Ty Cedars survived stage two testicular cancer | BEP | cisplatin | beleomycin | etopicide | neuropathy

DESCRIPTION

In 2021, one day away from his fortieth birthday, Ty Cedars felt pain in one of his testicles and noticed it was enlarged.  He contacted his physician, asking to be seen.  The following day, en route to a birthday celebration, Ty received a call from his doctor, requesting that Ty come right away.

The Alexandria, Louisiana-based schoolteacher soon underwent an ultrasound, then was directed to a urologist, who told Ty that he had testicular cancer.  He took the news calmly and was told by the doctor that this was a very treatable cancer, but that he would have to go on a chemotherapy regimen called BEP.  That is a cocktail consisting of cisplatin, beleomycin and etopicide. 

Ty said the worst part of the regimen was severe nausea.  He vomited acid into his throat, which took away his voice.  Ty also said he was extremely weak, and that resting wasn’t easy.  He could only watch television for ten to twenty minutes at a time.  Even though he had a stack of books ready to read, reading was out of the question because it was too hard to focus on the small print for much more than a paragraph.

As a singer in the local chorale, Ty found tranquility in choral music, which he accessed on YouTube.

The chemotherapy did its job and Ty was told there was no evidence of disease.  He was able to return to the classroom, can go to the gym, and his health is very close to what it was prior to his diagnosis.

However, he occasionally suffers from neuropathy, and because of the damage to his throat from the chemo regimen, his singing voice has dropped from a baritone to a bass.

Other than that, Ty Cedars is thrilled with the life he is leading.  By way of advice, he says if you notice something with your health that seems abnormal, don’t take chances and see your doctor.  Because he was proactive, his cancer was detected at an early stage.

Additional Resources:

Support Group:

The Testicular Cancer Society: https://www.testicularcancersociety.org

TRANSCRIPT

Bruce Morton: Greetings and welcome.  This is the @CancerInterviews podcast, and I’m your host, Bruce Morton.  When our guest experienced a painful, enlarged testicle, he didn’t waste time and got it checked out.  That’s when Ty Cedars of Alexandria, Louisiana learned he had testicular cancer.  But his proactive approach ed to survivorship.  Now let’s hear his story.  Ty, welcome to Cancer Interviews.

Ty Cedars: Glad to be here.

BM: Let’s start where we always start and that’s to learn a bit about you and your life away from cancer.  If you would, tell us a bit about where you are from, what you have done for work and what you do for fun.

TC: I live in Alexandria, Louisiana, as stated and have lived here my whole life.  I am a teacher here.  I am currently teaching English, but I also have a background in speech and debate as well as theater.  These are subjects I have taught in the past, so when we talk about life away from cancer, we talk about teaching, but I also devote a lot of energy to theater. 

BM: Anyone diagnosed with cancer seemed to think they were in good health until they experienced something abnormal, which it what started the journey.  For you, when did you notice something that wasn’t right?

TC: In 2021, the day before my fortieth birthday, when I was getting undressed and pulled my underwear below my scrotum, I noticed one of my testicles was painful and it felt strange.  The following day I was heading to a birthday celebration, but I called my doctor and told him what I was dealing with, and asked if he could squeeze me in.  As I was driving to the appointment, I received a call from my GP, wanting to know if I could come in right away.  I thought this was serious, so I went in.  He said, “You’ve got something,” and made an appointment with the ultrasound person and a recommendation for a urologist, who told me I had testicular cancer.

BM: All of us are different in how take this awful news.  What was your reaction to your diagnosis?

TC: Luckily, my urologist, one of the first things that he said to me was that he cited Lance Armstrong.  The urologist said Armstrong’s cancer had metastasized to his brain

Before they dealt with it and you can see he’s fine.  He said, “This is a thing I can handle.”  So, from the beginning I did not have very many worries.  He said this is a highly treatable cancer.  He can do what we need to, so we are going to get you into surgery very quickly and we will take care of it.  From the beginning, I was able to breath much more easily than other people when they get a diagnosis.

BM: By the way, we hope you will find time to like and subscribe.  And if you click on the bell icon, you will be notified anytime we post an interview.  We also want to remind you we are not distributors of medical advice.  If you seek medical advice, please contact a licensed healthcare professional.

