18-year-old knew he was ill — then he took a pregnancy test and it gave doctors a clue that saved his life
It is always said that where there is a will, there is a way. Sometimes, this will seem a little crazy and might also be something you never expected to do. Nevertheless, if it works, it works and when it really “works” in favor of your health, you would likely not say no. A young man named Byron Geldard, then 18, did something unusual and crazy that ended up saving his life, per The Telegraph. The teenager had been feeling pain in his side and after analysis, his doctors astonishingly suggested that he should try using a pregnancy test to figure out his condition, per The Daily Mail. Turns out, it helped him catch a life-threatening illness and begin treatment in due time.
Geldard visited a doctor concerning the pain he had been feeling. “Because I was going to the gym, it was just put down to muscle pain,” he recalled. Unfortunately, the scans revealed he had a tumor growing in his body that was spreading to his lungs. “I was told that it was cancer, but they weren’t sure what type,” the teenager remarked. He was referred to the Teenage Cancer Trust unit in Cambridge, UK, where they asked him to try something unusual — a pregnancy test. One can imagine how weirded out the teenage boy must have felt.
“They didn’t know what type of cancer I had. I could have had four or five different types,” he noted. Because it was something serious, Geldard gave it a shot. “There I was with a positive pregnancy test and something growing inside of me. I thought I was going to end up in a documentary,” he remarked. So why a pregnancy test of all things? It turned out that there was quite a logical reason behind it. Pregnancy tests detect a hormone called “beta human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG),” produced by the developing placenta. Dr Danish Mazhar, Consultant Medical Oncologist at Cambridge University Hospitals, said, “The pregnancy hormone (HCG) is often (but not always) produced by testicular tumors.” He also noted that it can be used for diagnosis and monitoring.
“In cases where the cancer has spread, the level of the HCG can be very high,” he explained. Dr. Phillip Ho from Kelsey Seybold Clinic noted that pregnancy tests coming positive for men can be a “sign of cancer,” per KPRC. Right enough, the pregnancy test came back positive, indicating that Geldard had stage 4 testicular cancer. He started rigorous chemotherapy and you’d be surprised at how many pregnancy-like procedures he witnessed. “Throughout my cycles of chemo, the hospital would monitor the ‘pregnancy hormone’ through blood tests,” the teenager noted. “When I was about to go into surgery, I had to have an epidural like a pregnant woman; it was all very weird,” Geldard remarked.
“It’s really hard to describe how it felt, you don’t come to terms with what’s going on, you just go along with it. It took me a while to realize what was happening to me,” he mentioned. A few months later, Geldard was cancer-free and went on to become an ambassador for The Teenage Cancer Trust. Speaking of the questionable yet life-saving method to detect cancer, it was noted that pregnancy tests had been used to diagnose testicular cancer for around six years. “It is relatively unknown, as patients don’t really talk about it. It is used for people of all ages, but the results are analysed in conjunction with scans and blood tests,” a spokesperson said.