My experience with banking sperm prior to cancer treatment

My experience with testicular cancer, banking sperm, and chemotherapy

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It was real simple. When I banked sperm it was, I think, like two days after the surgery. It was right after the surgery, so the surgery itself is high, it’s like in the groin area for testicular cancer. They’ll cut you about 3 or 4 inches, maybe about 3 inches. They reach down, cut the tube, then take the testicle out. So you’re pretty sore. Then you’ve got about 48 hours or so, two days, and then they ask you to masturbate to get sperm and…it hurts, I’ll be honest with you. It’s not a pleasant thing. It’s not the first thing you want to do after the surgery. Because everything’s a little sore down there, you’ve been sliced up.

At the same time you know there’s only one way to do it, it's only going to happen in one way, so, you do it and it's that simple. You know, by banking sperm, you go in one day and you have to give the body, I think it's 48 hours to let it regrow and be ready again for the next sample so it was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then the following Monday/Wednesday. Yeah I think that’s exactly what it was, five days, but each day there was at least a 48-hour period so your body, the sperm count, could replenish itself, regrow, which is interesting, I didn’t know that before, but obviously I learned that going through it. To me, you do it the first time and you’re like ok, you understand, you go in, they give you a private room and a little specimen cup and you can make the sperm right there. Once you do it the first time you’re sore, but you’re like ok, I can do it…Wednesday. After Monday I was like Wednesday will be ok. And then you’re healing so it’s slowly getting better as well, but it’s pretty painful, I’m going to be really honest, really painful. It’s not the first thing you’re thinking about right after cancer surgery.

Regarding the fertility issues, once they really helped advise me and I made the decision to do it, I’m one of those kind of guys who’s like ok if this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to do it. I knew I’d follow through and then it really was two weeks later, it was that first week Monday-Wednesday-Friday and then Monday-Wednesday the next week banking sperm, the following Monday the next week starting chemo so it was about two weeks, two weeks we had to push chemo back.

 

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