Hello, I’ve just found this forum and wanted to see if I could get some information before going to see my doctor for pain issues. I’m about 2.5 months post-op. I regularly exercised before my operation, but for about 3.5 months from the date of discovering a mass, I haven’t gone to the gym due to pain, and later on, due to surgery recovery time, while mostly lying in bed and not much else, I’ve been very lazy and done minimal exercise. So far, I’ve injured my lower back from doing some housework out of the blue and needed to go up to the emergency room from the pain it caused, along with pain in my abdomen where placing my hand on top would cause discomfort and slight pain. About 2 weeks ago, the pain went away after not finding anything wrong with a CT scan at the hospital. I believe I essentially just moved so little and had such muscle atrophy that, doing the housework, I should’ve at least stretched for something minimal. I recently started taking some incline walks alone. Later, I was accompanied by a friend, and their pace was slightly faster, and they wanted to double the length I had been doing during the walk. I felt no pain, just averagely heavy breathing from being out of shape after so long. However, later on, I felt intense pain from my incision sight, along with the hip on that side and lower back pain. I accepted that I was just feeling pain from lack of movement, but I did not feel pain like muscle soreness it was just pain. Along with that, I had sharp stabbing pain across my lower abdomen, with some burst pain going from my pelvis up to my chest, and some strong tightening pain as well. The pain was only felt while lying down, trying to sleep while standing, and moving around slowly only the incision and hip pain were mostly felt. I feel I’m far from my surgery date, and the recovery time is around 6–8 weeks at most, along with others saying they’ve gone to the gym 2 weeks post-op. I still have more scans and bloodwork, along with the recommendation to build up muscle from my oncologist. I feel defeated at this small exercise, injuring myself and not being able to lay down without stomach pain, along with not understanding why my lower abdomen is hurting so much while the pain should really only be in my incision area in my mind. If anyone could tell me about their similar experience or have an idea of what could be the cause, I’d greatly appreciate it.
Hi Cr1 and a very warm welcome to the Community but sorry to hear about your diagnoses and ongoing challenges.
Navigating the cancer journey can be such a stressful and challenging time but getting support from people who have walked the ‘exact same' cancer journey can help a lot.
I have a completely different cancer but have been through a lot of treatment and my consultant once said that going through treatments was like doing a boxing match and a marathon every day over the treatments and this was done without any training.
Think doing the London Marathon without any training and you had to finish it as your life depended on it……. this is the journey you have been on so it most likely will take much longer than you would think to get back to some normality.
There are sign everywhere in my local Heamatology ward and clinic saying a week in bed is like ageing physically by 10 years…… inactivity results in massive muscle wastage and it takes a long time and pain to rebuild this.
This New to Community area is like our reception desk where we look to try and direct you to the best part of the Community for you to get support. The Community is actually divided into dedicated Support Groups (Discussion Rooms) so can I recommend you join and post in our dedicated Testicular Cancer support group. This will be a safe place to talk to others with a similar diagnosis, treatment experience, to ask questions and get support.
To connect in with the group please click on the link below…….
…… then once the group page opens click in the [Black - Click to Join - Banner] that appears at the bottom of the page and this will then confirm that you have joined the group.
When you are ready……. you can introduce yourself by putting up your very own post by clicking [+ Create new post] or [ + ] in the top right of the group page.
You can copy and paste the text from this post into your new post.
Do get back to me if you need further help navigating the community.
