Armstrong wins twice

Posted August 26, 1999

Armstrong wins twice
It wasn't just that Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France, cycling's showcase race and one of the most grueling tests in sports.

It was that he'd done it less than three years after doctors gave him only 50-50 odds of living. In late 1996 he'd contracted an aggressive testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain, requiring surgery and four rounds of chemotherapy.

"This is an awesome day," he said Sunday. "This is beyond belief."

Testicular cancer kills hundreds of men each year in America when undiagnosed. The real shame is that a 3-minute self-examination once a month could prevent death. The following story is maintained for your reference.

Posted: April 24, 1997

THE TABOO CANCER
by Karen Williams
When is a social taboo deadly? When hundreds of men die each year from undiagnosed illness when a simple 3-minute self-examination once a month could prevent death. If detected . African-American men don’t turn away; you may have only a fifth of the cases of whites, but race is no protection from this kind of cancer. If you men who have or had an undescended testicle, you are at greater than average risk.

If any woman has stayed with this article this far – good for you. You can help save the men in your life. With at least four world-class athletes in the last decade being diagnosed with TC, what each story has in common is that the men ignored symptoms until they had to take medical steps to save their lives. In comparison to the approach men have taken to testicular cancer, women have banded together to fight breast cancer as if it is the only way women die. Where are the men speaking on the horrors of testicular cancer? Is this the last of the cancer group to escape the metaphoric closet?

Bob Losure, a former Tulsa newsman currently of CNN, spoke of his experience with TC at the April 19, 1997 Tulsa Press Club Gridiron show. He spoke briefly of radiation therapy and the impact TC has had in his life. He recovered, but his friends and colleagues did not fail to note his words. Testicular cancer is serious stuff.

Well, you ask, just what are we supposed to look out for?

· Blood or fluid in the scrotum
· An enlargement of a testicle
· Tenderness of the breasts (pecs for the squirmy)
· A draggy-ness in the scrotum
· Pain in the testes (tes-tees), groin or abdomen
· A lump on the testicle.

If a lump is found early enough, if it is localized (only in the testes, a plural form of testicle) and only needs low-dose radiation therapy and an orchiectomy (removal of a testis), the relative survival rate is about 98%. A metastatic seminoma, a cancer that has spread, can have a survival rate of 90% if the cancer has been treated with a combination chemotherapy.

Employment may increase your risk of TC noted Dr. Julia A. Knight, of the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation in Toronto. In a recent study Dr. Knight found that employment as miners, leather workers, oil and gas workers, food and beverage processing, janitors, bakers, meat workers and utility company workers with an eye to electrical utilities in particular suffer increased risk, but are not considered, in and of themselves, the causes. For example, an oil or gas worker has, potentially, 12 times the risk, as opposed to the general population. Leather workers have potentially five times the risk.

The more deadly type of TC, the nonseminoma, if localized and treated like a localized seminoma can have a 60 - 80% survival rate {Seminomas, 40% of TC cases, are made of only one type of cancer cell. Nonseminomas, the remaining 60%, are made up of more than one type of cancer cell. Hence, the difficulty in treating that particular case.] Seminomas were also found to be more common in the better educated, white-collar men studied. The possibility that work-related toxic exposure morphing seminomas into nonseminomas is also talked about in Dr. Knight’s study.

A Danish study found that fathers of men with testicular cancer are at twice the risk of TC, and that brothers of men diagnosed with this type of cancer are at 12 times the risk. A recessive gene is suspected in the difference between generations.

"I’d rather die than lose a testicle," is a direct quote read from the Internet. It was said to a man who had lost a testicle to cancer. How stupid can we, as a nation, be about our bodies?

Even with the unnerving statistics and scary medicalese, this is the most "curable type of cancer, compared to other tumors," said Dr. Fred Brunke, medical oncologist at The Cancer Treatment Center of Tulsa.

For more information from the Internet, we recommend the following sites:

http://www.acor.org/TCRC
http://shrike.depaul.edu/~ehamilto/stories.html
http://www.mediconsult.com/ads/infoseek
http://cancer.med.upenn.edu/disease/testicular.index.html
http://www.cancercenter.com/cancerinfo.htm

Editor's Note: Douglas Bank wrote May 23, 1997 in response to this story. Blank is the editor of the Testicular Cancer Resource Center web site (listed first above). We have included his comments in our reader response page and below.

This letter is aimed at Karen Williams, the author of the article "The taboo cancer" in the current edition of Tulsa Today.

First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Doug Bank and I am a testicular cancer survivor. I am also an editor at the Testicular Cancer Resource Center web site (found at www.acor.org/TCRC). I am pleased to see an article on testicular cancer in your paper, but I feel compelled to correct a number of errors in the text. 1) When checking for testicular cancer, blood or fluid in the scrotum is not an indication of testicular cancer. It may be indicative of a hydrocele or something similar, but it is not at all likely to be cancerous. 2) You are correct in saying that the survival rate for a stage I (i.e., localized) seminoma is around 98%. However, the survival rate for a localized nonseminoma is not 60-80%. In
fact, it is also about 98%. 3) You wrote that "Nonseminomas, the remaining 60%, are made up of more than one type of cancer cell. Hence, the difficulty in treating that particular case." That is not quite true. Nonseminomas can be composed of any or all of five different types of cancer (embryonal carcinoma, choriocarcinoma, yolk sac tumor, teratoma, teratocarcinoma). They are not more difficult to treat because there is more than one type of cancer, rather they are more difficult because seminoma is especially sensitive to radiation and nonseminomas are not, and nonseminomas (especially embryonal and choriocarcinoma) tend to grow faster than seminomas.

In my personal opinion, you also overstressed the results of Dr Knight's study regarding the risks for testicular cancer. The only widely accepted risk factors are race, age, and undescended testicles. Also, seminomas tend to affect older guys, which may explain why it affected better educated, white collar workers -they had more time to become educated and progress to white collar jobs. Finally, I think that you neglected to mention that it is so curable due to advances in chemotherapy made in the past 20 years.

Anyway, I don't mean to be overly critical, and I intend to place a link to the article on my website. I just wanted to correct a few misconceptions. Thanks for your time.
Doug Bank, Editor
Testicular Cancer Resource Center
http://www.acor.org/TCRC
dougb@comm.mot.com