And so I basically, I worked up the courage to go and see the doctor about it. It sounds strange saying working up the courage but I think a lot of young men are in that situation where they feel they er, firstly they don’t like going to see a doctor. I mean I don’t enjoy going to see a doctor. If you’re a young man you consider yourself to be fairly fit and healthy, it’s difficult to take the time, also getting the time off work and everything to go and see the doctor if you’re living a busy lifestyle. And also if it’s a slightly what could be called an embarrassing problem then you know you tend to delay it I think. But I finally took the decision to go and see him. Also another thing, it was it was a new doctor, I’d never met before so I suppose that works in both ways. I mean it took a bit of courage to go and see him but on the other hand I didn’t have any history with him so I could come straight out with it and say what I felt the problem was.

So this went on for 18 months before you actually went, did anything about it?

To be honest I would say 18 months yeah, yeah, yeah. I eventually decided to go and see my GP and

Why did you delay for so long?

Well I’ve thought long and hard about that and I wondered if the, deep down I knew there was a problem but I didn’t like to face the fact, may be, may be. But it wasn’t painful, it wasn’t uncomfortable for a long time and I think men in general perhaps don’t want to know.

Why do you think men in particular?

I’m not sure, I’m not sure. I don’t think they like to make a fuss perhaps or be seen to be weak, caring about their bodies perhaps is, I don’t know traditionally perhaps is seen as a sign of weakness in men, I don’t know, I don’t know. But as I say when it got to the point where I couldn’t ignore it any more I went to my GP. And he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong particularly but he said hed send me to the local hospital to have it checked out. And it was about 6 weeks later when I went down there.

I was told that my mum was alright and I thought to myself well I was told shes alright, now if they tell me I’m alright and then something happens to me you know I’ve got a young son as well. And I was thinking you know they told her she was alright for months and she wasn’t, she was getting worse and worse day-by-day. And I was frightened that that’s going to be me. I didn’t want to lay there like my mum was. I mean I was feeding my mother and you know we were washing her and she couldn’t do anything for herself in the end and I thought well that’s not for me.

So it was really fear of going to the doctor?

Yeah it was fear of actually finding out that you have got it. You know although they say yes it can be cured and all this it doesn’t give you much, it didn’t give me much faith because like my mum underwent treatment and operations and radiotherapy and everything else and they said, “Right shes clear.” Well if they said to me I was clear and it comes back I wouldn’t have been a happy bloke.

So it was really fear of being told?

It was fear of being told it’s spreading. I think that was the thing I was actually scared of the most to be told that it is spreading. But I mean I’m lucky it never so, because the wife caught it in time.

Arthur Frank said And then I was amazed to begin to have these symptoms that I had an intuition might be cancer very early. Like about half the people I think who have testicular cancer I went through a long period of misdiagnosis. I first began to notice a lump on one testicle in July, I wasn’t eventually operated on until October and during that period the secondary tumours grew very quickly as of course they do and I was in extraordinary pain, back pain and I couldn’t sleep at night and so I was in pain, I was sleep deprived and physicians were insisting that they couldn’t feel anything unusual around the testicle. Now of course they did not get a urologist and this went on until I’d finally been in the hospital for a couple of weeks and finally a urologist came to see me and it was very quickly and easily diagnosed. But since then the studies I’ve seen which were a small sample have all indicated about half men with testicular cancer do go through this period of diagnosis. I think one of the most difficult issues that that sets up is the problem of trust because then I really entered medical treatment for what finally was diagnosed with a strong suspicion of the medical system that it had failed to diagnose me through these months of as I say very extreme pain.

It was probably about a year ago now, but I was regularly checking myself anyway due to family history of mum and dad passing on with cancer. So since they passed on I was regularly checking myself anyway. Best time to check yourself was in the bath each evening. So I was checking myself one evening in the bath and noticed there was like a hard lump in one of my testicles. It was like a hard stone-like lump, as though a stone was in the middle of your testicle. Thought not right, but I was one of these gentlemen that thought I won’t do nothing about it, it’ll go away sort of thing, yeah. So I left it for a couple of weeks, mentioned it to the wife and said “Look I think I’ve got a lump downstairs,” and she said “Go to your GP and sort it out then.” So eventually I did pluck up the courage to go and see the GP in September of last year. He knew the family history, knew about my mum and dad because he treated them himself and he told me there was nothing to worry about. You know “Yes there is a little bit of a lump there but don’t worry about it, it’s fine.” So I took the doctor’s word for it being that you know I trusted him. But it just didn’t go away the lump, it just got, it got a little bit bigger as well as months grew on, it did get a little bit bigger. And I kept saying to the wife you know “The lump is still there, it’s getting a bit bigger.” And probably about 2 or 3 months before the op, in April this year, I was getting slight pains as well.

So that’s 2001?

Yes, I had, I was getting quite acute pain in the testicle area as well, pain that made me double up, I felt a little bit sick as well. So that’s when I said “Right I’m going back to the doctor.” But I chose a different doctor in the same practice to go and see er to which he stated “I don’t think you’ve got nothing to worry about, I think you’ve got a blocked urinal gland but I’ll refer you on anyway.” So I waited about 4 weeks, got an appointment with the specialist.

I went down to my doctors, he examined me and he said, “How long have you had the lump?” And I said “Well six or seven months now.” He went into one [disapproval] because I’d left it so long, and he said, “I’ll get you examined at the hospital.” He sent off for an appointment for me to be examined at the hospital which took rather a long time actually, that was in the October and by the November I still hadn’t heard anything. And I went back to my doctor and he said, “Well I sent it [request for an appointment] off,” and he showed me the Internet, the thing on the screen, on his computer, saying that hed sent it off. And he said, “I’ll chase the hospital up for your appointment.” And I still hadn’t heard in December. By this time my firm was getting increasingly worried about it because I’d obviously mentioned to the firm and that it was causing me grief at work because I was worried about it. So they sent me to their own private doctor, the firm’s private doctor, paid for it. He examined me and he said I’d be unlucky if it was cancer, that he seemed to think that it was some sort of swelling to do with the water ducts.