It was five days before Christmas (and thankfully this isn’t the start of a festive jingle) where my wife and I were sitting in the consultant’s room at hospital about to be told that I had testicular cancer…33 years old and a just turned 2-year-old daughter, Chloe! There aren’t many words I can find to describe that feeling!

And so began a journey, a journey that will continue for another 7 years through routine check ups and blood tests.

Cancer is one of those things that you’re aware of, and you hear about it through various mediums, but until you hear those words ‘you have cancer’, all of your perceived thoughts suddenly become something very different! Everyone’s journey is different, and yes this is a cliché but it is oh so true! Within 20 minutes of leaving the consultant’s room at the hospital, I was sitting with my wife in McDonalds pondering our next steps. The obvious one was obviously telling family and friends, what would happen with Chloe when I went in for my operation and any potential treatment afterwards (although luckily, I didn’t need that), how we would move house in 4 weeks’ time, the planned building work that was going to happen in said new house, what about work etc etc.

I was given a bundle of leaflets to read, bedtime reading if you like, which pointed me in the direction of charities and support groups that I could contact. Being told you have cancer sends your brain into a scramble and the assumption you have, broadly, is that you’re going to die! It doesn’t matter when people tell you that testicular cancer is one of the ‘best’ cancers to get as it is extremely treatable, none of that matters, the first thing I associated with cancer is death. Within a period of 4 weeks, I’d been told I had cancer, been into hospital for my first ever operation in my 33 years of life. After that, I spent 3 months recovering and that’s when it really hits home.

So why am I raising money now…well the simple answer is that I wish I was aware of charities such as Orchid, who rather than try to tackle all cancers, focus on cancers that affect males, such as testicular, prostate etc which is something I can relate to now. The more money they have, the more research it can do, the more education it can offer, the more support it can give to people and their families going through cancer. 

Cancer isn’t something that just affects the individual, it affects family, friends and beyond and the more awareness that can get out the better, as reliving what had happened 7 months previously wasn’t a fun experience for me or my family, and if by raising money to help Orchid do more then this can only be a positive thing right, so please, if you can, give what you can to help me to help others.