- Simon Dix lost both his testicles to cancer right before meeting Sarah, the woman he “wanted to share life and build a family with”
- Dix said when his cancer returned, he offered her “the option to walk away,” but she stayed and supported him
- Now they’ve welcomed a son through IVF with sperm he previously froze, and he’s urging men to seek medical care even if they feel “embarrassment”
A man who lost both his testicles to cancer shares how he was able to build a family with his partner — and now he’s urging men to seek medical care even it causes “embarrassment.”
Simon Dix was just 36 when, in 2018, he noticed that his testicle was swelling. He initially found it “difficult to talk about,” Dix, now 42, said, according to The Daily Mail. But he eventually sought medical treatment.
The diagnosis was cancer, and doctors had to remove both of his testicles to give him the best chance of survival. Before removal, however, Dix froze his sperm, in case he ever wanted children.
At the end of 2018, Dix, a healthcare worker, met Sarah, a nurse practitioner, whom he says he “wanted to share life and build a family with.” But a few months after meeting Sarah, Dix said blood tests showed he would need to undergo chemotherapy.
The news, Dix says, was a “real shock and come down.”
“Sarah stood by me through the cancer,” Dix, who hails from the English county of Somerset, said. “I gave her the option to walk away and she wouldn’t. She was my rock, supporting me through the treatment.”
Once he was declared disease-free, they began exploring starting a family using his frozen sperm and IVF. As Dix explains: “When you face something life-threatening, you think hard about what you want out of life and it was to find someone to share life with to build a family with — that became more relevant once I met Sarah.”
The IVF process, he says, is “very invasive with all the injections and treatments, and there are several stages where it can falter.” But although the process “wasn’t easy,” on October 14, 2023, they welcomed their son, Finlay.
“He’s our miracle child,” said Dix.
‘We didn’t think we would be able to have children. We were hoping for the best but there was always a lot of uncertainty,” he explained. “The day Finlay was born was just complete joy and exhilaration. It was the happiest feeling, it’s the culmination of all our dreams coming true.”
Although Dix shared that at first, his cancer was “difficult to talk about,” he’s urging others who might notice similar symptoms to seek medical care.
“The sooner you get checked out, the better,” he advised. “You don’t want to literally die from embarrassment. It’s better to cope with the embarrassment than kick yourself if you leave it too late and give yourself less of a chance of surviving.”
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