FOR MONTHS Frank Scanlon had been feeling unwell. He had been suffering from constant colds, flus and chest infections. During Christmas 1996, the then 26-year-old returned to Cork for his brother's wedding.
"I started coughing up specks of blood the morning of the wedding," he says. A visit to a GP in early January confirmed the worst.
"She sent me for a chest X-ray and that showed up tumours in my lungs," he says. "Within an hour or two, I was in hospital."
But the tumours on the lungs were only secondary cancers. An ultrasound examination revealed that Scanlon had testicular cancer.
"My father had died of cancer in 1991 so it was a big shock for me and my family and my fiancée. We were supposed to get married in March and that had to be put on hold."
But as the initial shock wore off, Scanlon went into "fix it" mode.
"I quickly got to: How are we going to fix this thing? How am I going to get better? Just tell me what I need to do. What drugs do I need to take? I just want to get better, I have my whole life ahead of me.
"The first treatment was surgery. They removed the testicle and then they gave me a chance to recover and then I was whacked with chemotherapy."
The removal of a testicle had no psychological impact, he says.
"It obviously was the source of the cancer and if it hadn't been treated, it would have killed me. When you are faced with those options, there is no real choice."
Scanlon made a complete recovery, eventually got married in October 1997 and even ran the Dublin city marathon two years ago.