“And studies linking it with vasectomy have not held up.”There are two types of testicular cancer. Again, it could be something to do with 20th century living,” he adds.The disease is one of the few cancers to be related to higher social class and is occasionally hereditary. Sam, now 13, still attends hospital for regular monitoring and because she has reached puberty doctors also keep an eye on her development, to make sure it has not been affected by the drugs. Her remaining kidney functions normally.Nowadays Sam wears her hair fashionably long and , unlike her parents, recalls little about her illness. “She’s getting on well at school – we’re proud of her,” says Brian.

“It seems a long time ago when she was in intensive care with yet another infection and I was wondering if she would pull through.”. The bad news about testicular cancer is that it is on the increase, particularly among men in their twenties. The good news is that, unlike other adult cancers, it is curable in over 90 per cent of cases – even when the disease has spread. “I hesitate to use the word cure in terms of cancer,” says Stan Kaye, professor of the CRC Department of Medical Oncology at Glasgow University. “But there are now thousands of young men who have been treated successfully for testicular cancer and who, 20 years later, show no sign of any recurrence.”
Although rare at the beginning of the century, the incidence of testicular cancer has risen markedly in the last 20-30 years, especially among younger men. It is now the commonest cancer among men aged 20 to 34, with about 1,500 to 2,000 new cases a year.”We do not know for sure, but it may be this rise is related to an environmental factor such as excess oestrogens, which may affect the foetus growing in the womb,” says Professor Kaye.Testicular cancer is thought to be triggered by something going wrong during foetal development, which would explain why it is sometimes associated with other problems of the male reproductive system – low sperm counts, infertility in men and undescended testicles in boys.”We think there is another trigger for the cancer 15 to 20 years later, but we do not know what it is.

Seeing the side-effects of the drugs on their daughter was extremely stressful. “Sam used to be violently sick several times each treatment,” says her father “Then her hair started to fall out She had beautiful blonde hair. With her big, blue eyes she was a photographer’s dream, but eventually she had no hair left at all. Luckily, she was too young to be self-conscious.”Her mouth was full of ulcers which made it difficult to eat and the drugs weakened her immune system, so she became prone to infection and had to return to hospital several times.”Finally Sam’s treatment came to an end Tests confirmed that the cancer had gone completely It has not returned.