Did you have any sort of feelings at that time that it might affect your masculinity or anything?

No, not at all. At the time I weighed almost 18 stone er I was pretty big and I was known for being big and I was, I was a bouncer at the local university and I didn’t, I still didn’t, I felt almost invincible. And this minor operation, what I felt like, well it is I think a minor operation hadn’t affected me whatsoever. I was actually back training lightly a week after the operation, much against obviously medical advice (laughs) but I was.

Do you think the whole business of testicular cancer affects men’s sense of masculinity, of being a man?

I think so yes, yes, I think anything that affects men in the, down below in that way can have an effect on their sort of what’s the word, what’s the word, self esteem I suppose, their self image as men is suddenly affected isn’t it. I suppose I relate it very much to a woman losing a breast you know she may feel that shes lost her femininity and that’s widely understood. It’s the same for men.

With regard to my story, going back to my story with the removal of one testicle you know it was a tremendous blow. I can understand now why women get so really uptight about cancer that affects, goes direct to your sexuality. If I’d have had a tumour in my lung or in my leg or another part of my body I don’t think it would’ve affected me as much as something that goes to the core of my sexuality. I mean you hear on television some of the expressions about men brimming with testosterone or whatever and it comes as a shock.

Arthur Frank said Well after that I had surgery which was really not much of a problem. I mean er an orchiectomy as we call it in Canada is about like having your appendix out in terms of surgery, it’s just not a major operation. The loss of a testicle was a big thing for about a week and a half may be. I mean at first there was this great sense of loss and particularly because your pubic hair is shaved, you’ve got this scar, you’ve got surgical dressings. I remember the scrotum just kind of hanging there and I did feel a definite sense of loss. Again I would say that really lasted for you know no more than 10 days or so because the, the surgical site quit causing me any problem within 2 or 3 days and then very quickly I was moving onto chemotherapy and I had other things to worry about.

Before you go on can you just expand a little bit about your sense of loss, was it, I don’t want to put words into your mouth?

Arthur Frank’ Well

In a sense of your masculinity or part of your body or

Arthur Frank’ Both, both I mean theres this common expression, at least in North America where you talk all the time about balls you know “that really took balls,” or “hes really got balls,” and all of a sudden you don’t have balls, you’ve got ball and so there is a kind of threat at least to masculinity. It was important to me to realise very quickly that sexual function wasn’t impaired at all er and really that the funny thing (laughs) is that once I got used to having one testicle which was really again very quick it all of a sudden seemed incredibly clunky to have 2. I mean the idea of “well don’t they bump into each other/” and they do bump into each other and all of a sudden having 1 just seemed like a very natural and even sort of preferred way to go through life.

What about sense of masculinity, do you think it affects guys’ sense of masculinity at all or temporarily?

I think it does to a degree. Initially, especially early on. As I said I had a prosthesis and I think that had, that had something to do with why I decided I would have it. Part of it I think was automatic, I’m losing a testicle, I want one back. And as I said early one with the surgery it was so rushed between diagnosis and surgery that I’m not sure I was making a 100% rational decisions all the time. So thinking back I’m really not sure why I decided to have the prosthesis. I think part of it is vanity, part of it is the self-image, part of it is sort of masculinity and sexuality. There is a severe worry you know as I said you know the idea of someone close to my genitals with a sharp knife makes me still very nervous. Probably even more nervous now I’ve only got one testicle than I did when I had two. But yes it is worrying.

So how did the idea that you were now losing two affect you?

Through no fault of anybody elses, and I think it’s because of how I felt myself, I felt almost as if I’d been emasculated, mutated. I didn’t blame anybody because it wasn’t as if it was a mistake by somebody, this was something that had happened to me and I found that I was in the position where I didn’t know whether I could ever have sex again, I didn’t know what the future held for me, would it spread, and a whole manner of things. And there wasn’t much in the way of help for people that had both testicles removed. I then after about a week or so they then started giving me injections of a hormone that they explained to me that I needed to keep my body going.

They’ve removed a part of my body, but the rest of my body is whole, the rest of my body works very well, and there is no reason whatsoever for man to feel any less of a man. And that is very, very, important; don’t ever feel any less of yourself because a small part of your body has been removed.