Oh they give me loads of information and when I had my first appointment, when I was chattering to the specialist we was actually in a room and they were taping everything that was said so that if you do have any questions you know they give you the tape. You take it home and you can sit and listen to it, they give you all this advice on there. But you know when you go in, I mean as I say when I got diagnosed with it and I was thinking, Well that’s it’, you know, theres nothing I can do, but the wife wanted the tape as well so that she could listen and she was asking more questions than what I would of because I’m just the one to say “Right okay I’ve got it so they’ll have to cut it out.” But she wanted to listen to the tape because it gives you a lot more information from the actual cancer treatment clinic. You know they give you booklets and this audio tape which they give you, I mean it helped the wife a lot because theres questions in there that shed asked, you know asked me when I got home which I wouldn’t have asked. But then she come down to the hospital and say “Right I’m coming with you,” and shed go in there and say “Right I wanted to know this, I wanted to know that,” and they are really helpful down there.

It was, I was always fully informed as to where I was with me treatment, how well it was going or how, you know, if it wasn’t going well. I was lucky; it went well all the way through for me.

Did you, were you given enough information about the disease itself?

Yeah, oh yeah, overkill, literally overkill. If you wanted to know you could find out anything, you only have to ask a nurse and a nurse would just uh, you’d only have to ask the, the GP specialist. You know, even if you didn’t ask you was told!

Were you?

Yeah! You know you can get quite boring on the subject you know!

So there was plenty of information?

Oh there was plenty of information once you was in the, being treated by cancer specialists, yeah, there, there was no hidden corners or anything. You was given what could happen, why this could happen you know, nothing was hidden from me, no. I mean I was told what the teratoma was, a wild cancer you know, it could be, you know, could re-appear anywhere in me body, and whatever, which is why I needed the scan, they did the scan, there was no, there was no sign of it anywhere else in me body and then they went ahead with the plasma treatments and what have you, the plasmatics’, that’s what they’re called, and burnt it out of me blood system.

Were you given written information as well?

Oh there was written information all over the place if you wanted to read it but to be quite honest we was all bored with it. Well, you’re, you’re in there, you know what’s happening to you, and that’s all you’re bloody interested in really.

I mean I was basically, as I say he explained things very thoroughly and I probably was talking to him for a couple of hours.

Really.

And then as I say literally a couple of hours after that I was being prepared for the operation. I obviously had time to call my family and tell them what the situation was but I think they were prepared for that anyway. We all knew that there was some problem there which needed sorting out, so that wasn’t too difficult.

So he talked to you for a couple of hours, what did he go through in those couple of hours?

Yes well all these things about the options that were open to me, what types of problem it could be. Theres the, I mean I’m not an expert on it either but I think the most common tumour is a seminoma which is perfectly curable if caught at an early stage and he explained, he went through basically how that occurs and how it’s treated. And then he went through the other more aggressive types of tumour that it could be and he explained that there could be more difficulty with those if it turned out to be something like that.

But as I say the, I found, I had the information I wanted. To go rooting around, finding out even more was actually just depressing. What I actually wanted to do was concentrate on the rest of my life.

I’d been told everything I wanted to know. Sometimes too much detail is, actually that doesn’t help, it just makes you focus on, I think the most important part actually is basically to pick up the rest of your life and get on with it. You can focus too much on the problem and if you, if your entire life is concentrated on focussing on just that disease then actually you’re not getting on, you’re not moving on, you just, it becomes like a mental cancer, it just eats away at you. It just chips away at your spiritual resolve and you end up becoming a complete nervous wreck. Well I wasn’t going to allow that to happen I’m afraid, I’m a stubborn old sod (laughs). I was going to get on with life. I just said, “Right it’s being dealt with, I’m going to get on with the rest of my life and whatever happens is going to happen. And I’ll deal with the various bits and pieces as they happen. And if I need to have chemotherapy I’ll deal with it then. If I don’t need it well fine what’s the point in dwelling on it.”

Do you think it would have been better if you’d had the Cancerbackup books all about it before you had the operation?

It would have been better if I had been told and informed and known what to expect. Even if I was told the worst, anything else would have been a bonus. If I was told the worst scenario, the worst situation, then I could have prepared myself psychologically, but to go into an interview room to be told, what I thought would be, ‘The operation’s been a success, the cancer’s gone and that’s the end of it. To be then told that the cancer had spread and I needed to have chemotherapy was a big shock, both for myself and for my wife. I mean my wife was crying, I was very upset, it was a very frightening time.

I was asking her [the nurse] questions, and she was saying like, “To be quite honest with you we don’t actually know much about it. It’s after care that we know,” she said, “with the nursing.” She said, “But as regards the operation side and all of that we don’t know enough about it.” So then it was a matter of trying to get somebody that did know a bit about it. But it’s very, very hard to do that.

Was it hard to find a doctor to ask questions?

