Taylor Tyree was just browsing the social media site Reddit when he came upon another user’s (rather graphic) picture of his testicle, which had just been removed due to cancer.
Tyree, 21, perused the comments associated with the picture and saw the original poster, a Redditor by the name of “uniballer,” described the symptoms he had ahead of being diagnosed with testicular cancer. Tyree realized he had the same symptoms.
“I went to the comments and was reading through and he was talking about symptoms and what not … it was like, wait, I have something similar to this,”
Tyree, a student at Colorado School of Mines, went to the student health center for an exam. He got an ultrasound, CAT scan and X-ray, and was told he had a large cancerous mass in his left testicle.
“It was about four months after I first started noticing the symptoms, so I’m really lucky that it actually didn’t spread to anywhere else,” Tyree said.
Tyree says Reddit “saved his life” because it prompted him to go to a doctor, rather than waiting for months before getting checked out. He even communicated with “uniballer” throughout his diagnosis and his surgery to have his testicle removed.
“He’s a really nice guy, he’s been very helpful,” Tyree said. “He said I should talk to other people going through this, it will help with recovery, and I agree.”
Tyree had surgery on Friday but is looking forward to getting back to school. His Reddit post has garnered more than 1,000 comments, and Tyree hopes he can help others in similar situations.
“I still have, like, a few hundred comments to go through, but I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can and if anyone has any questions, they can message me and I can try to help them as well,” Tyree said.
Source: Fox news