So, Ty, you have gotten your diagnosis, you are handling it with a certain calmness, and next up is treatment for you.  What, if any, treatment options did you have?

TC: From my awareness, I only really had one option.  One option was to go in, have surgery and have the cancer removed.  It is worth mentioning with the orchiectomy surgery, I was in the urologist’s office on Thursday and had an appointment on Monday, so it was a quick turnaround between the ultrasound to the appointment to the surgery, where I had the tumor removed and at that point, it was still just Stage One.  It was June when I was diagnosed and September when I actually got in to see the oncologist.  At that point, he said my cancer had started to metastasize because whatever germ cells were starting to float around my body had made their way into my lower lymph system.  That’s when he said I needed chemotherapy.  The specific treatment I received was called BEP, which I was told was a regular treatment option for people with testicular cancer. It is a cocktail of three types of chemotherapy, which beleomycin, cisplatin and etopicide. 

BM: Chemotherapy is never pleasant.  Depending on the patient, it is varying degrees of unpleasant.  For you and your chemotherapy regimen, what was the toughest part?

TC: It was truly terrible.  Nausea was the big thing I had to deal with.  What this particular chemo does is, it is attacking rapidly growing cells, which meant all of my stomach lining, anything that reproduces rapidly was completely killed off.  So, I had massive amounts of nausea and just the worst kind of heartburn.  Anytime I laid down flat, acid was just flooding into my throat.  It was unpleasant to say the least.

BM: Did you experience any cognitive issues?

TC: It is hard for me to say there were cognitive issues because I was weakened by the entire experience.  After the first week of treatment on Saturday, just a tiny bit of nausea.  I actually thought I was going to be going back to work; but on Sunday morning, I woke up and it was night and day.  I could barely get out of bed.  It was difficult to walk across the hall to the bathroom.  With that kind of weakness, yes, there was some cognitive trouble.  I couldn’t watch TV for any length of time.  I definitely could not commit myself to watching a movie.  I didn’t have much that I was going to do with my time, but the idea of watching more than ten or twenty minutes of something on the screen, I couldn’t handle it.  Luckily, my mom was taking care of me.  I had moved in with her during the cancer treatment.  She likes to walk to maintain her health, but because it was Louisiana and very toasty outside, she liked to walk around the house, and that was difficult for me because her movement around the room caused things to hurt.  I felt bad because I didn’t want to get in the way of maintaining her health.

BM: You mentioned that it was difficult to watch TV.  I can only imagine it would be even more difficult if you tried to read a book because of having to focus on the small print.

TC: Exactly, yes.  I had a stack of books I was planning to read as long as I was going to be laying in bed.  I would read a paragraph at most and have to put it down.

BM: So, you couldn’t watch TV and couldn’t read a book, yet you still had all that down time.  How did you occupy yourself?

TC: One thing I discovered, and this was about three weeks into treatment, was choral music was safe landing space for me.  So, I would fire up YouTube and it created a playlist on choral music, because that is something that I do. I am a member of our civic choir, the Red River Chorale, and so choir inmy college and adult life, has become a big part of my creative experience.  That became a safe place for me to land.  It was soothing to my brain. 

BM: All of this sounds very challenging, although the choral music did have some therapeutic properties, but at some point, Ty, you had to feel as though you were moving toward survivorship.  How did that feel?

TC: My oncologist said that each round of treatment was going to be easier than the last.  That was always something that I was looking forward to. One thing that ended up happening was my voice completely went out because of all the vomiting and all the acid, I stopped being able to speak for weeks at a time.

BM: Obviously your voice sounds great now.  There must have been a period of transition between when you could barely speak at all to when you got your voice back.  What was that like?

TC: It was good, especially because I was concerned about what was going to happen to my voice.  It was like three months of solid acid on my vocal cords.  I was wondering if it was going to completely trash my throat, for the long term?  Luckily, when I was doing the second two weeks of treatment, things were able to lighten up, so by the end of each round, finally my voice would come back, only for me to have to go into another round and subsequently lose my voice again.  Then in the third week, my voice came back. 

BM: Okay, but at some point, I am sure your care team told you there was no evidence of disease.  Can you recall that moment?

