Interview 20

Age at interview: 29

Age at diagnosis: 28

Brief Outline: Testicular cancer (seminoma) diagnosed in 2001; orchidectomy, no evidence of secondary tumours; radiotherapy for two weeks to prevent recurrence.

Background: Company Director; married, no children.

Describes how he had dye injected into a vein during the CAT scan.

Yes CAT scan is quite a weird, a weird thing actually. You basically, you go along and you get given a jug of two pints of liquid liquorice sludge is probably the easiest way of explaining it. And that they ask you to drink over about 40 minutes. And what I later found out was obviously this is what colours up in terms of they can see what they need to see. Now funny enough the CAT scan was probably my most nerve-wracking and daunting part of it all and to be honest it's not really a lot. And just simply because it all suddenly hit me about what was going on and what was about to happen. 

So I drank this sludge, then asked to get into a gown and then you go and sit in an anteroom and then you go in to have the CAT scan. Now the thing about the CAT scan is it's a very daunting odd-looking machine, it is actually very, very nerve-wracking. And what they ask you to do is that you go in there and they inject again another fluid inside of you which they, the funny thing is they said right okay this is for, it might hurt a little bit, you'll get a metallic taste in the back of your throat er and you might feel that you want to wet yourself.

Where does the injection go?

In the arm, I had one in the arm. You're actually lay like this inside it, so your arm is behind the CAT scan, you're actually inside the CAT scanner.

Does the injection go into your vein or

Yes it goes into your veins. So basically that, you lay back and it's actually over surprisingly a lot quicker than I thought it would be. You literally just lay back and it takes, it took me four, three or four bursts of about ten seconds where you hold your breath, it takes its pictures and then that's it you know, then you've finished.
 

While waiting for surgery he tried to put it out of his mind, but didn't sleep well and had nightmares.

I didn't sit down and cry and get any sort of emotional release. I must admit I didn't sleep very well and I had a few nightmares about what could happen. And I think a lot of people, well certainly me, you think of the worse as opposed to the best. And just sort of tried to deal with it. And I was almost living a little bit in denial even up to the, right up to the point where I thought to myself, right okay I'm having it out but it probably isn't that bad, it probably isn't, and even if it is you know I can get on and do this. And I was using that as a defence mechanism, almost trying to put it to the back of my mind and you know let it happen. Because I'm of the view that there's nothing that I can physically do about it until, so why, I know it's very easy to say but why worry about it? And I really did manage to push it to the back of my mind and that was certainly the easiest way for me to deal with it because I knew that I was in the best hands, that certainly the emphasis on testicular cancer has risen quite a lot, you know even from two or three years ago. And that's one of the things the urologist said. He said "Five, ten years ago you might have had to wait six months for this operation," but now as I said I got it done in ten days.

Which year is all this?

This year, 2001.
 

Recalls that the radiotherapy machines were big, noisy and very scary.

So I had to lay very still for about ten minutes while they mapped my body and then they put five very small little tattoo dots on my chest, three down the centre, from the belly button up about four or five inches, then up four or five inches again and I think there was one either side. And the reason they did this as I said so when they go down to the proper machine they know exactly where to do it and also you get used to what the machine is like. So you know I had that then the next day I started my radiotherapy.

What is the machine like?

Big (laughs), big and noisy. It's, you know I personally believe that these are the things that are the worst, the things that look the scariest are the things that do you the most good and are very over-awing you know very, very scary looking. So er the next day I went there and what was weird was, for me was I was expecting oh right you'd have to strip all your clothes off and no metal and all these things like this. And literally it's very laid back and it's a lot quicker than you think it is, you literally, with me I just went into a room, they asked me to take, not even take my shirt off fully into, undo my shirt, undo my trousers just pull them down slightly er and I had to lay very still. And then they marked some grids on your chest ad then they, they gave me like a, it's about 25 second pulse. First of all what they do is they take an x-ray first of all to see if you're lined up properly. Basically what they do is you lay very still and then they say "Look we're going out the room for a second." You hear a buzz noise and then you hear a weird hum for about five seconds, it stops and they come back in. And this is to make sure you're in the right place. Then they say "Right okay we're going to give you the treatment.