My name is Michael and I’m an African-American male living in the United States. I have always been a very sporty person and my main hobbies were ice hockey and basketball. I then picked up on running and I was running 5km’s regularly. It was the end of 2017 you could basically say that I stopped all physical exercise, I just wanted and needed a break. I did put on a little weight, going from around 145lbs to like 160lbs, but that was not a problem. It was in February when I first started noticing that I was dribbling urine. It would happen during intense or innocuous moments like playing video games or getting out the car that could set off the dribbling. Then within a month or two it got worse it was like literally every day, constantly every day. That was when I first thought that I need to go and visit my general practitioner. In February I paid my GP a visit. He basically checked around my scrotum, penis and my abdomen. He asked if I had any back pain stiffness, which at the time I didn’t. After some lifestyle and daily routine questions he made me an appointment with the urologist.

It was August 2019 that I went to see the urologist. She checked my urine, did an ultrasound and checked to see if I could empty my bladder. She prescribed me the drug Oxybutynin (used for urinary incontinence and frequency), which she said would help with the dribbling urine. There were a few side effects, I was getting severe dry mouth and acid reflux. I went to see her a second time and could report that it was working to some extent and things had improved with the stress incontinence, but the acid reflux and dry mouth were a real problem, so I decided to stop taking it.

It was around November 2019 when I started working at Amazon as a warehouse team member.  Unfortunately, the urine dribbling came back, severely, from just picking up packages. Also, I started to require the bathroom a lot more. At the same time, I started having stiffness in my back, the sides and the hip area but I had put that down to the physical exertions of lifting and moving boxes.

Soon afterwards, when I was showering, I would notice small bumps on the side of my groin area. I told my dad but he dismissed it as nothing to worry about – it was probably a rash or something. I also had a feeling, after peeing, that I had not emptied my bladder properly and my erections were not as strong as they usually were. It was about March 2020 that I started to have Covid like symptoms. I was having trouble breathing and getting the chills. I usually don’t really get sick a lot and that was probably the sickest I had ever got. I quit my job at Amazon as I was terrified of catching it.

Fast forward to summer 2020 and even though I had lost about 9 or 10lb, I had started online schooling for college and I didn’t get sick again after that so I was just getting on with life. Towards the end of summer, however when I did go to the toilet, I had a very weak flow and some discolouration. After all this I did finally decide to go and see my urologist. My father had come with me to the consultation. I was laying down but I was looking at the Imaging screen that they were looking at and basically I could see the left side. I didn’t know exactly which organ part or what it was but the left side, you know, it was normal, but then on the right side there was just a big tumor. Then I saw the worried reaction on the nurse’s face. Afterwards they spoke to my father but not to me. I knew something was wrong but they reassured me otherwise.

In early December, just after that visit, that I started to really get fatigued very easily and my leg would go completely numb at times. I asked my father about it, I asked him for transparency and he just denied everything. The doctors had prescribed me antibiotics. Rather than helping I started getting sharp pains in my legs, my ribs and my shoulder. My shoulder in particular was feeling very heavy and my chest was tight. I was even having heart palpitations. When I would visit the hospital they would draw blood, a lot of blood but they never told me the results. Even when I called them, they would tell me everything was alright.