On the Other Side of Testicular Cancer – Helping Kids with Cancer - Season 2, Episode 9

Byron Geldard learned he had testicular cancer at age 18. He survived and went on to a career with Young Lives Versus Cancer, a charity in England where Byron is the Fundraising Engagement Manager. He’s also a stand-up comedian who uses comedy to talk about cancer and survival. Find out how Byron moved on from his testicular cancer diagnosis to help children and other young people who have cancer.  Visit the Max Mallory Foundation for more information on testicular cancer and to hear this podcast and other episodes of Don't Give Up on Testicular Cancer.

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On the Other Side of Testicular Cancer: Helping Kids with Cancer, with Byron Geldard, season 2, episode 9

JOYCE: Welcome to Don't Give Up on Testicular Cancer, where cancer survivors, caregivers, and others touched by cancer share their stories. The Max Mallory Foundation presents this podcast in honor and memory of Max Mallory, who died at age 22 from testicular cancer. I'm your host, Joyce Lofstrom, a young adult and adult cancer survivor, and Max's mom. Hi, this is Joyce, and today I welcome Byron Geldard. He's a stand-up comedian, a testicular cancer survivor, and the fundraising engagement manager for Young Lives vs. Cancer in England. He will tell us a lot about that as we keep talking. He was diagnosed with stage four testicular cancer in 2015, and he'll share his story with us, including the work he's doing now with this important charity. So, Byron, I'm so glad you could join me.

BYRON: Yeah, I'm so excited to be here, and thank you very much for having me on.

JOYCE: Sure. So just let's start out with your story. Tell us about your testicular cancer journey, especially at stage four. So that's advanced. So tell us what happened.

BYRON: Yes. So essentially, I was 18 at the time and I was going--it was summertime I remember distinctl--and I went sort of partying in Greece in this island called Kavos and I was there, and I thought I just had a really bad hangover because I had a pain in my side. And I thought because I was like going to gym a lot and things like that, that it was just pain from the gym. And I went to the doctors, and they just said, oh yeah, that's what it is. And then as time progressed, I went back to the doctors and they sort of checked over me again and they said, they sent me to the hospital and then they did a scan of my abdomen and they said, oh, you haven't got a hangover. You've got a tumor and it's spread up to your lungs and you've got cancer.

So that's what happened initially. So that really sort of sparked this whole sort of journey of immediately starting treatment where I had to have several different types of chemotherapy. I can't remember exactly what they were. I think it was cisplatin to topazide and something else. And I had about four cycles. So that meant I was in hospital. I went from partying in Kavos, I think a couple of weeks before, to being in hospital in sort of a life-critical situation at the age of 18, which, one, I didn't know that that could happen at such a young age. And two, it was just so, it was so bizarre because I always associated cancer with, you know, being older and sort of knowing that you were so sick, and I didn't. So it was a bit of a strange time.

So yeah, I underwent the chemotherapy, I was in hospital, I think, pretty much for two, I think it was two weeks at a time, where I was just constantly attached to some sort of bag that I had to wheel around, like on a drip, either on fluids or on chemotherapy drugs. And obviously, after that, I've got, well, thankfully, my tumor sort of shrunk in my abdomen and the tumors on my lungs sort of disappeared due to the drugs I was given. And I had surgery to remove the mass in my abdomen and I think tumors on my lymph nodes. And then after that, I was sort of better and I've been going in for sort of checkups ever since, but I haven't you know, touch wood, nothing's ever come back.

And then after that, I sort of went more directly helping what I wanted to give back to the charity and to the charities that had helped me at the time and supported me and my family. So I started volunteering for them. I started doing talks and trying to educate people with my peers at that age that, you know, you can get, you can get cancer and it's not--I think cancer is such sort of a buzzword that immediately you think about all of these things that are wrong--but I think it's important for you to know that something's wrong because you can only do something when you know that you've been diagnosed or something's been identified. So I just wanted to share my thoughts and opinions to different people and different peers about my experiences and how important it is for some of any age to go and get themselves checked out at the doctors and to make sure that everything's okay. And if things aren't okay, in some respects, that's a good thing because that's the first step to getting things on the right track to get getting you better or recovery.

JOYCE: So you were very young, I mean, 18 is young to have any kind of cancer, but it's a common age, I guess, for testicular cancer. And I know when we connected on LinkedIn and kind of emailed back and forth or texted for a while, you mentioned how much this charity helped you during your treatment, and you just mentioned your family as well. So can you talk about what this, the charity is, what Young Lives versus Cancer, I mean, what did they do? How did they help you?

