precious things (the cancer story pt. 1)

So, I hinted at this story last week. God, nothing says uplifting story like cancer! Actually, this story has a very positive ending. Imagine if you will, a 20 year old traveling abroad for a semester studying in Seville.

I got to Spain on January 26, 1999. It was cool and over-cast in Seville. I remember being completely exhausted from traveling for the last 18 hours. A few days after our arrival, we moved in with our adoptive families for our stay. I didn't realize it then, but I was placed with the best family in the entire program. I really did grow to love them as my family.

While I was studying in Spain, I started to notice that my one testicle was growing. Understandably, I was more than a little freaked out by this. But, I did the intelligent thing and just ignored it. I thought that maybe it was some sort of STD or something that would just go away. At the same time I was dealing with all of this, I was still trying to deal with my sexuality. I just couldn't go to a doctor and telling them (in Spanish mind you) that I had a nut that was growing, oh and it may have come from having gay sex. It was too much for me to handle.

So, I just let that nut grow. And grow it did. By early May, it was so big, you could clearly see the bulge when I walked or did anything else. Thank God I had lost over 70 pounds by this point and my clothes were huge on me. Although, that nut was a curse one night.

It was a beautiful night in May and I was walking home from school. The orange trees were in bloom and the streets were full of people out browsing the shops. I stopped in Plaza Mayor on my way home to check out the book fair. As I'm walking along the various booths, I notice that someone is keeping pace with me. I don't think anything of it and go to cross the street. While waiting for the light to change, this older man (upper 50s) comes up to me. He says, in broken English, "You are American". I respond in Spanish, that I am. He then proceeds in English to ask if I'm a student and if I'd like to get coffee. I am immediately suspicious of him and politely decline. The he asks if I have a girlfriend. I say yes, lying, and cross the street. Any sane person would have stopped talking to him, but my momma always told me to be polite to my elders.

As we cross the street, his true colors came shining through. He immediately switches to Spanish and starts BEGGING to suck me off. Now, I am freaked out for two very different reasons. The first is that this man is apparently hypnotized by my gigantic package and wants it in the worst way. Second, I am freaked out because he is using all this filthy Spanish slang, and I am understand every word of it. This is when I realized just how fluent I'd become.

In my state of shock, all I could say to this man was no. The whole time I was trying to think of alternate ways to walk home so that he wouldn't know where I lived. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. I'm sure that you are asking yourself right now just how big that nut was. Well, dear reader, you'll just have to wait for the next installment of the story for that. Trust me, you will be amazed.

I returned to the states on May 31, 1999. I was so happy to come home. My family was more than a little shocked when they saw me. I had lost 80 pounds in the four months I was gone and looked just a little different. I have pictures showing me as I boarded the plane in January and when I got home in May. I wish that I could post them right now, but I don't have them scanned in. They will go up in a future blog post.

The day after I got home, I went to my family doctor for a couple reasons. Amazingly, the giant nut was not one of the reasons. On a drunken night, I fell into a table and screwed up my back (which still hurts from time to time six years later) and to find out why would become nauseous after meals. It was getting so bad that my friends in Spain thought I was bulimic.

After all of that was checked out, I casually mentioned to the doctor that my testicle had grown some. He asked me to drop my pants and show him. I'll never forget the look of shock upon his face. He scheduled a sonogram and blood work immediately. By 4 PM, not 24 hours after getting home from four months in Seville, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. My first surgery was scheduled for June 3. I didn't even have time to process everything that was happening to me. In hind sight, that was probably a blessing in disguise. Little did I know what was to come in the following months.