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One of the many benefits of having cancer is that you get regular check ups (every three months initially) to check that everything is going OK. It's blood tests every three months and a scan every six months for a while. It's like being a first class passenger on the Titanic. Pretty sweet.
It's possibly worth losing a testicle to get this regular service. Overall I give having testicular cancer a trip advisor rating of 8 out of 10. But I guess I'm a scrotum half full kind of guy.
The oncologist didn't seem too worried about my dizziness (which was a bit better today) though he told me to get in touch is it didn't go away in a fortnight and my blood tests were all good, except for one slightly high reading which he thought might be down to be not drinking enough fluids (I love fluids - they're my favourite drink). The one that I was interested in was testosterone levels, but it turns out the left left bollock has stepped up and done some extra duty and everything is fine. Given the right bollock was solid cancer in the end I think the left left bollock must have been putting his back into stuff for a while.
I am interested in if and why testicles are so associated with manliness. On one level that's obvious, but there is a pervasive idea in our culture that the essence of masculinity (and toughness) comes from having or even growing balls. And however comfortable I have been as being a non-manly man in the past, even I have worried on some level about this operation somehow emasculating me (as if it was possible for me to go any further to the left on that graph). But it's natural, I suppose, to worry about this and about any knock on effect that this will have on my already diminishing sexiness and libido.
And it's hard to do my own field work on that because I have two kids under seven and thus am basically too tired to experiment in that area. There's barely even time to do the solo work in this arena, which I have been very fastidious about for the last forty years.
Obviously with one worker in the ball bag engine room, I still have some gristle in the game and I don't feel in any way different than I did before, apart from my pants being more comfortable. I still feel like I am just as manly as I was before and I still identify as a man. I would be interested to see how removing the second one would make me feel - not so interested that I am prepared to go for it - but my guess is I would still feel like me. The essence of us is not contained in our genitalia and our gender is about way more than whether we're an outy or an inny.
So I joked about my manliness being strong and did feel pleased that my ball was still working, but only because it's difficult to step away from a lifetime of indoctrination where I've been made to believe these things were important or that being a man meant behaving in a certain way.
Mostly, of course, it was a relief to know that things are looking very positive in health terms and it doesn't look like the cancer is returning. So six months of non-cancer achieved and the only thing to hope for is that I get another forty times six months of non-cancer before my body decides to try and kill me again. Then we're not even half way through Warming Up.
Maybe it will be better for us all if I die.
