I’m pleased to see that the new American Urological Association Guidelines on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Early Stage Testicular Cancer have finally been published, and it was a great honor to be a small part of this!
April is Testicular Cancer Awareness Month
April is testicular cancer awareness month, and as a 9 year survivor of this disease, I can tell you a few things about testicular cancer.The first is that contrary to what people might expect, testicular cancer is actually the #1 form of cancer in men ages 15-44 internationally, yet almost no one talks about the disease. It’s sad and frustrating that 20 years after the founding of a very famous organization in yellow by a now very infamous testicular cancer survivor, that we still have to struggle so hard for any sort of public awareness about this disease. Testicular cancer in young men is about as common as breast cancer is in young women, yet no one ever talks about testicular cancer! In the U.S. alone, someone is diagnosed with testicular cancer every hour, and someone dies of this disease every day.
Negotiating Surveillance and Long-Term Follow-up for Testicular Cancer
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Guidelines for are the bible by which Testicular Cancer patients are treated and managed. The follow-up care recommendations within these guidelines only goes out to 5 years, and even within those 5 years, there's been some significant adjustments to the recommendations over time. It's entirely possible that if you were diagnosed with testicular cancer within the past few years, that you might be able to make some adjustments to your follow-up schedules in favor of fewer scans or appointments, but what do you do after that? It's up to you and can go on a case-by-case basis. Here are some answers.
"Testicular Cancer Wasn't That Bad?"
I'm amused that the ink has hardly dried on my last blog titled "There Is No Easy Cancer," only to now see an article over at GQ titled, "I Had Testicular Cancer and It Wasn't That Bad." Oh my...
There Is No Easy Cancer
On at least two occasions when I've mentioned my cancer story to new friends or acquaintances that hadn't known, I've received comments that were just short of dismissive that testicular cancer is an "easy cancer", alluding to the high cure rate. I'll be honest in saying that I haven't been offended by such comments, because I know that short of having been there in some way themselves, it's simply impossible for people to truly know what a cancer diagnosis feels like, nor all that one entails.
What Cancer Surveillance and Scanxiety Feels Like
25 Appointments and Counting... On the eve of my 4 year check-up for cancer, I rather foolishly clicked on a news video link of Virgin Atlantic Flight VS43's emergency landing in Gatwick last December. I've watched emergency landing videos before, but this is just asking for trouble around surveillance appointments, and I should have known better. As the Boeing 747-400 came down without its starboard main landing gear deployed, and with emergency vehicles lining the runway that were prepared for the worst, it was as though all of the collective fear, anxiety, and tension of the passengers on-board that aircraft found a way to channel straight through me. I could relate to this so well, because I know exactly what this feels like, and it's how I had already been feeling at the sub-conscious level. This is what I've been going through for 4 years now, over and over again, as an 'S.O.S.' cancer patient, "stranded on surveillance."
The Truth About Testicular Cancer Markers, and Detection with Pregnancy Tests
It seems like every few months, a story pops up somewhere where somebody managed to detect their testicular cancer with a pregnancy test. Yes, it's true! Thiscan be done. In a strange coincidence of nature, the hormone called beta human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG for short, which is emitted from the cells that form the placenta when a woman is pregnant and is what the pregnancy test looks for, can also be emitted by some types of testicular cancer. Since HCG should never be elevated in men except for in a few rare and very specific situations, a positive pregnancy test result in a man is almost a sure sign of testicular cancer!
Doctors Say, Keep Checking Your Nuts
In February 2015, Steven Petrow published an article in the Washington Post titled "Guys, here’s why it’s not worth testing yourself for a ‘lump’ down there", coming out against testicular self-exams (TSE) after having previously been supportive of them. What's surprising about the article is not just that such a view against testicular self-exams exists, but because Mr. Petrow himself is a twenty years and change survivor of advanced stage testicular cancer. I applaud and congratulate Mr. Petrow on reaching such a milestone. It's something that we cancer survivors take great pride in and stories like his are inspiring to so many of us, but I could not disagree more with his recommendation against TSE. Petrow thinks that it's "smarter" now to keep his hands to himself, but is it really?
Cancer Survivorship - The Fight after the Fight and All of its Firsts
After our fights with cancer are over, we all want so badly to believe that everything is behind us and that life is going to get back to normal. Those first weeks and months after our cancer fights are such a precious time. It’s our first taste of freedom after having been wrongfully held hostage by cancer for so long. I had my life back, but as time and the months went on I realized that it wasn’t my old life that I had back, but rather an entirely new one. Cancer survivorship brings with it an entirely new set of life circumstances and a whole lot of firsts, many of which I was completely unprepared to handle or to deal with at all.
