Well the day I got into the hospital they had to shave me and all this. The wife was there with me all the time, but I have this fear of being put to sleep so I actually stayed awake through the whole operation. You know and I was laughing and joking about with the doctors, I didn’t feel a thing. I mean they just said you know “It’s gone, off you go.” And that was it.

You had an epidural?

Yeah I had an epidural, which I couldn’t actually walk with because it makes your legs go like all jelly, you’re all numb down below. And I wanted to go outside and they said “You can go outside when you can stand up,” but I couldn’t stand up, they was pushing me around in the wheelchair. But as I say I have this fear of being put to sleep and so I wouldn’t have it. I mean I said “If you want to take it out you can but I will have to stay awake because I”, you know so that was it. I stayed awake and I still had to go to a recovery room for an hour after the operation. And I mean the operation I think took altogether about 40 minutes. It didn’t take that long at all which surprised me.

Because I had the double orchidectomy, when I woke up I was in quite a bit of pain, just because you can’t even favour one side or the other. And that was another thing that surprised me is that nobody said is that the incisions are actually taken on your lower stomach where you’d think if you’ve got testicular cancer you know you’d go through the scrotum. I, I just assumed that it would be through that, so that surprised me afterwards.

So basically you gave him permission to remove both testicles?

To do whatever, whatever he thought was necessary and the upshot was that my left testicle was completely removed and my right testicle was partly removed. The reason for saving part of the organ is to allow the body to continue to generate some hormones otherwise, then you might as well take, take the pair of them off. So he, he was very pleased with his, his work and I then got referred to a cancer specialist at a different hospital.

And I think it was about a, about a month from when I first felt ill to when I had surgery for the second time. Which was quite strange. I, I think it, my blood tests were normal, my blood tests were, they had taken a number when I first went to hospital, all the way through and it wasn’t until, I think the week before my operation that my cancer markers went up again. And then the week after my operation they went down. So it was quite strange. But that was a, a bit of a shock.

Right, so a week later I went into the hospital for the operation. You go in the day before, you’re not allowed to eat for about 12 hours before the operation, so it’s nil by mouth. And then it was, this is the bit that sort of got me, they came round, the doctors, and said “Were going to do the operation, were going to remove the whole testicle,” and they started drawing on me as to where they were going to make the incision, but they started drawing across the groin. And I thought hold it, that’s a little bit funny, I said “I’m coming here to have one of my testicles removed.” They said “Yeah we take, we do it from the groin downwards.” Because I thought they’d make the incision upwards through the scrotum and take it out but they didn’t. So what they do they make the incision across the groin and they go down, take out the testicle, take out all the tubes as well that are linked to it, but more importantly they also go down because they need to check from the testicle up to the stomach that it hasn’t spread upwards as well.

So that’s what they did, basically made the incision across the groin, took it out. It’s only about an hour and a half operation yeah, to be honest with you it was very, when I woke up after the operation it was no pain then because you’re still under the anaesthetic but as soon as the anaesthetic wore off it was very painful, couldn’t really move around in bed, it was hard to sleep at night, constantly on painkillers when I could have them, when they allowed me to have them. And then it was probably about another 2 days before I went home. Couldve gone home the next day but I didn’t want to go home because of the, having kids so young, jumping all over you and sort of welcoming you home. So I went home about 2 days after the operation and then it was basically probably about 3 weeks convalescing.

I was, I came out of the hospital on the Thursday – and I like to swim a lot for health reasons – and on the following Monday I was swimming and by the end of the week I was back to my swimming my usual mile a day. Theres no, there was no pain whatsoever and in actual fact things like swimming and having hot baths helps it to heal up. As I said the only thing was a nuisance was when the pubic hairs were growing back, that was the only thing that caused me any – uncomfortable. And they seemed to catch on to your underwear and everything else so all that, so that was basically the only thing. No, there is nothing to worry about. There is really nothing to worry about.

I remember being bent double really up until the Saturday when I went home, I was still walking very slowly. And they tell you not to drive for 2 weeks because obviously the force of breaking [the car] is likely to send a shock wave up your leg; that the first area it hits is your groin. So I was off work for 2 weeks, I remember going into work, probably after the first week, just to have a chat with people really and I was chatting to everybody, it wasn’t just the chaps I was chatting to, I was chatting to all the girls, the secretaries and everybody. It was a fairly small company and I knew everybody and I wasn’t embarrassed by it. I mean everybody; every chap has got them so why be embarrassed by it.