The past few weeks have been rough ones for me and my husband. A month ago he found a lump and when we first went to the doctor they said it was most likely just an abscess but that they wanted to get an Ultrasound ASAP and get an appointment with a Urologist. The ultrasound was done, but due to a mix up the results weren't relayed to us right away. Since my husband is a very healthy man (we gym 5 days a week and eat clean as we can) and had no symptoms other than the lump we felt it was safe to wait til the Urology appointment that was two weeks away. At the office the doctor came in and instantly explained that my husbanded needed an orchiectomy *immediately* and that he was 80% sure that this was cancer. The doctor wanted to do it that very day but my husband had eaten and couldn't go under anesthesia. The doctor worked with the hospital to get him the next day (a Friday). I was so grateful that they were able to work him into a busy day surgery schedule and that we didn't have to wait the weekend!
Surgery went well, but we were informed that the ultrasound had also shown a mass on his kidney (when they ultrasound testicles they do kidneys as well since that's often where the first spread is found). The doctor told us that this was likely just a fatty mass and that we would have to get a full body CT scan and the biospy from the surgery before we could move forward. Since it was a Friday night by the time the surgery was over we had to wait (the *wait* is the hardest part). The CT couldn't be done until Thursday, and his follow up appointment and hopefully the biopsy report was scheduled for Friday.
I can't tell you how long a week it was. Did anyone else notice that it was the longest week the Earth has ever had? No? Just us?
I have to say my husband has been so strong through all of this and other than my own moments of panic we manged to spend a good week together (he was off work due to surgery, I only had to work Tues by pure happenstance). Our 13th wedding anniversary is coming up in a few weeks and we've been together for 17 wonderful years, but I really expect to get another 50-60 years out of my man!
On Friday we got the second best news that we could have hoped to get. His biopsy came back as cancer, however it was Stage One with clean margins and no signs of metastasis (spread). The mass on his kidney turned out to just be an ultrasound artifact (a shadow on the ultrasound that wasn't really there, it happens. Ultrasounds are good not great). With the surgery the cancer was fully removed. We still need to meet with an oncologist because we do have the option of doing one cycle of Chemo to reduce risk of recurrence from approximately 10% down to aprox 3%. We haven't decided, we need to learn more about risk vs reward, the doctor seemed to feel that monitoring with CT scans for a while was better than blasting his body with chemo but the doctor wanted us to speak to the experts and we agree.
In all of this the one thing I have learned is how few people know that testicular cancer is a young man's affliction (usually found in men age 20-50). Awareness is *so* important for this cancer. This is a very treatable form of cancer but your odds of survival sky rocket if you catch it early and act FAST! From the time my husband found the lump to the time he had surgery was three weeks, and if we had been more pushy about getting the ultrasound results it would have been sooner (this slip was a clerical error that was really no one's fault, but does show that you must advocate for yourself).
I know this hobby has a lot of men in it and so I'm sharing our story to hopefully help someone else have as positive an outcome as we have had.
I also drew myself a new tattoo while my husband was getting his CT scan. In a few weeks my friend and talented tattoo artist is going to tattoo this in full color to my outer forearm. The ribbon will be purple (the color for several cancers), the orchids are woven in because they are associated with testicular cancer due to the root word for orchid in Latin meaning testicle (apparently whoever named orchids thought they looked like testicles...and also felt that would make a great flower name).
My hope is that people will ask me the meaning behind this piece and I can spread more awareness.
Hugs to everyone!
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