“One of my sweet testicles has gone rogue and will soon be feeding mice in a dumpster,” tweeted comedian Duncan Trussell yesterday. He wasn’t kidding: In a very funny Facebook post for one of the venue that was hosting a show he had to cancel, Trussell announced there’s a “90 percent chance” that he has testicular cancer—or, as he wrote, “CANCER!!!”
“The truth is that I've never paid much attention to my balls,” he wrote. “Outside of occasionally horrifying myself by holding a hand mirror near them, they've been something that I've intentionally ignored for most of my life.” But when the swelling in his right one wouldn’t go down, he went to a doctor, who sent him to a urologist, who promptly scheduled an orchiectomy for next Tuesday. (That’s what doctors call testicle-removal surgery, a few of which are available for viewing on YouTube. “Yea, that was some pro suturing for sure,” goes a comment for one.)
The good news, Trussell notes, is that this type of cancer is highly treatable—with a success rate around 80 to 90 percent—so he’s asking everyone not to “stress out” about it.
“These things are as natural and normal as the sun coming up, but our culture treats them like a malformed incest child born in some manor in the 1800s. We shove them deep into our cultural basement and act shocked and terrified when they [inevitably] manage to break down the door and limp through our evening parties.”
Wise words, those. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.