BYRON: So Young Lives Versus Cancer is, well…I was sitting on a hospital bed at the time and someone from Young Lives Versus Cancer came in and they had a different name. They used to be called Click Sergeant. This social worker came in and said, I'm from Click Sergeant. Immediately, I thought it was some repair guy for the computer that wasn't working. And then they sort of explained to me that, oh, no, we're from the charity. I'm a social worker. I'm here to help. Do you need any assistance? How are you coping with everything?

Because often what happens is, as I'm sure you know, when someone gets diagnosed with cancer, is that the person who's got the cancer is sort of like the epicenter or the eye of the storm of everything happening to them. But there are ripples that come off that and affects immediate friends and family. And it's just mobilizing all of those types of people and getting people to sort of work together and understand what, what's happening and how they can help effectively.

So Young Lives Versus Cancer, they, have a social care team that will come and sit with the family and talk through sort of the processes of what's going to happen and what different members of the staff at the hospital are doing and what the process is. Because cancer really—as with any sort of disease within a hospital--is a process. There are certain steps that are taken. So they can sort of talk to you about everything that's happening from a social side of thing. And then also because it's very expensive, I don't know how it is in the US in regard to going to hospital and things like that all the time, [but] in the UK, there's quite a few hidden costs to cancer. So the hospital might be hundreds of miles away from where you live. So this is an added burden on families and parents for them to take their child to this hospital, they might have full-time jobs. So it often means that one parent will have to quit their job to be able to look after their child. So this means that there's a massive hit to the overall income of the household. So how Young Lives versus Cancer helped with that is that they provided a grant to help sort of push back the financial instability. So that's what they did in my case. And then they've also got these places called Homes from Home, where you can stay that are near to your treatment center or near to the hospital so that it's like a house essentially and it's a five minute walk from the hospital, and you can stay there for as long as you want for free whilst you're on treatment. So that's what the charity does really in a nutshell. So how they supported me was mainly through the social side of things and helping my friends and family understand what was going on and helping me apply for different grants and things like that that was available to me and to my family so that there weren’t any financial difficulties when I was on treatment.

JOYCE: You touch on a lot of really important points, Byron. One is being at a distance from your home to wherever the hospital is that you have to go for treatment. I know we did that with my son, Max, and we were three hours from home. Yeah. And we worked, you know, his dad and I worked as much as we could. I mean, we had the type of jobs where we could do a lot remotely. And this is almost six years ago.

But it is a burden and it's hard because you want to focus on your child. But you also have to keep your household and your lives going. So I think it's wonderful that this charity has that option for people going through cancer. And then the house, you probably know this in America, one of the big houses like that is Ronald McDonald House. They have locations all over the country. And a lot of the hospitals now have started to do that as well. You know, sometimes they have a room on the floor, pediatrics mostly. But I think I just, I'd like to hear this from you because I'm not sure people, everybody knows about these options that are out there. So, you know, I think the cost, I don't know all the details about the National Health Service in the UK, you know, That's the other thing you don't want to have to worry about when you're trying to survive cancer is what it's going to cost. So I guess you have a lot of good factors there in what you're doing with the charity. So what do you think for you was the biggest challenge as you went through your testicular cancer?

BYRON: I don't know. It's very different from when I was going through cancer to what reflecting on it, what it is now. I think the biggest challenge was really set aside sort of my personal sort of inhibitions and things that I wanted to do at the time and weren't able to do but I think the most difficult thing that I found going through cancer is the effect that it has on the family, the family dynamic. Just everybody wants to be involved and so many people want to help but they just they don't know how to and I think that that was the biggest challenge of just explaining to people you know almost it's okay if you don't know how to help I know that you're there for me or for my family to assist in everything but you don't have to physically be doing things like every day like I was almost like, I don't know, a bit of a cancer celebrity in my local community. And there were just people just like rolling up to my door all the time. And although I know their heart was in the right place and it was really nice of them to do so, it did get a bit annoying. It was just like the priest--I remember like the priest turning up--and I was just like, I've never spoken to the priest. Why is the priest here?

JOYCE: Oh, that's funny, though. Oh, gosh. Yeah, you're right, though. Boy, how do they even know you if you haven't spoken to them? So I know you're a stand-up comedian. Tell us about that.

