I Saw it Coming: My Testicular Cancer Infertility Story

It was a dull ache, but not particularly painful. That area of my body had been a little firmer than usual in the prior weeks, but I only knew something was wrong when a hard ridge popped out. It didn't go away. A few days later, Thanksgiving 2013, I was certain there was a problem. My ball was more sensitive than it should have been, and there was this persistent hard ridge. After the ridge appeared, it took a few days to check with my primary care doc, then get referred for blood work and an ultrasound, and finally get to a urologist, who told me that one ball was atrophied/damaged, and the other had cancer. Not exactly what you want to have a urologist tell you, but it wasn't a surprise by then. We scheduled surgery for the 12th of December. By that date, that hard ridge had turned into a hard object attached to my right testicle. And it was clear it was growing aggressively, having gotten much larger since I originally noticed it. It needed to go, and I was relieved when it was. A bit over a month later, I started chemotherapy, just in time for my hair to fall out on my 35th birthday in early February. By April 2014, I was done with cancer treatment and set off to go rebuild my health and my professional life. A couple months later, I tried to store more sperm and received confirmation that I was totally infertile—a disappointment, but again not a surprise.

I had always envisioned myself having biological kids, but by age 30 it was clear that my life was not going how I had planned. I had decided to pursue a Ph.D. and an academic career, and that had been successful but had parked me in a state of perpetual instability. In my 20s, I had worked past a lot of experiences with anxiety, but that meant I had missed a lot of the best opportunities for dating in high school and college. It also took my 20s to accept my identity as bisexual. That still remains complicated as it's turned out for me to be easier to date guys than women. My parents married when they were about 25 and I was born before they were 30. I had thought that I would be able to find a long–term relationship by the time I was 30. By that time in my life, that had still not yet happened. As the years started ticking past and it kept looking unlikely that I would have kids in the next five years, I decided by the time I turned 34 to become a sperm donor. I figured I was a good candidate for this: tall, well–educated, good–looking, family history of longevity. I reached out to my local sperm bank and tried to begin the process of becoming an anonymous donor. That plan was shot down when I disclosed that I was among the population of men who had sex with men. At the time, and I believe still currently, this population was banned by the US Food and Drug Administration from anonymous tissue donation in the USA. No blood, organ, or semen donation. It's a carry–over from the 1980s AIDS paranoia. At this writing (April 2017), this rule has been slightly relaxed to allow blood donation after one year of celibacy.

So, barring that option, I started thinking about non–anonymous donation, or at least storage. I had been investigating these options for a few months already when I found the ridge on my testicle. By the time I met my urologist, I think I had already booked a storage appointment. Both he and I were prepared at that meeting to discuss implications of my surgery and chemotherapy on fertility, and he supported my action to store semen. In the end, due to the waiting time recommended between sample storage (to allow for sperm production) I only had the chance to make three "deposits" in my new bank account...