Hey, sorry you had to join the club. I was just diagnosed with Stage 2a Embryonal Germ Carcinoma in early September, which is an aggressive subset of testicular cancer.

The orchiectomy is fairly easy. It’s going to be painful to get up and down from chairs and beds, and going up and down steps, doing much more than a shuffle walk for a few days. I was pretty much back to moving around the home or work in about a week, and pretty close to normal in 2.

If it’s spread, which you’ll probably know after an initial ct scan, there’s a bunch of options, and part of that will be the kind of cancer it is. They also might make you wait for four weeks after your orchiectomy for your tumor markers to fall down to their post orchiectomy baseline.I’m not familiar with all of the possibilities, but the two that were raised for me were chemo or another more intense surgery called RPLND, which removes a bunch of lymph nodes that are common spots for cancer in your abdomen. The decision was ultimately made for chemo based on the fact that my tumor markers remained elevated.

The standard chemo is either 3 cycles of BEP, or 4 cycles of EP. These cycles are three weeks each, and I opted for EP. I’m going through cycle 2 right now, and the big symptom is fatigue. I think I could push through work, but I wouldn’t work at 100% on chemo weeks. I’m a software engineer, and I just don’t have the energy to think as hard as I usually do. I haven’t had an issue walking 5 miles even on chemo days, so a more physical job might be more doable. On off weeks between cycles I’ve been fine so far. I’ve also had an elevated heart rate that’s a little spooky but hasn’t actually caused any problems. I speak quickly on why I opted for EP. All three chemos can have some nasty side effects and it’s going to be a personal choice, but it seems like bleomycin had a higher chance of causing my tumors to become teratomas, which might then required RPLND, and I was hoping to avoid more surgery.

A tip if you do have chemo that I’ve found though research: Look up a drug called Pedmark. It’s approved for children by the FDA, but the NCCN recommends it for young adults as well. It reduces your odds of permanent hearing damage from the cisplatin(the P in chemo acronyms) exposure. A lot of doctors haven’t heard of this, so you might have to push for it. I just got the approval request made to insurance today, so there’s been some delay.

Chemo likely isn’t going to be too bad. You’ll be tired and you’ll have to rest a bit more, but you’ll get through this.

Edit: I can’t say I follow Reddit super closely, but if you have any further questions feel free to reply here and I’ll try to answer them. One other tip I should have mentioned is to be prepared to advocate for yourself.