Testicular Cancer Long.....

[Hog]

About 5 minutes after i pressed "Post Reply" on my above postlast night , the door rang. I went upstairs and answered, an old friend was there and gave me some bad news. She has an agressive form of cancer which has metastisized throughout her lymph nodes. She was bald, wearing a scarf, I was floored, chemo and radiation but prognosis is not good. I hadnt seen her in a while, last couple times were at the hospital I'm at, but she said she "was just getting bloodwork".

Anyhoo, I was doing a self exam one day in the shower and I felt something, so I went to the Urologist. I told him that I had found "something, in the North Pole region of my left teste", he giggled and said he had never heard it described that way before. He then said" Let me guess, you found this bump, and now you have been playing with it at every ocassion and now it's sore?" I replied "Yes, but it's not sore." He continued, "only 2-3 people in this county get testicular cancer each year, so stop doing you self-exams".
I always though, "What if I'm 1 of the 2-3 people?" Needless to say I still do my self-exams, I was 24 at the time, now I am 34 and all is good, turns out that I was palpating a natural part of the testicular anatomy, but couldn't feel the "bump" on the other teste. I have a good friend that had a teste removed due to cancer 8 years ago now, he WAS 1 of the 2-3 a year in the county, no radiation, no chemo-but he refuses testosterone supplementation, his waist has grown substantially, but is otherwise healthy.

LGAFF-I am also surprised that a lot of things weren't documented as well. I can't beleive they didn't record what type of metal clip was used. Thank-you very much for the kind words, I'm almost there.

peace
Hog

[WB9MCW]

The following statistics relate to the incidence of Testicular Cancer:

* 8,980 new cases for testicular cancer in the US 2004 (Cancer Facts and Figures, American Cancer Society, 2004)
* 8,890 new male cases for testicular cancer in the US 2004 (Cancer Facts and Figures, American Cancer Society, 2004)
* 1,648 new cases in England 2000 (Office For National Statistics, London, 2000)
* Testicular cancer incidence increased by 15% since 1993 in England and Wales (Office For National Statistics, London, 2002)

>> http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/t/test...prevalence.htm

In the United States, between 7,500 and 8,000 diagnoses of testicular cancer are made each year. Over his lifetime, a man's risk of testicular cancer is roughly 1 in 250 (0.4%). It is most common among males aged 15?40 years

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicular_cancer

Incidence of testicular cancer is rising. According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 7600 cases are diagnosed and about 400 men die of the disease each year in the United States. The disease is most prevalent in men between the ages of 18 and 32 and is approximately 5 times more common in Caucasians than African Americans. Germany, Scandinavia, and New Zealand have the highest incidence of testicular cancer and Asia and Africa have the lowest.

>>> http://www.oncologychannel.com/testi...er/index.shtml

>>> http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/150/1/45.full.pdf

PURPOSE: Testicular cancer (TC) is the most common malignancy in 20 to 34-year-old men. Numerous publications have shown an increase in the incidence of testis cancer in the last 40 years with substantial differences among countries. We evaluated worldwide variations in testicular cancer incidence and compared trends in different regions in the world.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We reviewed 441 studies provided by a MEDLINE search using the key words testis/testicular, cancer/tumor and incidence that were published between 1980 and 2002. From these articles we selected only those devoted to testis cancer incidence and of them only the most recent studies from each country or region. Nevertheless, articles using the same data base but providing new and additional information, for example differences among ethnic groups or controversial explanations for trends, were also retained. We selected 30 articles and analyzed their methodological approach and main results.

RESULTS: Worldwide we observed a clear trend toward an increased TC incidence in the last 30 years in the majority of industrialized countries in North America, Europe and Oceania. Nevertheless, surprising differences in incidence rates were seen between neighboring countries (Finland 2.5/100,000 cases versus Denmark 9.2/100,000) as well as among regions of the same country (2.8 to 7.9/100,000 according to various regional French registers). In addition, substantial differences in the TC incidence and trends were observed among ethnic groups. The increase in the TC incidence was significantly associated with a birth cohort effect in the United States and in European countries. To date except for cryptorchidism no evident TC risk factor has been clearly demonstrated, although the environmental hypothesis with a key role of endocrine disrupters has been put forward by several groups.

CONCLUSIONS: Such a recent increase in the TC rate in most industrialized countries should lead urologists and andrologists to give more attention to testicular cancer symptoms in adolescents and young adults. In a public health perspective further research using cases collected through national and regional population based registers and case-control studies must be strongly encouraged if we wish to be able to assess future trends in TC incidence rates and also identify risk factors.

>>> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12796635

HOG -- YOU NEED TO SHOW THIS INFO TO YOUR DOC --- HE IS WAY OFF