I found out that I probably had cancer on October 2nd, 2007. Within 3 days, I flew from my new home of Austin, TX to my old home of Baltimore, MD, had my right testicle removed, and received confirmation that the mass on my testicle was a non-seminomatous cancer. That's a lot to think about in a weekend. Despite the brilliant support I received from the medical staff around me, and the fact that my parents stayed by my side night and day for all but 20 minutes over my 7-day stay in the hospital, I still had a sea of questions that I felt like no one could answer.
What I needed more than anything was someone my age, or who felt like a peer, that I could talk to about questions that my doctors or parents or friends or family could not answer: "Am I going to be able to have my own children? How can I preserve my sperm? What will my sex life be like with one testicle?" These questions and hundreds of others are extremely personal and hard to ask, but they are as real as any of the other worries that consumed me upon diagnosis.
It took me several months to find the answers to these questions and to speak with fellow testicular cancer survivors who could answer such questions from a first person perspective. Still, I feel lucky that I was able to find other men that had survived testicular cancer as a young adult, and had gone on to have families of their own and/or perfectly normal (sex!) lives. Ideally, a young adult cancer survivor would not only have access to these resources, but also would view these resources as a right, and this starts with increasing awareness and support for the unique young adult cancer population.
As a young adult survivor of testicular cancer, I cannot emphasize enough the right to fertility preservation, as well as candid, apolitical, and conversational information and counseling concerning short-term and long-term effects of cancer and treatment affecting fertility.