It was really yeah to answer them [questions], if you wanted them being answered, and that’s why I went to the book side. I thought well if I get the book, the book will tell me everything.

So did you see the book before you had the surgery?

That was after, that was after. I was trying to get everything I could. As I say I had the leaflets, the leaflets they helped me but I wasn’t getting everything out of them leaflets as what I should have done I didn’t think.

Did you not get a chance to ask questions of a doctor in the hospital?

I did but they were busy, they were busy and I could understand that as well like you know. I was trying to ask them, you know, but all I got about the feedback was, “I’ll come back to you.” Well it was never, that coming back they didn’t come back because they were that busy to come back to me. So I had the nurses there all the time like but like I say they didn’t know enough about it to tell me like you know.

Didn’t know much about it [CT scans], so myself and my girlfriend went on the internet. Cancerbackup website which was very helpful. It explained diagrams, pictures, what CT scans were, what would take place, so that was very helpful, printed all that off. Printed a lot of things off just to give to my Mum more than anything. She was very, very worried, she didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything, no one knew anything and we needed something to look at and say right, that’s going to happen, that could happen, and just a structure of what was going to happen really.

So they hadn’t given you any information leaflets at the hospital?

No absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing. All that came through was just letters and appointments, no leaflets.

Did you find any other websites that were useful?

No we just stuck to one, the Cancerbackup, which you know for what I needed to know it was ideal.

We have one very big advantage with testicular cancer or with any form of cancer or with anything that is available now and that is called the World Wide Web. Now I use Yahoo, that isn’t an advert for Yahoo, that’s the way that I find it’s best. You go into Yahoo, and you type in testicular cancer, and I guarantee you that for the next two weeks you’ll be looking at every site that is different. You have peoples experiences, you have drug information, you’ll be able to read papers that are published on the web by some of the most eminent, eminent doctors that are around. There is no excuse these days, if you haven’t got a computer go down to an Internet cafe, there is no excuse whatsoever for not finding out about testicular cancer or all the other things. I mean type in Carboplatin on the web, it will tell you about the chemotherapy that I had. Type in Virormone, which is the hormone that I inject myself with, it will tell you about that. The information technology break through of having the Internet available is just unreal. You know were very lucky because were at the dawn of something that is quite remarkable with the Internet.

It’s all, it’s all access, it’s all getting, having information at your fingertips. You know to go out and start going to a library and borrowing books or all these different sorts of things require a hell of a lot of effort. It’s now literally, was it two clicks awa, is that what Microsoft say? Two clicks awa, so that’s, it is there, a web site is there. A web site is the most brilliant idea for spreading information.

And it wasn’t easy at that stage, I didn’t find it easy find, to get to a site that, that um, really gave me the depth of information that I was, I was looking for. And what information I did find seemed to be somewhat conflicting. There seemed to be a difference of opinion between, particularly between international and American sites and British sites. One or two, one site I did find did actually recognise there was a difference in view between American sites and English sites and they explained that difference so I suppose in that sense I was able to get hold of some information.

And you suddenly realise theres a huge void in what you know, and you need to fill that void. And its so personal because its you, its your body but, but you need to go somewhere. What better place to go than, well certainly in my own circumstances where I have a computer at home, that I can just switch on, in total privacy. I don’t need to feel that I’m asking a dumb question. I don’t need to feel that I have to ask all the right questions first time round, and that you know however long a doctor might be prepared to sit in front of me and answer my questions, at the end of the day, you know were going to dry, you’re going to dry up and not be able to answer another, ask another question. And you move on and then that’s when you suddenly think, oh I should have asked x, y and z or what-have-you. Having it on a Website means that you can go at any time of the day and you can go back as many times as you like and re-read and ask the same question, because theres a lot to know.

And you’d done some searching in the Internet you said, what did you find on the Internet?

I found some very good American sites, medical sites and they’re sort of interactive so you can mail people on a, like is it a chat pool do they call it or something like that?

A chat room.

It’s a message board or whatever and people can respond to your questions and you know who’ve had similar experiences etc, which again was very good.

Have you used that, have you sent messages to other people?

Yes I have, yes, yes. But information-wise I found there was very little in Great Britain. I also found that some of the terminology, the American terminology wasn’t quite what we use over here, so it was difficult. So I did find out a lot about testicular cancer, the various types, the sort of age groups it affects and I suppose I wanted information, I wasn’t getting information from the hospital or the doctors, I found it out for myself really.

So to have a website where you can go on and you can see peoples experiences and find out a bit more what it’s going to be like before you actually go and have it done is, would be an amazing help. Also it takes out the embarrassment of having to speak to someone down a phone line and then uncomfortable silences and stuff like that. You can see the person on the end, you can read what they’ve said or listen to it or see it and you don’t have to have any interaction with them. You can just sit there and listen and make of it what you need to. Yeah I think it’s great.