Andrew Kettner survived testicular cancer | etoposide | ifosfamide | cisplatin | sternotomy | teratoma
Andrew Kettner Description
In 2024, Andrew Kettner began to experience shortness of breath and a cough that wouldn’t go away. This led to the detection of a mass extending from his heart to his lung. Tumor marker tests resulted in an incredible diagnosis of a rare form of testicular cancer. He was put on a chemotherapy regimen of etoposide, ifosfamide and cisplatin, followed by a sternotomy for a resection of the mass. The regimen was difficult, but Andrew achieved survivorship and says his health is about 70 percent of what it, pre-diagnosis.
Andrew Kettner was nearing the end of a quarter-century serving in the Marines when his solid health took a turn for the worse. He had trouble taking in a full breath, had a cough that wouldn’t stop and anytime he tried climbing stairs, he felt dizzy.
He didn’t seek medical attention right away, but when he did, he underwent a series of tests, including an x-ray that revealed a mass going from his heart to his lung. He went on subsequently undergo three tumor marker tests. Two of the three, AFP and HCG, indicated his tumor was consistent with testicular cancer despite the mass being located in his upper body.
Andrew chose a chemotherapy regimen, which ran the risk of attacking his kidneys or his liver, but would address the tumor near his lung. Via two ports, he received four cycles of a VIP regimen, including etoposide, ifosfamide and cisplatin. When that was completed, he underwent a sternotomy, aimed at a radical resection of the mass. A complication from the sternotomy was a blood clot, deep vein thrombosis.
In 2025, he was pronounced having no evidence of disease. Because of the location of the mass, he still has both testicles. Andrew has neuropathy in both his hands and his feet, and says his health is approximately 70 percent of what it was, pre-diagnosis. Nonetheless, he is grateful for the level of health he has and that he can spend quality time with his wife and three teenage sons.
Additional Resources:
Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkettner
Support Group: https://testicularcancerawarenessfoundation.org
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Morton: Greetings. This is the @CancerInterviews podcast, and I am your host, prostate cancer survivor Bruce Morton. Not all types of testicular cancer are identical. Our guest on this episode was diagnosed with a form of testicular cancer that materialized in a part of the body far from the testicles. He is Andrew Kettner of Burke, Virginia. His story of survivorship is both informative and inspirational, and now is the time to hear it. Andrew, welcome to Cancer Interviews.
Andrew Kettner: Thank you, Bruce, for having me and a chance to the spread the word.
BM: Before we hear your story, we want to learn more about your life away from cancer. If you would, share with us where you are from, what you have done for work, and what you like to do for fun.
AK: I am from southern Maryland. I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2002 and in March of 2027, I will be calling that job quits. While in the Marine Corps, I started off in the infantry and spent the vast majority of my time as a logistics officer. I am currently working on the Chief of Naval Operations staff at the Penatgon. I think more importantly, though, I am a married father of three. I have three boys and as we talk right now, they are 16, 14 and 12. For fun, I enjoy spending time with my wife and kids. They take up a lot of time and it is time well spent.
BM: All of us diagnosed with cancer had that point in time when something about our health became abnormal, which started us down a path leading to a diagnosis of cancer. For you, what were the abnormal symptoms?
AK: I initially had a cough, and the cough wouldn’t go away. Over the course of August to the end of September 2024, with that cough I realized I was not running as fast. I was having a cough that comes and goes that I thought was related to a cold because it always feels better to blame it on something you understand, but as a Marine, I was running and working out quite a bit, and my run times over a three-mile course, is getting slower. I was having trouble breathing. Again, I thought it was a varsity-level cold, but looking back, I could not take a full breath and when I tried climbing stairs, I would get dizzy. I do drink coffee and sometimes around midday, I would get the same feeling as if I got one cup of coffee in the morning. My heart pound in a way as if I were jacked up on caffeine. I had these four symptoms moving around in my life I blamed this on a cold, but over time, I realized this was more than a cold.
BM: Did you seek medical attention right away?
AK: Not initially. I waited until a friend of mine said he was going to see a doctor regarding another issue and I distinctly remember holding my uniform and heading to the Pentagon and texting my friend and saying that, I, too, would get checked out. That would have been about two months since I felt something wrong.
BM: So, what happened when you did seek medical attention?
AK: I went to the emergency room at an army base in northern Virginia. I was feeling a little nervous and embarrassed because I didn’t quite know what was going on. I said I was feeling dizzy, I was having trouble taking a full breath. I was triaged there and waited in line for close to fifteen minutes. Because I was having trouble breathing, I was seen. In the emergency room, they noticed there were some sounds when I tried to breath that made the ER doctors nervous. That led to an ultrasound done on my back to see if there is fluid built up. My blood pressure was high. I ended up getting placed on EKG as well. They noticed irregular heart patterns. I was x-rayed, and that is when thing shifted. They found on the x-ray a large, shadowed mass over the right side of my heart to the top left of my lung. There was some silence as they discussed the next steps for me.
