(FoxNews)
Taylor Tyree was just browsing the social media site Reddit when he came upon another user’s (rather graphic) picture of his testicle, which had just been removed due to cancer.
Tyree, 21, perused the comments associated with the picture and saw the original poster, a Redditor by the name of “uniballer,” described the symptoms he had ahead of being diagnosed with testicular cancer. Tyree realized he had the same symptoms.
“I went to the comments and was reading through and he was talking about symptoms and what not … it was like, wait, I have something similar to this,” Tyree told FoxNews.com.
Tyree, a student at Colorado School of Mines, went to the student health center for an exam. He got an ultrasound, CAT scan and X-ray, and was told he had a large cancerous mass in his left testicle.
“It was about four months after I first started noticing the symptoms, so I’m really lucky that it actually didn’t spread to anywhere else,” Tyree said.
Tyree says Reddit “saved his life” because it prompted him to go to a doctor, rather than waiting for months before getting checked out. He even communicated with “uniballer” throughout his diagnosis and his surgery to have his testicle removed.
“He’s a really nice guy, he’s been very helpful,” Tyree said. “He said I should talk to other people going through this, it will help with recovery, and I agree.”
Tyree had surgery on Friday but is looking forward to getting back to school. His Reddit post has garnered more than 1,000 comments, and Tyree hopes he can help others in similar situations.
“I still have, like, a few hundred comments to go through, but I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can and if anyone has any questions, they can message me and I can try to help them as well,” Tyree said.
WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT -This is the original post that Tyree saw on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com
User uniballer commented to say: I’m 34. Median age for diagnosis is 33, which was surprising. My nut starting swelling about a month ago. After some research it looked like it could be some strange blockage or whatnot and probably not worth a trip to the doctor. Testicular cancer can be accompanied with lower back pain which I did not have. It was dumb not to go right away but it was a strange thing. My nut was getting bigger and harder but there was no pain associated with it. I learned later that no pain is actually a bad sign. If there was pain it was probably a torsion (twisting).
After a month I decided to get seen and, after a fun ultrasound with a grandma, I was seeing a urologist. Then the next day I was in the O.R. and now I’m here. I’ve read that some guys will find small lumps on their nut and some have the swelling. My best advice is to not be stupid and get seen as soon as you suspect any issue.