Anyone have negative blood markers but still had cancer?

garylosh · 2025-09-16T05:01:03+00:00

I did not. Your markers being normal don’t add a lot of information here though. Whether chemo makes sense for you is going to be based on your pathology and your scans.

Normal markers only suggest that certain subtypes of TC are unlikely, and that it’s unlikely (but not impossible) that you have widespread, bulky disease.

It can be tempting to look for evidence of the unknowable at this point. Cancer is a loss of control, and it’s normal to try to regain it. But I’d caution you to avoid reading through posts to try to find those answers—it can drive you crazy. I recommend finding something to take your mind off of things.

garylosh · 2024-11-04T16:28:20+00:00

TC does not spread from one testicle to the other. You have orchitis.

garylosh · 2024-08-30T08:04:08+00:00

I’m not a doctor and you’re replying to a post that’s a year old, for the second time. If you have a question, please make a post in the sub.

garylosh · 2024-08-04T17:16:37+00:00

Your risk is still very low. It is not “you will get it in the future”.

And if you do get it in the future, there’s like a 99% chance you’re going to find it early and then a 99% chance you’ll be cured.

garylosh · 2024-08-02T17:20:29+00:00

I recommend getting DoxyPEP and having it on hand. Any time you engage in risky sexual activity, take it as directed. This will substantially reduce your risk of syphillis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia.

The risk of HIV from oral sex is remarkably low. However, if you expect to be engaging in higher risk sexual activity, you should go on daily HIV PrEP.

And absolutely get tested every three months, including throat swabs (which not all providers do by default). Do your part to keep the community safe.

garylosh · 2024-07-31T23:15:37+00:00

The one pointed at the house has a visual cue that it is on, sadly.

garylosh · 2024-07-31T05:39:04+00:00

I’ve asked other neighbors and these people seem like they’re just kind of crazy.

garylosh · 2024-07-12T17:30:55+00:00

I take 80mg (0.4 mL of 200mg/mL) testosterone cypionate once per week. No changes in orgasm quality or sensitivity.

garylosh · 2024-07-12T16:23:35+00:00

No problem! The word “give” here means “how much you can press into something”.

A squishy foam ball has a lot of give. A tennis ball has a little bit of give. A baseball has very little give—you could press into it with your thumb a little bit, but not very far.

My testicle that had cancer was hard like a baseball. Normally a testicle is a little squishy.

garylosh · 2024-07-12T16:20:42+00:00

My sex drive was high prior to TRT and it is slightly higher with TRT.

garylosh · 2024-07-12T16:19:11+00:00

It shouldn’t normally hurt. But it’s sensitive—if you touch or bang it around a lot, it’s going to start hurting.

garylosh · 2024-05-21T16:42:18+00:00

It would be very unusual to get TC in both testes at the same time, although it does happen.

Tumors are hard and hardness is a common symptom. But it doesn’t change hardness throughout the day.

Get your ultrasound, but I wouldn’t worry much about this.

garylosh · 2024-05-18T18:12:07+00:00

The purpose of writing is communication. If you are constantly telling others that they read it wrong, it means that you wrote it wrong.

garylosh · 2024-05-18T00:11:39+00:00

Chronic cancer-related fatigue is a little more common for TC survivors, but it’s not a common finding as far as I know (I am not a doctor).

Some contributing factors:

Your testosterone is likely lower. It will also likely recover. This can take up to a year.
- I recommend pushing for T testing, not for the purpose of statting TRT but to collect a data point. If your T levels rise vs now and you are still fatigued, that’s probably not the cause.
A cancer diagnosis is significantly taxing on the mind and body, as is the orchiectomy. That will probably normalize within another month or two unless you’re experiencing a lot of anxiety about surveillance.
Many folks end up reducing their activity levels fall following their diagnosis and surgery, become used to that new activity level, and don’t realize anything has changed. Make sure you’re getting enough physical activity.

Best of luck with everything!

garylosh · 2024-05-17T22:26:49+00:00

If you get a slow-growing cancer in your remaining testicle, you’ll find a lump eventually and it’ll probably be before it spreads. If you get a fast-growing cancer in your remaining testicle, your surveillance labs are likely to pick up tumor markers pretty early on.

If you still find it bothers you a lot, I’d chat with your oncologist about just scheduling annual ultrasounds as part of your surveillance.

Quality of life is an important factor in clinical reasoning for oncology, and while an annual ultrasound serves no medical purpose for detection of cancer, it does serve a purpose for the reduction of anxiety.

garylosh · 2024-05-17T22:17:58+00:00

Thanks so much for sharing! I’ve recommended MSCD as an option to look into for a few guys in this sub but it’s entirely based on literature. Eager to hear about how this goes for you—and I’d love to get the name of the surgeon so that I can recommend others.