BM: And did those steps lead to your diagnosis?
AK: They did. There was maybe 90 minutes of silence, then the doctors told me what they saw might be some form of cancer pushing on my heart. It looks like it has collapsed part of your lung and will necessitate surgery. Before that, they wanted to perform a CT scan to see how large the mass is, and they needed to take some blood to determine what kind of cancer this might be to help the guide the next steps. The CT scan occurred and they were unable to say whether the cancer was inside or outside the lung, but in terms of the blood markers that were reviewed, there was a review for AFP, HCG and LDH. The AFP and HCG are two tumor markers that are associated with testicular cancer. Turns out, in the pre-surgery before getting this mass removed, there was a urologist oncologist that wanted me to be tested for these markers, which ended up being a blessing that I received attention from a doctor who knew the disease could present this way. Both of those came back positive and that’s when the discussion for surgery stopped. I did my final ultrasound at the emergency room. They found no masses in my testicles at that point and the doctors set up, and the doctors said after an eight-hour or so ordeal that this could be testicular cancer. They said they would send me home and that would have an appointment with the urologist oncologist the following Monday.
BM: By the way, we hope you will like and subscribe to our channel. And if you click on the bell icon, that way you will be notified anytime we post an interview. We also want to remind you that on Cancer Interviews, we are not distributors of medical advice. If you seek medical advice, please contact a licensed health care provider. And as you watch, as you listen, we would like to hear from you, where you are watching from, as well as your thoughts on Andrew’s story.
So, by now, the words cancer and testicular cancer have been introduced into the conversation. This is horrific for anybody. How did you handle all that?
AK: It was whips to the left and whips to the right. Upon being diagnosed, we went to Google, and testicular cancer. The general prognosis is much higher than if we had lung cancer, which we had anticipated in our own uneducated way. However, when we were diagnosed on October 7, 2024 by my oncologist, it was at that point that I was told I had a rare form of testicular cancer, primary mediastinal non-seminomatous germ cell tumor runs a prognosis of 45 to 50 percent of still being alive at the two-year mark. So, we went from expecting a type of cancer with high mortality rate, that being lung cancer, to testicular cancer, which is highly curable to studies showing my chances of survival are not as great with this rare form of testicular cancer. It was hard. It was a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of slience. I wish I could say that my wife and I came together in a bright moment of epiphany, but it was horrifying and very scary, a lot of information at once coming our way and not really digesting much of it at all.
BM: Andrew, I have this question, and I think more importantly viewers and listeners would have this question, and I will bet you would have this question, but how does testicular cancer materialize in parts of the body far from the testicles?
AK: I think with many cancers, there are questions about what causes cancer to form in any particular location in our body. What I have been told more often than not, our genital areas are close to our chest for a zygote-sized baby. During that time, a germ cell which should be down in your gonad area, stayed in my chest area and sat dormant for many decades, only to be activated at some point. At 40 years old, it did what it wanted to do, which was grow. My oncologist looked for what he called a “burnout” in my testicles, because that would change the prognosis greatly, but there wasn’t burnout and I still have both of my testicles. This cancer was only in my chest.
BM: So, looking forward, this had to be treated. Did you have treatment options?
AK: With chemotherapy, yes, but my two options were what I should do and what I can do. The ‘can do’ is a regular treatment option for testicular cancer, which would be four times of BEP, but the recommendation from Walter Reed Medical Center, which is where I was then being seen on October 7, 2024, was to receive four in-patient rounds of VIP, which is etoposide, ifosfamide and cisplatin, which is a variation of a cisplatin-based chemotherapy regimen. It has often a higher occurrence of kidney problems and liver problems but protects your lungs. The other option could be hard on the lungs but doesn’t influence the kidney or liver. When the surgery was over, the care team wanted to protect my lungs because the surgery would be in my chest. So, that is the direction I went in, and everything was happening so fast that the VIP is what I chose, as the best opportunity for success.
BM: Let’s talk about your chemo regimen. It is never pleasant for anybody who is on one. For you, what was the toughest part?
AK: The toughest part was the blood clot I received after my first round of chemo. I received my chemo via two ports. My left port ended up having a blood clot associated with it, a deep vein thrombosis. I was dizzy, my left arm was swelling up. It almost caused me to change my timeline for treatment. Luckily, I had a great nurse practitioner who saw me. She caught my symptoms early and got me on the straight and narrow. From a chemotherapy perspective, losing my hair, losing weight, I lost almost 50 pounds over the course of two and a half months, it made me very frail. Being on blood thinners made me very tired. While I, as a warrior going through cancer, trying to take advantage of every opportunity with my family, the worst part was being away from them while being a patient, then during recovery, not being able to be my full ‘me.’ Then with each of the four rounds, becoming less and less of what I should be doing. I don’t think they would count that against me, but it was very mentally tough.
