Washington University student overcomes testicular cancer

While his friends crammed for exams in the library, Brendan Ziebarth spent much of his fall attached to an IV.

It was an unconventional semester.

Ziebarth, 20, is an unconventional student. When doctors told him that his testicular cancer had returned, he opted to stay at Washington University to finish out the term.

?It really appealed to me to stay at school and be with my friends, the community at Wash. U, and people who I could hang out with who would really love and support me,? Ziebarth said. ?They would definitely be worrying about me if I were at home.?

Home is Arlington, Va., where Ziebarth was when he first discovered a hardening on his right testicle last June.

The urgent care center told him everything was fine. ?I insisted I got a referral to the urologist anyway,? Ziebarth said. ?Because I knew something was wrong.?

The urologist confirmed his fears ? it was testicular cancer ? and booked him for surgery the following Monday.

Ziebarth, whose friends gave him the moniker ?Ace? after the successful surgery, returned to St. Louis in good spirits, eager to continue his studies in architecture.

He went to monthly checkups at Barnes-Jewish. August looked good, but in September, he got a call back from the hospital.

The cancer had returned.

HIGH CURE RATE

As cancers go, testicular cancer is remarkably curable.

The five-year survival rate for all men with testicular cancer is 95 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute. If the illness remains isolated to the testicle, the rate is 99 percent.

Even if the cancer re-emerges in the nearby lymph nodes, as in Ziebarth?s case, the rate is still in the 90s.

?The odds were in my favor and I had a great team,? he said.

Ziebarth began chemotherapy treatment under Dr. Bruce Roth, a specialist at Siteman Cancer Center in genitourinary cancers.

The treatment came in four three-week cycles. On the first five days of each cycle, Ziebarth went in for six hours of treatment. On the ninth and 16th days, he went in for an hour.

He opted for IV treatment as opposed to a surgically implanted port. ?To me, it was less of a constant reminder that I was sick,? Ziebarth said.

Ziebarth?s team tailored his regimen to how his body responded to certain drugs and steroids, but he still felt the sickness brought on by chemotherapy.

?I had constant heartburn,? he said. ?I would be hungry, but then I wouldn?t want to eat because of the heartburn.?

On day eight of cycle two, Ziebarth came down with a fever and went to the emergency room. That night, he had a CT scan, an MRI, a spinal tap and numerous swabs and cultures. The doctors told Ziebarth he probably had a sinus infection.

?The other thing we learned was that I was having allergic reaction to the chemo drug Bleomycin. It gave me an excruciating migraine,? Ziebarth said. ?My dad has them frequently, and I learned to empathize because it was unbearable.

?That was sort of my darkest hour.?

A SOCIAL NETWORK

But Ziebarth said school work helped distract him from the realities of chemotherapy. The university worked with him to set up a lighter load of six credits.

?I was able to take my Intro to Sexuality Studies work with me to the hospital during treatment,? Ziebarth said. ?It was a lot of reading, but it was fascinating to me.?

He even tried Skyping into class from the hospital one day. ?It was really awkward talking about sex with all these other patients listening. I was in a room with seven other people who were getting treated, and they all tended to be in their sixth decade or so,? he said.

For the younger crowd, Ziebarth made a Facebook group so loved ones could receive updates on his health and know when to offer a helping hand. Friends raced to get Tylenol and volunteered to drive him to appointments, helping to relieve the burden on Ziebarth?s local family members.

And when Ziebarth lost his hair, one of his fraternity brothers ? in an impaired state ? decided to shave his in solidarity. Others soon followed.

?I thought it was great,? Ziebarth said. He told his friends that, when asked about their newly buzzed heads, they should use the opportunity to raise awareness about men?s cancers.

Figures like Lance Armstrong have boosted attention toward testicular cancer in recent years. ?Teenagers and young 20-year-olds are much more aware because of high profile cases,? said Roth, who was on the team that treated Armstrong at Indiana University.

Roth says it?s important to instruct potential patients on checking themselves because a yearly physical may be too infrequent to catch a growing mass.

And while his patients may be young, Roth also suggests that they think long term. ?We recommend to bank sperm for patients going under chemotherapy.? Roth said many testicular cancer patients already have lower sperm counts, and some are sterile.

427 LIKES

Ziebarth received his last chemotherapy treatment in Arlington over winter break.

It was Christmas Eve.

?I went out to dinner with my family to celebrate what we were pretty sure would be the last treatment, then we had Christmas and New Year?s,? he said. ?It was great to be home.?

He got the news he had been waiting for back in St. Louis. ?Dr. Roth did his job, cured me,? Ziebarth said.

The whole time Ziebarth had wanted to remain stoic in the face of the disease. ?The heartburn, the migraines, they were inconsequential compared to the amount of suffering that so many other people go through,? he said.

So it didn?t really hit him until he called his parents and heard their relief.

?For the rest of the day, I was just sort of happy,? Ziebarth said.

If the Internet is any indication, his friends were happy too. Ziebarth?s Facebook status relaying the good news has garnered 427 likes and counting.

?I?m pretty sure it?s the only Facebook status I?ve ever made with more than 10 or 15 likes,? he said. ?It was very touching to see how many people were there for me.?

With peach fuzz now emerging from his scalp, Ziebarth is enjoying the spring semester. He enrolled in five architecture classes and plans to complete a minor in urban design.

The best reward? Ziebarth will use the scholarship money he saved by taking less coursework toward a summer abroad program in Florence, Italy.

?I?ll be living in an apartment down the street from the Duomo,? Ziebarth said. ?Doing studio by day, drinking wine all day and all night.?

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/washington-university-student-overcomes-testicular-cancer/article_b6ad1271-e074-51a5-a2d8-c2ecae76ee14.html

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