The importance of banking sperm

When I was first diagnosed, my doctor told me right away, “There’s a good chance you’re going to be sterile. It’s 50% roughly, but you’ve got to take that seriously, that you might not be able to have kids. You know, we’re going to cut a testicle out and then after that, we’re going to slam you with chemo.”

Chemo really is the main reason that guys like me are sterile, because losing a testicle, you still have one. There’s still sperm that can work but the chemo is so intense for testicular cancer that oftentimes, it just crushes those cells and they never recover. But my doctor told me right away, “Look, you need to go to a cryogenics lab, a sperm bank, and consider that. I’m not going to force you to do it, but you really should consider it because you’re young. You’re 26 years old, you may want to have kids one day. You can bank it now.” He explained everything to me. I was very lucky. This was my original doctor, the urologist, the guy who diagnosed me with the cancer in the first place, before even chemo started. Then I chose which oncologist was going to work with me, a urology oncologist, every step of the way.

That was a woman by the name of Dr. Hussain at University of Michigan Hospital who was a fantastic doctor. She was the same. She always, at the very beginning, brought up the fertility issues and was always available to talk to if I needed to. So I felt very comfortable. I’m a very open person. The family I come from is very open and very “This is how it is” and “Life’s short, put all your cards on the table”. So I felt very comfortable talking about all these things. To me, losing a testicle was, for lack of a better term, like losing a pinky. Maybe I’d rather lose this than this because I need my pinky. I think it actually helps me more. But for me it was just something that was a body part and the way I looked at it was we’re going to talk about one body part or we’re going to talk about life. When you balance the two, you always choose life, of course. But I’ll be honest, I didn’t worry about it that much. I was focused on life.

I knew I was going through chemo and right before it started, I knew that that was what I was focused on. I can honestly say I didn’t think that much about it. I was single at the time and I just really didn’t think about having kids. It was far off. I wasn’t married. It was far off for me. At the same time, the guidance of my parents made it really clear that there was no other option. I had to bank sperm. My parents were real clear with me. They were like, “Trust us, you need to do this.” I do know people especially with what I do everyday—I run a cancer organization—and I do know people who knew about it and chose not to because they just didn’t want to deal with it. They didn’t think it was a big enough deal. So I think it is important if you’re young and we can reach people and raise awareness. Teach kids that, “You may not feel that way now, but trust me, it will be a bigger deal later.”

That sort of thing, teaching kids, is just really important. Because when you’re 18 or 19, which is very common for testicular cancer, you are not thinking about marriage. You are not thinking about kids. You are thinking about probably fraternity parties and college—what a normal 18-, 19- or 20-year-old kid is thinking about. And they may want to disregard it and say, ”I don’t want to go to the sperm bank, I just want to beat cancer.” But the reality is if they don’t have the family support that I did—kids need to understand that later, it’ll be a big deal. Probably coming from a little bit older, but young adult cancer survivor with the same thing, is a pretty powerful message.