Kevin's story

In April 2019, just before his 30th birthday, Kevin Hiney noticed a slight lump on his right testicle. “There was a lot going on at the time, I was splitting my time between Dublin and Brussels, and I was also moving in with my girlfriend– I was in a bit of denial and I just told myself to ignore it and it would go away.”

In hindsight, Kevin is now strongly advocating for people, especially men, not to dismiss any persistent changes in your body and instead, calling on people to raise these issues with their GP. “You can try convince yourself it’s nothing, but the reality is, the sooner you deal with whatever it is, the better. Don’t live with the regret of thinking: I should have gone the doctor sooner.”

By July 2019, the lump had gotten much worse, and Kevin was experiencing sporadic periods of pain. “I was back from Brussels for a week, and I took myself to the ED in the Beacon. I went in for 9am on the 17th of July and by 11am, they told me there was a tumour on my testicle, but they would have to await further tests to give me a full diagnosis. From then on, I was straight into test after test and scan after scan. There was an ultrasound, some CT scans after which it emerged that the cancer had metastasised and spread to my abdomen. Within two days, I was into surgery but it was a further three weeks before my chemotherapy began.”

Reflecting on receiving his diagnosis, Kevin says “it’s like a suddenly being forced onto a new track and your life taking a very different direction. I remember having to phone my parents and tell them the news andwas always very conscious of trying to protect the people around me and not scare them. The fallout from cancer really touches everybody you’re connected to. I met a friend for a catch up between my surgery and chemo starting and his reaction was so visceral, just the word ‘cancer’ was so scary for him, he was asking if I was going to die and it was me doing the reassuring telling him that the survival rate is good, the treatment will be tough but I’ll come through it.”

“For me, I don’t deal well with uncertainty and information gaps, so how I coped was by consuming information, reading up on the facts and the data.  I remember my first surgeon giving me a copy of the Irish Cancer Society’s guide to testicular cancer which was hugely helpful but also only a starting point. The factsheets, medical journals, the personal stories of others who have experienced cancer and so on, were all hugely helpful so that I could help those around me to be calm as well.”

As Kevin began his chemotherapy in August 2019, he recalls a comment from a member of his medical team: “’you’ll be done by Christmas’ they said, they just never said which Christmas!”

After his first round of chemotherapy, further scans showed anomalies dotted from Kevin’s pelvis through to his chest. “It took a further series of biopsies, guided by CT and ultrasound, to come to the conclusion that they were a type of tumour that is unresponsive to chemo but which grow similar to benign tumours, rather than fast-growing cancerous ones. I’d need major surgery to remove them,” explains Kevin.

Due to the complexity of the of surgeries required, Kevin would need to go abroad to London. His first consultation with the urologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital took place on the 10th of March 2020, only for Covid restrictions to disrupt his treatment. “My surgeon was uncontactable for many weeks as he happened to be the chief of surgery. It wasn’t until May that he made contact again.” Navigating his way from Brussels to Dublin and then onto London in the midst of lockdowns and isolation periods was challenging, but eventually his surgery journey began with a major operation. “First up was an RPLND (Retroperitoneal lymph node dissection) to remove enlarged lymph nodes at the back of my abdomen,” outlines Kevin. 

After his infection cleared in early 2018, and after a period of recovery, Paul’s stoma was reversed in late 2018. He’s sharing his story to encourage anybody experiencing any persistent symptoms to visit your GP and seek guidance. “Looking back, I totally did the wrong thing. I had just moved jobs and I told myself, you can’t be messing around taking time off work when you don’t even know if there’s something wrong with you. It could have been a lot worse for me and I’m so grateful to be able to tell my story to raise awareness of bowel cancer and to encourage people to know what the symptoms are and to get checked out if you’re experiencing any of them. I am so grateful for the treatment I received. I can’t commend the compassion and professionalism of the hospital staff enough. Life is good now. I took early retirement after I got better. I’m a stay-at-home dad and I do the school runs and I can honestly say, I’ve never been happier.”