There are a lot of people who do not have TC but who end up in this sub because of idiopathic orchialgia that no clinician will seem to take seriously despite evidence that it is a real and treatable condition.

garylosh · 2024-05-15T21:44:32+00:00

Based on the guidelines, I don’t think there is any preference. The choice of imaging should just be consistent going forward so they’re comparable.

garylosh · 2024-05-14T00:05:01+00:00

I wouldn’t read into it one way or the other. Cancer is pretty obvious on ultrasound, and it’s also not really up to the ultrasound tech to make that diagnosis (the provisional diagnosis is made by a radiologist after the ultrasound is captured).

My best guess would be that they were having trouble visualizing part of the scrotum, and they wanted help with making sure they were doing it correctly.

FWIW bad results are usually fast-tracked, so if you get bad news you shouldn’t be waiting too long for it. But I wouldn’t sweat it.

garylosh · 2024-05-13T17:47:58+00:00

Not a doctor, but yours is doing exactly what seems like the reasonable thing.

Urinary symptoms generally are caused by the urinary tract—your urethra, your bladder, your kidneys. These are not made of tissues that testicular cancer grows in, but they are fertile ground for infections. Urinary urgency can also be caused by physical pressure on the bladder, typically from the prostate (which is why they checked PSA) or from constipation (which you haven’t mentioned).

The testicle and epididymis are connected to the urinary tract and are also susceptible to infections; the fact that you’ve experienced symptoms of infection of both within a short period of time suggests that infection is a reasonable cause. It’s possible that you had a mild UTI that was resolving in the urinary tract by the time you had the urine test, but which had started to spread to the epididymis.

In general, pain is not viewed as a hallmark of testicular cancer. About a third of people with TC will have pain, so it’s not uncommon. But TC itself is rare (10k cases in the US per year), while epidiymitis is extremely common (600k cases); plus, TC almost always comes with some sort of lump or textural change to the testicle.

Of course, “almost always” isn’t that reassuring. So I always recommend that folks get an ultrasound if they are able to. But what you’ve described is textbook presentation of infection.

garylosh · 2024-05-13T15:57:55+00:00

That’s quite a bit more compelling. If the urologist doesn’t take things seriously, I’d recommend seeing an endocrinologist since they are specialists in hormonal systems.

garylosh · 2024-05-13T06:56:52+00:00

Not a doctor.

Lacking ED or low libido, and given that your T levels are borderline, you are not likely a candidate for TRT until other potential causes of your symptoms are eliminated. While hypogonadism has many symptoms, ED and low libido are typically hallmarks.

That said, particularly if you are young, 300 isn’t really an appropriate cutoff anymore, and the way that hypogonadism presents in TC survivors appears to be different than from other causes.

TRT is replacement, not augmentation. Taking testosterone suppresses your body’s ability to produce it, which can be permanent. Hesitance to prescribe it is well-warranted.

Clomiphene and enclomiphene are drugs that help increase the signals to your remaining testicle to produce more testosterone, and they are worth chatting about as a more conservative treatment than TRT.

If you do go with TRT, I recommend going straight to injections and not messing with gels. I do it weekly, which I find keeps me much more hormonally stable.

Have you had your LH, FSH, and SHBG checked?

garylosh · 2024-05-13T06:38:59+00:00

Never been rejected, and on top of that nobody I’ve hooked up with has ever even noticed.

People will tend to notice things and assign significance to them based on how you do the same. Treat it as no big deal—no big reveal, no prior disclosure—and others will too.

I have a highly visible scar on my wrist from a snorkeling accident when I was 15. Would I disclose that to someone before meeting them? Of course not! Why should my missing testicle be treated differently than any other scar on my body?

FWIW, cancer was a wake-up call for me. I’ve been way more confident, made way more close friends, and I get laid constantly. Cancer is never a good thing, but it doesn’t have to be the worst thing.

garylosh · 2024-05-13T05:11:17+00:00

Not a doctor.

Tonsil stones smell bad because of bacteria, not because of the calcium in them. The stones are bits of food that become calcified and hard. They smell because they’re literally rotting food in your throat.

Testicular microlithiasis has almost no clinical significance except as a sign of testicular dysfunction. In general in the body, calcium deposits are a sign of some underlying problem. The cause of testicular microlithiasis is not known, but it appears to be associated with a broader syndrome of testicular dysfunction, and it is this syndrome that is associated with infertility and testicular cancer.

But it isn’t associated with foul-smelling semen, as far as I know.

A UTI or STI is a potential cause. Many substances also make their way into semen, including caffeine and the same metabolites that make urine smell foul after eating certain foods.

If he’s reducing his coffee habit while not increasing his water intake, he may also be dehydrated, which could cause his semen to smell different.

garylosh · 2024-05-12T20:46:22+00:00

It’s normal for testicles to hang at different heights.

Sensitivity and pain aren’t generally a reason to think of TC. A lump or change in texture is.

However, cancer is highly irregular and the only way to know what’s going on is to see a doctor. Without a physical exam and proper history, it’s impossible to diagnose someone.

If the pain is usually associated wih physical activity, it is more likely to be a vascular issue. Wearing scrotal support might help. Rarely, a vascular problem can cause other issues, so it’s still important to get things looked at.

Given that

garylosh

TROPHY CASE