curls for the girls (AKA, how i found it)

One of the most common questions I've received since this journey started has consistently been, "how did you detect it?" (or something similar).

Of course, it's a natural question, and I can imagine that after the initial shock of learning about the diagnosis, many guys wonder whether the same could happen to them and how they can ensure they catch it early.

Mine didn't come from any regular check-up with my doctor, nor sadly from diligent self-monitoring in the shower as taught during the Movember campaigns I was a part of for so many years in the 2010's.

Finding my lump came as part of an incredibly weird coincidence, one which may have been a blessing or may have been a curse...

It all started with one of my normal lunchtime visits to the gym at the adidas campus in mid/late April 2024, and on this particular day I happened to be working on my upper body... I had my wedding and honeymoon only a few months away, after all ;) I was using a preacher curl bench to do seated bicep curls, and an unfortunate slip as I was sitting down with weights in my hand led to me nutting myself on the bar between my legs. Suffice to say, especially with the addition of the weights I was holding, it was painful.

For the next couple of days which then turned into weeks, my testicles were in some discomfort and swollen - and over time I noticed this being really confined to the right testicle. Of course, I had thought that this was only the gym injury, and internet research suggested it could take some time to clear up, even several weeks. I was paying extra attention to the injured area during the weeks following however, and after about 2-3 weeks I felt something in the shower that worried me - a hard lump. Still, at this point I thought it was probably just some pooled / hardened blood from the injury, and so made my way to my GP to get it checked out. My doctor had a feel, performed an ultrasound, and while he saw some signs of contusion (bruising) in the ultrasound, he was concerned that there wasn't any outward signs of discoloration as he would expect from such an injury and with such swelling. Still, my GP thought that it was unlikely to be a coincidence that I would have a tumor growing just at the exact moment where I had my gym injury - what would the odds be? Perhaps the most worrying part though was the size of the affected testicle, especially compared to the other (left) one. The slightly bizarre context here is that my GP had actually done an ultrasound of my testicles a few years prior at the urging of my girlfriend (now wife) Joanna, as at the time the left one was much bigger than the right and she was worried. At the time, this imbalance was chalked up as normal, and is the case with many guys. However, with those historical ultrasound images in my file, my GP could look back and see that whereas the right one used to be smaller than the left, it was now TWICE as big. Slightly alarming.

We agreed to monitor the situation and that I should return for an appointment in another 2-3 weeks if the swelling still wasn't going down. In that case he would refer me to a urologist, who would look into it further.

One week later - the swelling still hadn't gone down. I had been doing some mental gymnastics about having just 2.5 months before leaving for my wedding and a 3 month sabbatical / honeymoon, i.e. a long period where I wouldn't be in the country and ideally not getting medical treatment. I figured that if I needed to get treatment - some kind of small surgery to drain blood or fluid etc., I didn't have much time to see a specialist or have a procedure. I followed-up and asked the doctor to give me a referral to the urologist rather than wait any any longer. Referral in hand, I managed to book an appointment with a local urologist 1.5 weeks later using one of those medical appointment booking apps (Jameda). The formal diagnosis followed quickly, and is covered in a coming post.

Finding the lump coincidentally with my gym injury... was it a blessing? Most people I tell this story think so - I was definitely paying more attention to that region after the injury, and maybe as a result I found the lump sooner. At the same time, the injury made both my doctor and I put off investigating the more serious potential cause for a few weeks. So, it probably cuts both ways. The true driving factor in terms of getting diagnosed faster was rather the time factor of the wedding / honeymoon, which pushed me hard to get things sorted on a much more rapid timeline than I usually operate under when it comes to my health. I am normally the kind of person who brushes things off. I think the real question however is - could I have found it even sooner? Impossible to know for sure, but almost certainly yes. If I had been checking myself out regularly there's a good chance I would have found and dealt with my lump even earlier - and avoided some of the challenges and heartache that lay in store. So the moral of the story is CHECK YOURSELF!!!

There are tons of guides online, and I've posted one in the resources section about how to perform these checks. Just make it part of your shower routine. Ladies - the same exist for your bits and pieces, and of course don't negate the regular tests with your doctors / gyno!