My brush with the big C

Currently a friend of mine is having his own brush (and I hope it will be just a brush) with cancer and it has prompted me to look back ten years to my experience.

About ten years before that again a friend of mine developed testicular cancer, which is one of the commonest forms of cancer in young men. This coincided roughly with the singer and music critic Ferdia McAnna getting the disease and being open about it in the media. Consequently I was well aware of it and knew how to watch out for the symptoms. However, by early 2001 I had reached the age of 41, which was outside the age-band where I had understood the disease was most common (I know better now).

One Saturday morning I woke up with a pain that wouldn't go away. It wasn't crippling but the hypochondriac in me was worried, while the image-conscious part of me said "don't be melodramatic". It was still there on the Monday and I was due to go down the country with a colleague on what was a relatively urgent work-related trip. I went to my family doctor, explaining this, and he made the judgement (which I still feel was a reasonable one) that if anything was wrong it was unlikely to escalate critically in the space of a three-day trip. So, armed with painkillers and with a follow-up appointment for the Friday morning, I departed for Mayo, did the job and came back on the Wednesday.

By then, though, the pain was getting worse. It still wasn't crippling but by Wednesday evening I could feel a lump. By now, the hypochondriac in me was winning the argument so I spent hours that night scanning the Intee time - rnet. One of the things I read was that the symptoms that might point to testicular cancer can also by caused by numerous other factors. I decided to wait until the Friday morning, therefore, and not to bring the appointment forward.

On Friday my doctor looked at me again and now he decided that I should get it seen to at once. He tried to arrange for me to see a specialist there and then but that wasn't possible so, with a letter from him, I presented myself at casualty (A and E, or ER if you will) in the nearby Beaumont Hospital. Ironically, the receptionist who checked me in was a colleague from my voluntary work with the scouts (I was a beaver leader, at the time, the beavers being the secrion of the scouts for 6-8 year-olds).

It took a full day of sitting around in wating areas, going from place to place for an ultra-sound and a physical examination, before a junior specialist confirmed that I was likely to have cancer. Plans had to be changed straight away. I had to arrange cover for the beaver meeting the next morning so that my wife and I could meet the specialist again. I was told I should present myself to the hospital on the Sunday evening. On that basis, I thought I would be clear to go to a dinner in my sister in law's house. However, on the Sunday afternoon the hospital phoned to say they had a bed free and that I was to come in at once.

That was a bit of a shock and left everybody a bit anxious, not least our dinner hosts. It was kind of lonely settling into the ward and saying goodbye to the family (Aifric, who was 6 at the time, was crying, even though neither of the children had been told exactly what the matter was).

I was operated on the next afternoon and the right testicle, when removed, was verified to be cancerous. I stayed in hospital until the Saturday (during which time I was also diagnosed with high blood pressure!). I had a room to myself for most of the time but I had to move to a public ward near the end. My niece by marriage, trooper that she was, had a job in the hospital café at the time and was constantly bringing me goodies.

What really moved me - and still moves me to this day - was the response from friends, in-laws and acquaintances. I decided from the beginning to be open about the illness because I figured that the truth would leak out anyway and be even more embarrassing. Lots of people phoned and, when I started to show my face in the streets again, I had parents of my children's classmates and parents of kids in the beavers coming up and wishing me well. The kindness of my in-laws was espeically touching, and is one of the factors of regret in the subsequent break-up of my marriage.

At the time, the atmosphere in work was quite fractious but I maintained the policy of being open about what had happened and putting it up to others to be embarrassed if they chose to be. None of them were, at least in my presence. I am sure there were a few mutterings that I didn't hear, to the effect that the person concerned would have been willing to do the operation and save me the cost of an anaesthetist. They would probably have been right!

I started back at work and even undertook a trip to attend a conference in Rome, before I had to take more time off to undergo low-level radiation therapy, which is standard practise in testicular cancer cases. This involved driving across the city nearly every weekday for several weeks to St. Luke's Cancer Hospital in Rathgar, to wait around for half an hour or an hour and then to have a blast of radiation that lasted a few seconds (I had to have two spot tattoos on my tummy to mar the area to be irradiated and I have them to this day). I was warned that I might be sick afterwards and advised to buy Motilium as a precaution but I was more or less fine. As I said to the radiologist, the feeling was like what one's reaction would be if, having already gorged onself on ice cream, one was innocently offered an ice cream dessert. She said that this was a good description (I have Reggie Perrin to thank for that). That said, some people have been violently sick after the same treatment. Afterwards, there was a series of tiresome follow-up CT-scans in St. Luke's and, after I moved there, in Brussels (in a hospital that was also called Saint Luc, coincidentally).

For me the most moving part of the visits to St. Luke's were the daily encounters with other cancer patients, most of which, one can reasonably assume, were in a worse state than me. These included children and teenagers - both girls and boys - many of whom had lost their hair - and some of whom were obviously very ill indeed. If I had any temptation to feel sorry for myself, it wat tempered by witnessing their courage and acceptance.

I write this piece because, for the few people that read it, I want them to know that the depth of trauma of an illness is not determined by the fact that it has "cancer" or "tumour" in the title. At the time when I fell ill, it is true, I had already watched my prospective father-in-law fade away due to cancer. Since then I have lost several friends and relatives to cancer, including my own father, a work colleague who had already ondergone a double mastectomy, and a child of the friend I mentioned at the outset. But I have also lost friends, colleagues or relatives through motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, septocemia, and freak accidents. On the other hand, I am still alive ten years later and I know other former cancer patients who are also alive - and prospering.

A couple of years ago, I overheard a radio interview with the comedian Des Bishop, who also fell victim to testicular cancer. He was asked - by the female interviewer - if he had had a prosthesis inserted afterwards. It was the first time I'd even heard the idea suggested. As he said, why would I? The crotum is not the most attractive part of the male body!