Summary
How could that be? I asked. It wasn'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.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 couldn't spread.See the full content of this document
Extract
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 celebriti...See the full content of this document
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