Hi Conor,

I just wanted to reach out to you because I have read your posts going back to your introduction to this forum now six years ago and I just want to say what an inspiration of courage and positivity you have shown and continue to show to others here, almost none of whom will have to go through what you have dealt with. What blows my mind about your case is how most of the guys who really suffer the most are ones with aggressive primary extragonadal tumors.. You were a stage ONE seminoma (an open and shut case, right??) and you have been to hell and back, radiation, 3xBEP, HDC and stem cell rescue, and brain/spinal fluid mets that is virtually unheard of for seminoma as far as I know. I honestly can't even wrap my brain around how all of this even happened. Have the oncologists you've worked with ever tried to explain to you why this disease kept showing its ugly head??

I want you to know that even though this is the first time I've communicated with you, I have been following your story and every day I am hoping for a post from you saying that they nuked this leptomegingeal bull**** with radiation and your six years battle concludes in victory, you seem like an incredibly nice guy with a lot of class, and you provide true inspiration for other guys going through this disease and the unique challenges of being a young man confronted with cancer.

I'm going into my third cycle of BEP next month... I had my right I/O at the end of February, it was initially diagnosed as a stage 1 classical seminoma, no lymphovascular invasion, clear of margins, no invasion of tunica/epididymis, but from my first CT scan put me at stage 2B with a cluster of enlarged retroperitoneal nodes, one as large as 2.8 cm, as well as a femoral node at 1.4 cm that might not be related.

My whole oncology team at Dana-Farber seems to look at me as an open and shut case, but knowing your story I know that you can never look at it that way, and 99% is not 100%.

All I can say is man am I ever rooting for you, and I know I'm not the only one. Please continue to keep up your updates, because we all care big time.

Ben