Boobs and Balls
 

Check NOW please, for lumps and bumps that don't match up with the other side.

Okay, I checked my boobs. When my husband wakes up, I'll check my balls. :)
(Good advice, Monnie)

On average, testicular cancer affects men 31 years old.

Does that mean you can lose both balls at 62?

No. The average human has one testicle.

My evil ex worked - and was close friends with - a man who had testicular cancer. While they worked together his gf felt a lump, bullied him into going to the doctor. Within a very short space of time he was in hospital having one of his knackers whipped off and replaced with a prosthetic.

I was all sympathy and understanding of course. Said to the evil ex, "Good job it wasn't you. You see me so rarely these days you'd be riddled with cancer before I noticed. Oh. Except I bet there's other women fondling your balls when I'm not here."

Yes, I am ashamed of that relationship.

The other board I (used to) post on has only had one death of a member that we know about, and that was from testicular cancer. But two of my personal close friends have got boob cancer diagnoses in the past few months. it's too many. One of them admits to not checking regularly. she wondered how and when to tell her kids what was going on, I said, for once LIE to them. tell them you were just doing your routine monthly check and you found an irregularity, so you're getting it checked out to be on the safe side (this is before it was confirmed).

it's not usually an overly fun thing to do -more fun if your partner helps, but also more likely to lead to something being missed if they do ... but hey, it's a shitload more fun than surgery and chemo. And death.

*Shakes head*

In the last few years I've known a few people affected by the big C. A party member (who lives down the road); a friend of J's family (whom I remember well from our youth in Bolton); a former work colleague. One of my closest friends (J's partner) had breast cancer a few years ago and recently had a scare and had to do rounds of tests.

Bri's journey, obviously, I think hit most of us here whilst she was going through it. Sarge's recent scare too. I know there have been a couple of other dwellars affected.

Sometimes it feels like some kind of spectre hovering around.

I hope your friend is ok Monnie. And this is a good thread and a timely reminder to us all.

Thanks for the reminder. Checked this morning in the shower. I'm good for now.

Fuck cancer.

Fuck cancer.

I'll gladly drink to that, having been visited more than once by the malignant bastard, which I seem to think now brings out the best in me. I'm now in my 60s a calm reflective pacific sort of woman, who in my youth, was a true revolutionary and trade union activist. I think the cancer brought back the tilter of windmills, the woman astride the barricades, the women's movement activist and anti-war protester.

I think we all have it in a primitive way, the ability/strength/rebel within to step up to the threat, the enemy, and no greater enemy than Cancer. Fuck it!

*smiles* ahhh you're one of the trail blazers. Prior to the Trade Union movement's discovery of women as well by the sound of it

FUCK IT indeed, well survived Caz!

Yes probably, but my memory holds it as all of a piece, know what I mean? In the late 60s early 70s I had to join and become a shop steward because of the Labour government's undermining and running down of the NHS, where I was first a student then Registered Nurse.

It feels as if the women's revolutionary movement moved into the NHS more or less at the same time, and all of the women I knew were so ready for it! That's partly because as a professional group, nurses had been downtrodden and penalised for the whole of our history. See the merging of action and philososphy, for different yet identical reasons.

I loved it Dana, just as you do. It was without doubt the most important and exciting period of my life and we burned with fervour and were driven by passion for the truth. Our truth. By 1996/1997 I was preparing to run for parliament in a safe seat, boundaried by Joan Ruddock's constituency in Deptford when my first brush with cancer put paid to it, otherwise - heaven protect us - I would have been one of 'Blair's Babes' !!!

Come the revolution...:) See you at the barricade Dana *smiles backatcha"