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Comment by cancerboi | Hacker News Reader

It’s nice to read these articles as someone with advanced stage testicular cancer and a 50% 5 year survival. Current treatment is chemo + surgery.

Really appreciate all the smart people in this field. Thank you for the work you do!

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You have that 'other' variety I guess? I had the 'good' one (very slow and easy to eradicate after surgery). Hope you will be ok. For me there were no detectable bumps or whatever on the outside, just one day I noticed it was hard as a rock and went to the doctor.

Hope science will find better treatments than chemo (I don't really care about the surgery) and radiation.

Yep mine is weird and rare (PMNSGCT). Starts in the chest cavity, grows to a huge solid tumor. Just finished up 4 cycles of BEP, a very intense chemo regime. But honestly wasn’t too bad. I would do it 10 times over if it means living. Thoracic surgical resection coming up next.

May I ask, how did you find out and how old were you?

I found out at age 29 about 4 months ago. My cancer is rare called PMNSGCT. Presented as large solid tumor in chest the size of a cantaloupe. Symptoms were fevers, night sweats, coughing. They thought it was pneumonia at first. Had a big surprise when I went to the ER lol.

I'm very sorry to hear that! That f*cking sucks! And thank you for sharing. That's something every man should be cautious of. But you say "chest", so checking your balls wouldn't make a difference, right?

Cancer is funky. My dad had lung cancer that travelled to his brain and affected his vision. That's the only way he knew there was something wrong. Well, that and driving a truck and trailer over another truck and trailer.

He went the eye doctor and they said his eyes were healthy. Then they suggested more tests and they found the tumor in his head and the one in his lung.

This also points out why cancer is so dangerous, by the time you realize you have cancer it could have spread around your body. Especially cancer in parts with lots of blood supply or close to lymph nodes.

Sorry to hear that! I really do hope we make advances in cancer detection, that's so fear-inducing that you can't know until it's too late.

Thanks! Luckily my dad is still kicking around, but he was classified stage 4 lung cancer in 2018 (if memory serves) so we understand that's it's going to come back at some point. But he got to see 3 grandbabies since chemo+radiation+surgery so that's precious time he has enjoyed :)

That's a very good reminder that it's not about the years (quantity) but quite definitely how you fill it. So I wish you folks lots of valuable moments and beautiful memories.

Very sorry about your dad. I am so thankful that in my case I still have a shot at cure. People have been telling me I am strong to go through this, but folks like your dad are really the strong ones.

am I missing something? You originally said testicular cancer, now you're describing cancer in the chest.

Many cancer cells travel around the body. The cells may only attach and grow in certain kinds of tissue, but that isn't always the case. At a basic level, cancer is mutated cells...sometimes they mutate more.

I had seminoma testicular cancer. If you must have one, it's what you want. It's very treatable, but also affects the lymphatic system of the body. I had tumors in one testicle and 2 lymph nodes in my abdomen.

Surgery for the testicular tumor, chemo for the others.

sure, but in that case I would expect someone to say cancer rather than specifically testicular cancer.

It's not that important, it just struck me that something was missing in the description.

It is specifically a testicular cancer. The cell type originates in the testicle. It’s a germ cell which are only found in reproductive organs. In my case doctors don’t really know why it “starts in the chest”. Some think it starts in the testes, moves up into the chest and the testes clear up. But there is no definitive science pointing to that. It is very rare. But it is definitely a type of testicular cancer. A rather shitty one unfortunately.

heh, ok. I always assumed testicular cancer meant cancer in the testes, what I'm hearing you say is that it's a type of cancer that starts in the testes so it's considered testicular cancer regardless of where it's found.

that makes sense, thank you for the explanation.

Sometimes it starts in the testes, but in extremely rare cases they believe that it is of primordial origin. For example, when you are developing as an embryo, perhaps the germ cell gets stuck in the chest and takes many years to mutate. But they don’t really know how this works. Very weird stuff.

gotcha, thank you for the education. I wasn't aware that could happen, definitely weird.

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