My decision to undergo radiation and testicular shielding

The cancer treatment, once surgery was over, I went to the doctor’s followed up, had a CT scan about a week and a half—just short of two weeks later—where they found no traces of cancer in my body. I remember that phone call quite well. I was coming back from Home Depot, actually. They found no traces of cancer in my body. Because there were no traces, they did give me options not to do radiation or chemotherapy. They said in my case, because it was stage one and there were no traces of cancer, they did not recommend chemotherapy. But they said they could give me one dose of chemotherapy instead of radiation if I wanted to go that route.
I have heard about chemotherapy, the stories, the Lance Armstrong books and many others, so I decided not to do that. The radiation was between 4 and 7 weeks at that point. They were undecided, based on more research that the doctors wanted to do. It turned out to be just about 4 weeks. So I opted for the 4 weeks of radiation. In April we set up a plan to start early May for the 4 weeks of radiation.

Going through the radiation treatment. I went to the hospital and they first fitted me for the table and basically making sure that every day that I come in for the radiation that my arms and my legs would be in the same spot. They told me they wanted to tattoo my body, which would’ve been four markers: chest, midsection, then just below the bellybutton, where they would hit me with the radiation. I decided I didn’t want marks on my body to remind me that I had radiation treatment and cancer. It’s bad enough that I have a big scar from that. I just couldn’t deal with everyday looking in the mirror and seeing tattoos. So I kind of used the religious thing that was the reason I couldn’t get tattooed. So they used permanent marker—and I do recommend people knowing that because if you don’t want a tattoo they can use permanent marker and if it comes off they’ll just remeasure you. And for me that was a better route.

So I got the first day of radiation they hit me between from above my midsection to my clavicle. [some stammering here you may want to edit out] Because my wife and I did want to get pregnant and we hoped for, we hoped that I would grow sperm again, or develop sperm again, excuse me, that they were not going to radiate my testicle. It was less than a 1% chance that if they did not radiate my testicle, the remaining testicle, which is my left one, that the cancer would come back. Since it was less than a 1% chance of coming back, we opted just to go for the, radiate everything else except for that because we were young and wanting to pray that I’d be in that either 66% or the remaining 35% on year two. It didn’t really change the treatment any. They were still going to be watching me 4 times a year for the first two years, and then 3 times a year the following two years, so we decided to pray that if they didn’t radiate the testicle that I’d be able to develop sperm there again. So they literally took a lead pipe for every radiation treatment and put it right over my scrotum to make sure that the remaining testicle would not get hit with any radiation.