BYRON: Yeah, so I really got into that when I was bored. And I used to write a lot of blogs and things like that online when I was on treatment. And I met a few famous comedians in the UK when I was on treatment and I sort of got talking to them about what I wanted to do and it was sort of a form of expression because I think with comedy a lot of the time is that the harsher the subject or not harsh but the darker the subjects, the lighter the sparks sort of the brighter the sparks burn in regards to misdirection and different ways you can take it and I think with cancer because people just hear the word cancer and they forget that there's a person behind that that it's really important to be able to sort of express your feelings and you still have the same goals and same drives as someone else of that age. And it was really just to express that. And I mean, especially with testicular cancer, there was so many times where I had to take my dad to the sperm banking clinic and things like that. And it was just really awkward situations to be in. So yeah, I really got into it from that. And then from then on, I've always kept doing it, kept public speaking. Although I'm not like Kevin Hart or something like that, I really enjoy doing it. And I think that that sort of opportunity that I had, I think it's just a form of expression and an outlet to be able to talk about your problems in not such a negative way you know, cancer is such a heavy subject and it should be treated as such, but it doesn't have to be so difficult and so hard to talk about. And I think comedy opens those doors up a lot easier than other things, other traditional methods of talking about things do.

JOYCE:  I agree with you. It's you have to be able to laugh in general and laugh at yourself, you know, just in life. But I think going through the cancer treatments to it, it helps a lot. So are you still performing? Are you still doing stand-up or public speaking?

BYRON: Yeah, I'm doing I've got a show that I'm doing in April at the Cambridge Fringe, and I'm taking a show up in August. to the Edinburgh Fringe. I don't know if you know about the Edinburgh Fringe. It's a big performing arts festival that we have. It's in Scotland. So I'm doing that. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to doing that and performing. It's called, a little plug, it's called A Village Idiot. So yeah, if you're in Edinburgh, come and take a look.

JOYCE: Okay, so you were 18 when you had testicular cancer. So what message do you have for young men, teenagers who might think they have testicular cancer or just want to know how to be aware of it?

BYRON: Yeah, I think the main message is if you've got any doubts, just to go and get checked out. Because I had so many people sort of message me, afterwards and just ask me questions about different lumps and things that they've found. And I'd always say, go and get it checked out. It's not going to be any worse than what your mind is going around. And what I always say to people, the first step is the best step in regard to if there is anything, hiding away from things is only ever going to make it worse. And nine times out of 10, it probably really isn't going to be anything, but it's always best just to make sure it's nothing sinister, you know. Yes.

JOYCE: You talked about Young Lives versus Cancer in the work you're doing now. So how can people in the UK find Young Lives versus Cancer? Do you have a URL or just tell us how to find it?

BYRON: Yeah, so you can find us on social media, we're just YoungLivesVsCancer or on the internet, you can find us. We used to be called Click Sergeant, but now we're called YoungLivesVsCancer. So we're on all social media platforms. And if you give us a Google, we should pop up straight away. So if you need anything, you can message me. Anyway, I should be on call, so feel free to reach out. But yeah.

JOYCE: And I'll just say for Young Lives versus Cancer, versus is the VS period. Correct. People have that spelling. So what's next on your agenda, Byron? What's ahead for you in the future? Anything you want to share?

BYRON: What's ahead? Well, I'm really looking forward to doing my comedy stuff. That's great. I'm looking forward to forging a career in the charity sector, in the charity space, and trying to give back to the organizations that have helped me and to help other people that are in a similar situation to me. So that's really where my head's at, at the moment. It's just trying to help other people and guide them to lead, have a better life in the face of problems such as cancer, so yeah.

JOYCE: Okay, and my last question, if you had a song that you just have to sing along with when you hear it, what is that song, favorite song?

BYRON: Favorite song of mine?

JOYCE: I really like… Yeah, that you like to sing along with, like it comes on the radio or in your playlist and it's like, oh I have to really just sing along.

BYRON: I sing a lot, so right it depends how embarrassing we're going here. There's quite a few I really like, ‘Live Forever’ by Oasis, uh that's one, I don't know whether you know that one, or I like ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears, that's fun.

JOYCE: I'm a big Beatles fan, so I sing along to most Beatles songs.

BYRON: Both my parents are Scots, so it’s a big Beatles house.

JOYCE: Oh really? Okay, that's good. I have some photos my cousin took when they were in Kansas City in the ‘60s, so those are my prized possessions. Well, Byron, I really appreciate your time and sharing your story with us and your work with Young Lives versus Cancer. And, you know, maybe I can have you come back in a few months or so and tell us more about the charity and your success in comedy.

BYRON: Oh, Joyce, it's been absolutely wonderful. And thank you so much for reaching out and having me on.

JOYCE: All right. Take care. Thank you for joining me today on Don't Give Up on Testicular Cancer from the Max Mallory Foundation. Go to MaxMalloryFoundation.com to learn more about testicular cancer, to donate and send your suggestions for guests on the podcast. And join me next time for Don't Give Up on Testicular Cancer.

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