Steve Friedman is used to hearing a few snickers when he talks to teenagers about his battle with testicular cancer.
The message is deadly serious, though, and not a story that the typical high school student likes to hear: the painful surgery, the chemotherapy that threatened to leave him infertile, the feelings of emasculation. Yet with testicular cancer striking most often in young men, Friedman believes it's an important message to tell.
Ben Weiss, left, Pete Glaros and Ben Layman, all 17, laugh during a light moment in a speech on testicular cancer.
(Photos Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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"It's a very curable disease," he said. "It's all about early detection and early treatment, and that could save a lot of men's lives."
Friedman, a 37-year-old from Chevy Chase, strolled onto the auditorium stage yesterday morning at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia and asked his audience of 12th-grade boys a question: Who plays football? Several students shouted and raised their hands. Basketball? More hollers.
"You guys play through pain, right?" he said. He pointed to a student wearing a shirt that read, "Whatever it is, put some ice on it."
"If you have a pain in your testicles, you can't put ice on it. That's not going to fix it. You can't go to your coach and say, 'Wrap it,' " he said. "Lack of communication in this situation can kill you guys."
Although breast cancer is often discussed openly -- October is national Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- testicular cancer remains a largely taboo topic, despite its being the most common form of cancer for men ages 15 to 35, according to the Testicular Cancer Resource Center. The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 9,000 cases will be diagnosed in the United States this year, and that about 360 men will die from it.
Cancer survivors, though, including such athletes as Olympic champion figure skater Scott Hamilton, former baseball player John Kruk and Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, are working to draw more attention to the cause.
Friedman's speech was organized by the Ulman Cancer Research Fund for Young Adults and Hadassah, a nonprofit Jewish women's group.
"We get the impression that as young men, we're invincible," Wilde Lake Principal Restia Whitaker told the students. "But in all of our lives, we go on and find out we're not invincible."
