I first realised something was wrong when my girlfriend noticed that one of my testes was a lot harder than the other one. I really became concerned over the next couple of weeks, when it began to increase in size.
This was two months ago, while I was away in Belfast during Easter break, and I was unable to get a hospital appointment. It was four weeks before I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
The most difficult part was not only the waiting, but also the realisation that life wouldn’t continue as normal any time soon. You can’t make any plans; you can only hope for the best.
It sucks being 21 and having to have serious conversations about going to sperm banks, about losing all my hair, and having to leave my university two months earlier than planned. It scares me that the next three months of my life – my holidays, my trips with my girlfriend that we had planned when we graduate this summer – have all come into question.
One of the weird things about the cancer is that I can still basically function as a human being; I can still go outside and talk to people – but they now find it hard to interact with me. They try their best to be nice, diverting the conversation away from cancer. Unfortunately, as I begin my treatment, I don’t have much else to talk about nowadays.
This day-to-day struggle to stay casual is not exclusive to me. My girlfriend and my parents have each had to deal with the constant bombardment of polite enquiries about me.
But while it can get annoying, I can completely appreciate that it’s hard for people to know how to react: it’s not like you can take a class on this stuff. I am certainly grateful that people care and show an interest.
I’m getting all this at a time when a future lack of independence due to my disease could really affect my quality of life. As a Europhile and international politics student, what’s keeping me positive is campaigning for the UK to remain in Europe. I’m more determined than ever to try to shape the world I live in.
Now I’m at the end of my student days I regret that the cancer has taken away my ability to reflect on my time at university. Ideally, when you come to an important juncture in your life, you’d look back and talk to your peers about what you had. I had a week to leave university, so I only got the opportunity to see all my friends together for the final time in a rushed few days - often at formals, when we were slightly inebriated and unfit for the deeper conversation I had hoped for.
At the time of writing, the severity of my treatment is unclear and will be for another two weeks. This isn’t what I wanted my final year at university to be about, but it’s put whatever student worries I had into perspective.
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Ethan studies international politics and conflict studies at Queen’s University Belfast. He also writes a blog about living with testicular cancer.
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