Gregor Paul: The day I was diagnosed with testicular cancer

Gregor Paul quickly came to realise he needed to "take my health seriously and not myself". Photo / Jason Oxenham

Sports journalist Gregor Paul recalls how he found out he had cancer – and what came next.

September 17, 2002, is a date I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget. It was the day I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Even now, almost 21 years later, the details are vivid.

Three weeks earlier I’d noticed a lump on my right testicle.

This was not down to any conscious due diligence on my part, but the result of what my wife says is an affliction which I should try harder to rid myself of, but I say is a comforting habit forged after having been sent to an austere boarding school, of sitting with my hands down my pants.

I wish I could say the three-week gap between me being aware of something not being right and doing something about it was down to the chaos of the health system and waiting lists. But it wasn’t.

It was down to me telling myself that if I ignored the lump it would go away. I’m not sure why I was so wedded to that belief, because it hadn’t worked with university assignments, wasps, dirty dishes piling up in the sink or my overdraft.

Thankfully, it turned out there is some kind of safety alert programmed into my system that can override stupidity when my life is in danger. I mentioned the lump to my wife, who reacted with the sort of practicality that has never sat within my wheelhouse, by picking up the phone.

Journalist Gregor Paul with his wife Fiona have had three children without using IVF after Gregor beat testicular cancer. Photo / Jason Oxenham

The following day I was explaining my symptoms to my GP.

He gave every indication it was nothing to worry about and managed to get me an appointment at the hospital that afternoon, “just to be sure”.

The doctors that examined me there also gave every impression it was nothing to worry about, but they managed to squeeze me into the last appointment that day to be scanned, “just to be sure”.

And it was about 5pm that I got that certainty – the diagnosis that each doctor I had seen that day had suspected but didn’t want to say until they had the evidence – when the radiologist scanning me said: “That doesn’t look good, it will need to be removed”.

He explained a bit more, but to be honest, I wasn’t listening because all I was thinking about was whether it would be impolite to start pulling my trousers up as he was talking.

And the more he talked, the more I focused on the fact that he’d broken this earth-shattering news to me while I was in the entirely undignified position of my trousers being round my ankles and my genitalia smeared in whatever gel body parts get smeared in to scan more effectively.

But I would come to learn that the best, maybe the only, way to get through the cancer journey, is to not be precious about your dignity.

The healing game doesn’t come with elegant solutions, and you soon realise that to be fixed, you are going to be poked and groped, cut open, pumped full of this, and zapped with that.

None of this is done to embarrass you or deliberately expose your frailties.

It is done to make you better and once you realise it’s not personal, and nor is it possible to go through cancer treatment without exposure to situations that make you spectacularly vulnerable, half the recovery battle is already won.

Within a few days of being diagnosed, quite the extended list of people – all of whom I assume were medically qualified with legitimate business at the hospital – examined me.

And so it came to be that from barely having the courage to show my GP what he needed to see, I’d pretty much have everything out and on the table, as it were, almost as the doctors arrived.

What I realised is that I needed to take my health seriously and not myself.

The other important breakthrough was understanding that as much as cancer likes to sniff out the smokers, drinkers and non-exercisers, so too can it be randomly cruel and pick on whoever it feels like.

I lost my sense of health entitlement: my belief that I was immune, by right of birth or whatever other deluded measure I was applying, to being a victim of bad luck.

I was 29, a non-smoker, fit and brought up breathing the glorious fresh air of the Scottish Highlands, and yet there I was being told that I had testicular cancer, and for the life of them, the doctors couldn’t tell me why.

I had surgery, radiotherapy – and then three children – and far from being upset by what happened, I’m grateful.

Grateful to be alive. Grateful to medical science and especially grateful to the amazing nurses who understand much better than their higher paid doctor colleagues what 20 rounds of radiotherapy does to someone.

Grateful to have learned that I’m not special or invincible and most of all grateful that my wife rang the doctor that day and made me an appointment.

Fiona and Gregor Paul, with their children, from left, Lachlan, 13, Mackenzie, 19, and Isla, 17.

I’m even grateful to the young doctor who examined me a year after my treatment during one of my routine check-ups.

After 5 minutes of eye-watering exploration, she told me – again with my trousers round my ankles – that she had discovered a lump and needed to bring in the consultant to double-check.

As the consultant was examining me – my panic rising that I was about to be handed a death sentence – he asked his younger colleague if the lump had been sizeable? “Yes,” she said. Had it been extremely hard? “Yes,” she said.

“Congratulations,” he replied. “You have discovered Mr Paul’s prosthetic testicle.”

For more information and guides on checking your testicles for irregularities and lumps, click here.