My husband did have some of the same questions that most guys will ask when you hear the diagnosis of testicular cancer now again I am going to warn you that these are direct questions so just be aware.
First like any man his first question was if everything was still going to work if you know what I mean. The long and short of it is that the testicles are basically the sperm makers. He already had a vasectomy so we did not need to worry about that part. Everything else is and does work just fine. The doctor compared them to be like decorations now so if everything else worked before it would work again.
Second he was wondering about the incision and how much pain there was going to be. Ok first you are put under anesthesia so the pain you will feel is post-surgery. As to where they place the incision ok feel your hip bone on the front on the side that will need to be removed. The surgeon puts about a 2 inch incision there and kind of pulls it up from where it is resting and takes it out that way. He said they do not cut the skin over the testicle because they don’t to “nick” anything.
He was wondering what happened to the extra room in the area when something is removed. The doctor said they do have artificial ones if he really wanted it but we did not get it.
Next he was asking how long he would be out of work and in the hospital. Well it is just a day surgery so unless they did the operation at night he would be home the same day. He could go back to work about a week later.
We went home talked to our kids and told them Daddy had to have an operation, we never used the cancer word. We lucked out the doctor got him in first thing that Friday morning. The surgery took a little longer than we thought and I did get a bit worried but it was just a delay in getting the surgery started. Everything went good and when he came out of recovery he had a lot of padding in the area so he would not feel every little bump.
The surgeon said everything was sent to pathology and when those results come back we would know how we needed to proceed.