them. I highly recommend signing up (free) and telling your story.

I have met with the radiotherapy specialist. The options for post surgery treatments of testicular cancer are all a little confusing and irritating right now. Every option seems to affect the probability of a reoccurence of the tumor and at the same time also the probability of causing another, secondary type of cancer further down the road (10-15 years from now). I will post more once my clears up a little and I have done more research.

About one week after the operation my urologist set up a ct-scan meeting for me. The ct-scan takes x-ray slices of the body and allows the radiologists to examine the lymph glands which could have been affected by the tumor. The seminoma tumor spreads almost exclusively through the lymph system.

The main purpose of the ct-scan after the operation is to determine the amount of spreading of the tumor across the body, this is referred to as staging.

The ct-scan procedure took about 10 minutes total. I lied down on the platform, the nurse hooks my arm up to some contrast liquid which allows the ct-scanner to highlight the blood and the lymph system. Then the platform goes back and forth about 4 times and a recorded voice tells me when to start and stop breathing. At one point the voice says: “… and now the contrast will give you a warm feeling across your body.” I felt the liquid pumping through my entire blood system in about twenty seconds… what an uncomfortable and unexpected feeling. I guess I was not prepared for it even though they have explained it to me.

My scan was clean! No apparent spreads visible. Yes! The doctor said that I was lucky. Loosing a testicle is not the most pleasant thing in the world, but if he had to pick a tumor he’d probably pick mine.

So I am officially a seminoma stage I patient.

On the way to our favorite sunday brunch place I felt a sudden sharp pain in my groins. It started to sting in the groins but also in the legs and the lower part of the stomach when I was walking. Needless to say that the eggs benedict were not quite the right medicine at that moment. We took a cab back home and I lay down to take a rest.

The next thing I remember are three doctors checking out my balls at 11pm in a crowded emergency room. Their first concern was that I was suffering from testicular torsion, in which case immediate surgery would have been necessary. A nurse rolled me on a wheelchair into another department where a young doctor took a sonogram of my scrotum. In retrospect I realize that this doctor must have been very unexperienced. It took him almost 30 minutes to do the sonogram and even after all that time he still was not quite able to give me a convincing diagnosis. I just saw him pulling a disgusted face when he looked at the sonogram image. “You picked up one nasty infection” , he said but he didn’t know what it was. I was very irritated and felt somewhat insulted.

After almost 10 hours in the emergency room the main physician subscribed me a dose of antibiotics and a painful shot of Ceftriaxone in the butt. The diagnosis: Orchitis and Epididymitis. “Nothing to be worried about,… I see it all the time here,… follow up on it with your doctor in 4 weeks.”

I bought the medicine at a CVS nearby. I took the first one later that day. The hospital called again and said it might be a little more severe. They prescribed me stronger antibiotics. 10 Days of Doxycyclone, 2 pills a day.

I was less worried than before but the doctors seemed somewhat incompetent. I figure I’ll wait a could of days and see how things progress with the medicine.

The pain did not develop any further so there was no need to be alarmed, I thought. Recently however my right testicle started to feel a little sensitive. Slightly more than usual. I was not too concerned. Its size also seemed a little large than the left one which apparently is not uncommon. Read Dr. David Delvin’s article.

A couple of days later the scrotum started to take on a redish color, subtle but definitely different. The size seemed to have increased and yes they were very touch sensitive. It started to feel wrong. I got really concerned and started to reasearch on the internet for similar symptoms. My head started spinning. I am worried…