I Could Have Had Testicular Cancer

"I recommend that everyone, especially those who are college-age, get as serious about health as I have," says Kendrick Marshall

When the word “cancer” comes up, many people think first of breast cancer or prostate cancer, partly because lots of celebrities have shared their experiences with those diseases.

When you’re young, athletic and expecting to have a good life, you’re certain that the word applies to someone else.

I got the shock of my life this summer when a doctor put the word "cancer" in a sentence that applied to me!

I hadn’t been sick or noticed symptoms of any illness. But my doctor found a mass in one of my testicles and said it could be cancerous.

How could that be? I asked. It wan’t even a type of cancer that I’d heard much about. Testicular cancer goes under the radar, but it affects thousands of young and middle-aged men in the United States. The most that I knew about testicular cancer was that it was the disease that six-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong licked before resuming a career setting bicycle marathon records. Armstrong was diagnosed at age 25 and given only a moderate chance to live after his cancer spread throughout his body and to his brain. He survived his bout by having a testicle removed and going through treatments of radiation and chemotherapy.

Cancer of the testicles accounts for only about 1 percent of all cancers in American men, with an estimated 325 deaths each year. About one man in 25,000 contracts the disease. It is four times less common in African American men than in Caucasians. The risk of developing testicular cancer in a man’s lifetime is about one in 500, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Compared with prostate cancer, which is likely to kill 40,400 of its 244,000 victims, testicular cancer is relatively rare. Yet, in males aged 15 to 34, it ranks as the most common cancer. And I'm 20.

I never thought I’d need to know all this. But everything changed with that fateful appointment.

My doctor said that the small mass he’d found -- no larger than my fingernail -- could spread to other parts of my body. The doctor recommended that I take a blood test to find any tumor markers that might be present in the bloodstream. Then, I underwent X-rays to see whether there were more masses spreading to other parts of my body. After a week of waiting nervously, the doctor called and said that there were no abnormalities. But he recommended surgery to make certain that the mass could’t spread.

So I underwent surgery. One testicle and the mass it contained were removed.

A biopsy showed that the mass wan’t cancerous. No need for chemotherapy or radiation treatments.

In this case, I was scared straight. And I was blessed in at least two ways.

One way was timing. Only 15 years ago, a diagnosis of testicular cancer was grim news. Ten times as many patients died then as now. But dramatic advances in therapeutic drugs in the last two decades, along with better tests to gauger the extent of the disease, have boosted survival rates. Now, testicular cancer often is completely curable, especially if found and treated early.

I was also lucky that a routine examination was all that was needed to pinpoint my problem. I’d never given much thought to annual doctor visits.

Now, I’ve pledged never to take checkups lightly, to take my overall health more seriously and to find problems with my body before they become crises. I now know that a life-threatening illness can confront anyone at any age.

Patients discover most testicular tumors, either by accident or while performing a self-examination. Some men, though, have reservations about examining themselves or being examined by a physician because of fear of embarrassment or fear that something might be truly wrong with them.

Dr. Jay Steinberg, a urologist at the University of Chicago Hospital, said men should examine themselves regularly to spot problems in the testicle region.

“It is important for men to do this because if they find a tumor, then we can handle it before problems occur down the road,” he said.

Steinberg also said that if a patient is found to have cancer in the testicles in its early stages, the man has at least a 90 percent chance to be cancer-free with medicinal and surgical treatment.

Patients who fear that the removal of a testicle or exposure to radiation and chemotherapy treatments might make them sterile have nothing to fear, Steinberg said. “This is not a death sentence. Early detection and treatment can still save thousands of men in the long run.”

My experience has made me a little bit of a crusader. I recommend that everyone, especially those who are college-age, get as serious about health as I have. We now live in an age where even young people can’t afford to take their health for granted. Making annual trips to the doctor can save a thousand days of sorrow.

Kendrick Marshall is a student at Jackson State University.

Posted July 28, 2004