Following my ultrasound scan 5 days later I was at the local hospital outpatients' department awaiting my appointment with the Urologist. I was eventually called in. Not sure why we decided to do this, but my wife waited in the waiting room rather than coming in with me, I think this may have been reflective of my state of mind at the time - still being relatively confident that this would prove to be something related to cycling and not cancer.
Urologist was very nice, asked me lots of lifestyle questions, then got me on the couch to inspect the offending item. First he felt the right one, to check what the other one should feel like, then inspected the left one. Once he had done that, he asked me if it felt more painful when being touched (it didn't), then he felt around my groin and stomach (which I now know was to check for any swelling in the lymph nodes), and asked me to pull everything back up again.
He sat me back down and went straight in with "Right, usually in these situations we remove the testicle". Hold on, I think we need to rewind a little here...this was a total shock. What situations? What do you mean? "From inspecting your left testicle I think there is a strong chance it is cancerous".
So that was it, I was finally in very little doubt that the worst was happening. Although there were no lumps, the testicle felt sightly enlarged and was harder then the other one. Difficult symptoms to detect.
I remember that feeling, I came over very dizzy, cold sweat, needed a drink of water. I suddenly felt the need to pace the room. The Doctor popped out and grabbed the cancer nurse, who grabbed my wife from the waiting room and broke the news to her. Can't imagine how she felt at the time, similar to me I imagine, total shock, she went visibly pale.
The nurse was excellent, he said that 30 years ago his father died from testicular cancer, but he said "don't worry, this won't kill you, they pretty much got this cancer nailed nowadays with a 95%+ clear-up rate". My recent experience with cancer in other people had been pretty poor - my father died of pancreatic cancer, friend with children the same age as mine died from breast cancer at 42...so I hadn't really had any experience of cancer resulting in anything apart from death!
The nurse's comments obviously helped. Questions followed about fertility and banking sperm - I didn't have any concerns as I was already maxed out on the child front, having two boys aged 4 and 9, and no plans for more. I was also asked about whether I was interested in a prosthetic testicle..again, "no", as I don't tend to walk around naked in front of people I wouldn't be completely comfortable with, or in tight fitting swimming trunks in the summer!! I genuinely wasn't worried about the aesthetic aspects of this, as I was busy fearing for my life and my wife and children.
The next shock was when the doctor left and came back into the room, he said "I think we can get the procedure done tomorrow for you"...gulp! So that was the diagnosis...before I knew it I was on my way home and thinking "how the heck am I going to tell my children, mother, brother and friends?".
As it was that time of year, I then realised that we were due to attend my youngest son's school nativity (his first one) that evening. Could the timing have been any worse? Couldn't not go as that would prompt questions we didn't want to answer, so quickly followed a very surreal nativity experience! (as I am sure you can imagine!).
This also prompted a phone call to my mother to give her the news, as she was due to be looking after our eldest son while we went to the nativity. I decided to drop the news over the phone first, rather than tell her when she arrived. Thought it would give her time to process it and "put on a positive face" before seeing our eldest. She has since thanked me for doing it that way!
This prompts an interesting dilemma, who to tell, and how to tell them? I can only share what we decided to do, everybody is different. We quickly decided that we would tell the children about the operation, but would stop short of talking about cancer, we didn't feel they needed all the stress of waiting for biopsy and CT scan results. We obviously had to tell them about the operation as it would be obvious something has happened. Fortunately they are young enough not to question what we tell them too much, so we went with removal of left testicle due to a cyst. We also told them when they were busy doing something else...all I got was a "OK" and they went back to playing again. Excellent.
I enlisted my mother in telling the rest of the family (including my brother), which made it easier for me as I didn't fancy going through it again and again. I obviously had a subsequent conversation with my brother, and fortunately he had done some online research after hearing the news, which made both mum and I feel better.
My wife was sensitive about who I wanted to tell in terms of friends. I know my wife would need people to talk to outside of me and the immediate family, and I also thought it would be far better not to have to hide things (feelings, information, pain) from friends - especially over a period where we were likely to see them a lot, so I quickly decided that she should tell anybody she wanted to.
Lastly, work. My boss had been brilliant up until that point, there had been no pressure to rush back, and he was actively ensuring I rested and didn't rush back until I was 100%. So I made sure he was kept informed and that I was unlikely to be in for a couple of weeks after the operation. I was due to have two weeks off over Christmas anyway, one of the positive aspects of this happening over Christmas is that it is always a slow period at work with skeleton staff (I work in an office for a financial services company). They suggested I remember to get a certificate from the surgeon who does the operation. Noted.
