A 21-year-old man who went to the doctor for a persistent cough was mortified to learn he had a rare form of testicular cancer, but nothing could prepare him for what came next: a diagnosis that proved to be downright bizarre.
Anthony Bianco, now 51, was in his final year of university when symptoms began creeping in. What started as a minor fever spiraled into something much more alarming.
Follow-tests came back positive for pregnancy.
Anthony Bianco recalled how he went from complaining of a cough, to being diagnosed with cancer, to testing positive for pregnancy
Image credits: Anthony Bianco
“I was burning the candle at both ends,” Anthony recalled.
“I had these recurring symptoms of getting a slight cough and a fever, but it would go away and I would think nothing of it.
However, the cough progressively got worse, becoming like a smoker’s cough, even though I’m a non-smoker and have never smoked in my life.”
His doctor wasn’t initially concerned, but Anthony’s past history of pneumonia led to a precautionary X-ray that would change everything for him.
Anthony stared at the chest X-ray in disbelief, watching as the doctor pulled it up on the screen.
Dominating the image was what he described as a dense, ominous white cloud. The 11-by-15 centimeter mass all but confirmed that something was seriously wrong.
Anthony couldn’t understand why a cancer located entirely in his chest would be classified as testicular cancer
Image credits: Getty Images
Sadly for Anthony, that wouldn’t be the first bizarre diagnosis by his doctors. They then suspected lymphoma, and performed surgery to remove a lymph node from Anthony’s neck, but the results came back negative.
It wasn’t until a biopsy of the mass itself that doctors were finally able to give a diagnosis.
He had testicular cancer.
The diagnosis made little sense to Anthony, as the tumor was in his chest, not his privates. His mind initially raced to the worst-case scenario, fearing the illness had spread everywhere and that his chances of survival were slim.
However, further scans confirmed the cancer was confined entirely to his chest.
Things took a turn for the worse when his blood tests came back positive for pregnancy
Image credits: Annie Spratt
Anthony’s doctors then explained what was truly happening to him.
He had a rare cancer called primary mediastinal non-seminomatous germ cell tumor (PMNSGCT). The illness originates from germ cells, which are usually found in the reproductive organs.
These cells, however, can sometimes migrate during fetal development, lodging themselves in other parts of the body, such as the chest, where they later develop into cancer.
It was precisely because his cancer took the form of germ cell tumors that they behaved unusually, something Anthony was reminded of during blood tests.
“My blood results were showing up as positive on a pregnancy test like I was two weeks pregnant,” he recalled.
His exceedingly rare type of cancer produces the same hormones that are liberated into the bloodstream by pregnant women
Image credits: Anthony Bianco
“My first response was, ‘Is it mine?’” Anthony explained, trying to find humour to deal with the “hand grenade,” as he put it, that had just been thrown into his life.
But no. Anthony wasn’t pregnant. What happened is that his tumor was releasing the same hormones and proteins into his bloodstream that are used to determine when women are pregnant.
Image credits: Getty Images
Beyond the surreal lab results, Anthony was dealing with a very real and dangerous illness. His tumor had grown aggressively, wrapping around his heart and lungs.
“It was interfering with my blood flow,” he explained.
“Just before I was diagnosed, it had started pushing the veins against my chest so you could clearly see them appear in a spider-like pattern. That was the only sort of physical indication of it, as well as a swelling in my neck.”
Anthony was declared cancer-free by 1995, and by 2000 he was considered fully cured
Image credits: Ahmed
Seeing how close to his vital organs the tumor was, Anthony’s doctors opted to forgo surgery in favor of aggressive chemotherapy.
Anthony responded well, and the tumor shrank dramatically. By late 1995, it was difficult to tell whether the illness was still active or just scar tissue, and Anthony was declared cancer-free.
Image credits: Anthony Bianco
By 2000, he had officially reached the five-year remission milestone.
One thing still bothered him. Anthony wanted to be a father, and was scared the ordeal had completely erased his chances.
“My doctor said it was possible I could be left infertile, but frankly at the time I just wanted to just get things going with treatment,” he recalled.
Anthony hopes that his testimony raises awareness and funding for rare forms of cancer like his
Image credits: Authority Magazine
Nowadays Anthony is the proud father of two daughters, aged 11 and 14, and hopes his story raises awareness and funding for others in his situation.
“There’s no research directed at rare cancers, and you basically get the dregs of other research from other more common ones, which unfortunately leads to poor survival rates. If you have cancer as a young adult, you’re a statistical outlier, and it’s usually a rare one,” he said.
Calling his cancer rare might even be an understatement.
“My doctor said I had a better chance of winning the lottery than getting this kind of cancer,” he said.
“And I checked. The lottery odds are one in 8.5 million and this cancer is one in 10 million, which annoys me because I still haven’t won the lottery.”
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