A 21-year-old gymgoer who was dismissed by medical professionals found that he actually had 58 cancerous tumors.
What started as a bit of back pain after a gym session turned into a life-changing diagnosis for 21-year-old Rob, a college student from Delaware who unknowingly had cancer spreading throughout his entire body.
“About an hour after leaving the gym my back started hurting really bad,” Rob shared in an interview with The Patient Story. “I assumed it was weight-lifting related — an injury from my back.”
Like many fitness fanatics, Rob didn’t think twice about it. Sore muscles? Pretty standard after hitting the weights. But the discomfort didn’t go away — in fact, it got worse.
Rob initially went to health services on his college campus for help, where he was given pain relief.
But as the weeks rolled on, his condition spiraled. His appetite vanished, and things took a dark turn when he started vomiting “blood and bile”.
That’s when he was finally sent for a CT scan and blood tests. The results? Far worse than a gym injury.
Doctors discovered Rob had testicular cancer — and it had metastasized, with about 58 tumors spreading throughout his body.
It all started to make sense when one doctor asked a key question: “One of the doctors had walked in and asked if I had ever noticed anything funky going on with my testicles,” Rob recalled.
Turns out, he had. Rob admitted that he’d noticed one of his testicles had been firmer than the other for “a good couple of years”.
According to the NHS, early signs of testicular cancer can include swelling, pain, a lump, or increased firmness in one of the testicles. For Rob, that one subtle difference was a warning sign he hadn’t realized.
“I was completely shocked,” he said of hearing the diagnosis. “The treatment process had been a complete rollercoaster for me.”
Rob was immediately put on an aggressive treatment plan that included chemotherapy and what he described as a “complicated” surgery to remove one testicle and abdominal lymph nodes.
While fighting for his life, the physical and emotional toll hit hard.
“I think that was probably one of the more challenging things for me,” Rob said about the hair loss.
“I felt awkward and like everybody was going to be staring at me. So that was definitely a huge mental battle.”
Losing his eyebrows and eyelashes added to the struggle, and not being able to work out — something that had been a big part of his identity — only made it harder.
But the end of this story brings hope.
Thanks to the intense chemo and surgery, doctors were able to remove all traces of cancer. Rob is now in remission.
“That was a really good moment,” he said about hearing the news. “It's very rewarding to go through an entire battle like that then see these moments of progress.”