Chris Hughes was overwhelmed after his on-air testicular exam saved his brother’s life
Image Source/ Heat World
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The former Love Island star underwent the demonstration live on This Morning in 2018, and the broadcast helped his brother Ben when he found a lump and was later diagnosed with testicular cancer.
Appearing on the ITV breakfast show on Monday (28.09.20), Chris reflected:
‘It was quite overwhelming to begin with.
‘I saw the press articles surrounding it and I was thinking,”Why is this such a story?”
‘Because in my head I suppose I was doing it to raise awareness, that’s what I wanted to do, but I didn’t think it would be such a crazy story that Ben, someone who is so close to me, it saved his life’.
The two siblings have joined forces for new documentary Me, My Brother and our Balls, and they have both decided to be candid about their issues with fertility.
Ben – who feared he could only have a 20% chance of his sperm producing a child – said:
‘[Sharing this] was really just to try and raise awareness, not just for testicular cancer but what could possibly lead on afterwards.
‘I’ve seen some really good specialists over the last few months, just coming out of lockdown, and so my chances are now looking a lot better than they were. And I’m just really grateful for that.
‘I got referred to another specialist down in London. I’m now on a completely different medication to what I was initially, after sort of getting over cancer.
‘And that is now starting to take real good effect and we are starting to see the changes in how I feel and we’ve got more of a chance, and they’re telling me there’s not a percentage on this. It is looking positive, so that’s what we’re really happy about’.
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Meanwhile, Chris has also battled his own issues with fertility and he wants to continue to raise awareness.
He added:
‘It’s called a varicocele. I’ve got that on my left testicle and I’ve got a hydrocele on my right one, but my varicocele was just quite a strong varicocele really.
‘It took three operations to deal with it. It’s like a build up of veins and it takes a lot of oxygen from the testicle and it surrounds my left side… If I was to have a hot bath where everything relaxes it looks a bit like a brain…
‘They come from my kidneys, I’ve had them all coiled, like metal coils around the kidney in the most recent operation, and it just kills them off essentially because they can hamper your fertility. It is the main cause of male fertility as well…
‘I’m okay [now]… It took time to recover from but that is okay and I got some positive news within the documentary with my fertility, which is a weird one, because it’s not something you can shout about with everything that Ben’s going through’.
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