Thursday July 9

One of the hardest days of my life was when I finally decided to tell somebody about swollen, and still growing, testicle. What provoked me finally admitting it, I don't really remember, but it had been something I stalled on for a long time. We were in the car, ironically, going to Las Cruces to look at apartments for the coming fall semester.

It just came out.

The tumor (as it turned out) had been growing all summer. I have my theories on when it all started (a later blog), but I had told myself that if the swelling didn't go down by the end of May, I'd tell somebody. May came and went, I still didn't say anything. So did June, July and most of August.

I was never one of those guys who was afraid of going to the doctor and I couldn't really tell you what made me so afraid this time. I think part of it was the fact that I had so convinced myself that it was nothing serious, that I didn't really see the need. Big mistake, obviously. My tumor was 9cm when they removed it and I still get crap about it to this day.

Right up until the moment I saw the urologist, I believed that it was either a hydrocele or a hernia. Both suck, but not nearly as bad as cancer. Believe it or not, for the longest time, cancer never even crossed my mind. Perhaps it should have. The evidence was as clear as day.

With cancer, of course, waiting is the absolute worst thing you could do. If I had said something in May, like I had originally planned, I might have even been able to avoid the whole chemo thing! But even not knowing it was cancer, nothing good comes out of letting a medical problem fester. Nothing.