BM: In February 2025, you underwent a sternotomy. Describe that procedure.
AK: On October 7, 2024, I was told it would be chemotherapy followed by a sternotomy. I had the opportunity to go to a cancer center of excellence for the sternotomy, the University of Indiana. That was where they break your chest plate apart. They go in, looking for clear margins and anything that is left over from the chemotherapy attacking my tumor. It was only then that I actually received a pathology for the first time. The tumor was made up of necrosis tissue, which is what the surgeon wanted to see, as well as mature teratoma , which in my case is a form of testicular cancer that is unresponsive to chemotherapy. So, while it does not metastasize generally, it had to come out. While chemotherapy got worse each time I went in and came home, the sternotomy was horrible, but by the third or fourth month, I felt much, much better. So, it was a continual climb as my body put its chest back together.
BM: So, at that point, did you sense you were moving toward survivorship?
AK: I did. I saw the tumor getting smaller. According to my nurse practitioner, I was heading toward the finish line, but I was not yet out of the woods. I held on to that belief. So, I hoped, and I kept a reservation that this was great news, but I am not done yet.
BM: These days, do you feel as though you have cross the finish line?
AK: I feel I have crossed the finish line, as of the two-year mark after being treated. Something changed in my mind, but it is not as though the book has slammed shut. It was from being told I have No Evidence of Disease, being told the sternotomy was a success. It was multiple chapters to get to my feeling better now. I feel better, where I am at. That took two years. I am still done, but I have crossed the finish line.
BM: Andrew, we are going to wrap up right about now, and we want to get the following assessment. If you could label your health, pre-diagnosis, as 100 percent, these days where is it? If there are things that physically your could do then, but cannot do now, what would they be?
AK: I’d give myself a 70 percent. I have neuropathy in my feet. I have neuropathy in my hands. I have tenderness in my chest, numbness from the sternotomy and the ports. All that to be said, I realize there was the ‘me’ before this and that person was successful and doing great things for the Marine Corps, and there is the ‘me’ now. This ‘me’ is successful doing great things for my family, but I am not the same individual, and that’s okay. I shouldn’t look back to when I was twenty years old. That was a different ‘me.’ I am 42 now, and I am allowed to be different and useful to help the family and can continue to contribute. I am at about 70 percent.
BM: Well, 70 percent is a nice alternative to say, 40 percent or 50 percent, so it’s great to hear that and great to say have absorbed all that and are okay with the new you. Andrew, for sharing your story of fortitude, of survivorship, we’re glad you are with us, and one more time, thanks for your service, and thanks for being with us on Cancer Interviews.
AK: Thanks, Bruce.
BM: And we want to remind you as we close that if you or a loved one is on a cancer journey, you are not alone. There are individuals out there like Andrew Kettner, who have information and inspiration that can ease the cancer journey. So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.
Additional Resources:
Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkettner
Support Group: https://www.testicularcancerawarenessfoundation.org
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Andrew Kettner, Testicular Cancer Survivor – Burke, Virignia, USA
In 2024, Andrew Kettner began to experience shortness of breath and a cough that wouldn’t go away. This led to the detection of a mass extending from his heart to his lung. Tumor marker tests resulted in an incredible diagnosis of a rare form of testicular cancer. He was put on a chemotherapy regimen of etoposide, ifosfamide and cisplatin, followed by a sternotomy for a resection of the mass. The regimen was difficult, but Andrew achieved survivorship and says his health is about 70 percent of what it, pre-diagnosis.
Additional Resources:
Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkettner
Time Stamps:
02:16 Andrew says his cancer journey began with a cough and shortness of breath.
06:45 Says various tests led to a diagnosis.
09:35 Reaction to his diagnosis.
11:45 Asked how testicular cancer could be diagnosed far from the testicles.
13:18 Said he had two treatment options, but chose chemotherapy.
15:20 Asked if his training as a Marine played a role in his journey.
16:52 Andrew describes his chemo regimen.
20:10 Recalls undergoing a sternotomy.
21:30 Is asked if he sensed he was moving toward survivorship.
22:17 Andrew is asked if in his journey he feels he has crossed the finish line.
23:27 Compares his present health to what it was before his diagnosis.
KEYWORDS (tags):
testicular cancer
etoposide
ifosfamide
primary mediastinal non-seminomatous germ cell tumor
cisplatin
sternotomy
LDH
AFP
HCG
deep vein thrombosis
necrosis tissue
teratoma
neuropathy
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