TC: That was amazing.  Certainly, finishing that treatment, and getting that first report, getting the blood draws and being told my tumor markers were completely down. It was joyous, especially because I was going to be done with treatment at this point, I could leave that behind entirely. 

BM: When you look at you are able to do physically now, compared to pre-diagnosis, what differences are there? 

TC: Going back to the voice, I did pretty much get it back, but I lost just a tiny, tiny amount on the upper end, so I can’t hit some of those higher falsetto notes, a note and a half, but I did gain three or four notes at the bottom end, so I went from a baritone to a full-scale bass, so that is a thing I can do now.  One of the things tied to the treatment is that I am still dealing with some neuropathy.  I did not have any neuropathy during treatment, but after treatment, my feet began to go numb.  That was something that I still kind of struggle with.  I tried to go back to the gym.  The first couple of times I tried, I couldn’t do it as I didn’t have the energy.  Getting on a treadmill actually made my neuropathy worse.  Now, almost five years later, I have tried going back again and I am now able to exercise in a way that I thought might have been lost to me.

BM: That’s wonderful.  Our guest is Ty Cedars of Alexandria, Louisiana.  He survived Stage Two testicular cancer. Ty, we are going to wrap up now, but I do want to touch on one point that we briefly addressed at the top because I think it is worth some emphasis on your part.  Once you realized you had a painful, enlarged testicle, you acted on that information right away and that led to early detection.  So, if you would, tell us about the importance of a proactive approach and early detection.

TC: So, it is incredibly important.  One of the things that I still think about is that I acted as soon as I did, I recall having lower back problems that probably had nothing to do with my diagnosis.  I would get this pain as soon as I stood up and all of a sudden my back would seize up.  Then I would jostle a bit, the pain would go away and I could walk again.  The pain was in the groin area and I later wondered if that had anything to do with my diagnosis.  I do want to caution people that not every lower back problem means you have testicular cancer, but if you happen to notice the same thing I did, this groinal pain, then maybe you should contact your doctor and get it checked out.  Had I done so, my diagnosis, even though caught early, might have been caught even earlier.

BM: Outstanding.  Ty, thanks very much for your story.  It is one that can inform and inspire, especially to those who have been diagnosed with testicular cancer or have learned that such a diagnosis could happen.  Ty, thanks for being with us on Cancer Interviews.

TC: Thank you for having me.

BM: And we will say what we always do when we conclude, and that if you or a loved one are on a cancer journey, you or they are not alone.  There are people like Ty Cedars who have information that can ease the cancer journey.  So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.

Additional Resources:

Support Group:

The Testicular Cancer Society: https://www.testicularcancersociety.org

SHOW NOTES

TITLE: Ty Cedars, Stage Two Testicular Cancer Survivor – Alexandria, Louisiana, USA

On the eve of his fortieth birthday, Ty Cedars experienced a painful and enlarged testicle.  He quickly sought medical attention and after an ultrasound was diagnosed with testicular cancer.  Ty was relieved to hear from his urologist that his cancer was very treatable.  He was placed on a chemotherapy regimen called BEP, which included a cocktail consisting of cisplatin, beleomycin and etopicide.  Ty’s regimen involved a great deal of nausea and fatigue, but led to survivorship.  The regimen’s damage to his throat resulted in his singing voice dipping from a baritone to bass, he still occasionally deals with neuropathy, but is thrilled to return to his job as a schoolteacher.

Additional Resources:

Support Group:

The Testicular Cancer Society: https://www.testicularcancersociety.org

Time Stamps:

01:31 Ty realized he had a painful and enlarged testicle.

03:20 Recalls when he learned he had testicular cancer, but his diagnosis was treatable.

05:18 Was told he would have to undergo chemotherapy.

08:30 Names the toughest part of his chemotherapy regimen.

12:15 Ty said choral music helped him as he rested during and after treatment.

13:09 Was encouraged to move close to survivorship.

14:05 Said after losing his voice during treatment, he was thrilled to get it back.

15:18 Recalls when he was told he had survived cancer.

16:05 Ty is asked how his life was different after treatment.

21:39 Articulates the importance of a proactive approach to illness and early detection of cancer.

KEYWORDS (tags):

testicular cancer

chemotherapy

ty cedars

cisplatin

bep

beleomycin

etopicide

painful testicle

bruce morton

early detection

neuropathy