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After a week I went for a follow-up with the urologist who scheduled me for a CT scan. He said I was healing very well and mentioned that I would likely receive radiation. My family doctor referred me to a local medical oncologist. I met with him the following week after the CT scan of my pelvis and abdomen. He wanted a CT scan of the chest in case the cancer had skipped the abdomen, so off I went again. Both CT scans came back clear. There was a scare with something showing up in my liver. However, a three-phase study and an ultrasound showed that this was an artifact due to air in the stomach/intestines.

So it appeared that I had stage I seminoma i.e., no apparent spread of cancer from the testicle. My oncologist gave me some options – wait (surveillance) to see if anything else shows up and then treat it, or radiation therapy to sterilize the retroperitioneal lymph nodes. The latter would be done just in case there was subclinical cancer in that area, i.e., cells had escaped but had not yet grown into a detectable mass. My oncologist had only treated 3 testicular cancer patients (it is a relatively rare cancer, only striking about 7500 men each year) so I decided to seek more advice. I had joined the TC-Net mailing list and had heard from several people regarding treatment options. After a second opinion with an oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic I chose radiation therapy, despite an initial heavy leaning toward surveillance. Hindsight being 20/20, I think if I had lived in an area where the TC experts practiced (e.g. Indiana University), I would have opted for the surveillance. But the 15-20% chance of a reoccurrence bothered me and my oncologists were more familiar with radiation therapy as the "standard" treatment for my staging.