The GAA partnered with MOvember Ireland in 2015 to raise awareness about cancer, especially amongst our male members. To mark World Cancer Awareness Day (February 4) we are revisiting the inspirational story we carried on GAA.ie last year.

**It features Jason Hughes, a former Monaghan senior footballer and multiple championship winner with his club Castleblayney Faughs, where he now helps to drive their annual ‘Operation TransFAUGHmation’ as part of their award winning Healthy Club Project. In conversation with the Community & Health team he talks candidly about how he overcame cancer with some help from his friends.

By Jason Hughes

It was in December of 1997 when I first realised that I had picked it up, and left it alone.

I don’t like saying that as I don’t like giving the impression you can leave these things alone, I know that now in hindsight.

I was a young footballer at the time and just after getting a wee run in the Monaghan senior County panel, and things were going well for me. However it was after I had played in a challenge match in February that things started to dawn on me. I had broken my wrist and I ended up going to the doctor to get it checked out due to the swelling of it and it becoming bigger and bigger. Waiting for the doctor, I was sitting around when I picked up this leaflet on testicular cancer. I started reading it and as I did, I just had this thing in the back of my mind that there were recognisable things in the leaflet.

I got my wrist checked out eventually by the doctor, but being a typical fella at the time, just 22 years of age, I chickened out. The wrist was checked out, but I didn’t say anything to the doctor about anything else and went back playing football.

It was later in July of that year when I eventually had to throw the towel in as I was in that much pain with it. It was during a club championship match at the quarter-final stage that I got the slightest wee flick or touch of it that sent this sensational pain through my stomach and right up into my chest and everything.

At that point it had been six months since I’d been in the hospital and I had had it in the back my mind that I had testicular cancer, but I was just too embarrassed to admit it.

I didn’t want to admit it to anyone. At the end of the day, it’s a private area of your own body and I just didn’t want anyone else to know about it. In fact, even when I went into hospital, I did the wrong thing again as I was telling people I had stomach cancer. I was uneducated at the time and didn’t want people to know the full situation about it. I wasn’t educated about the condition, and looking back, it was just embarrassing for me and something I couldn’t accept.

When I went into hospital in July when I was diagnosed, the first thing I really had to do was realise there was nothing I could do about it. I just had to accept it, deal with it and just be positive about it from the start.

Having never heard about testicular cancer until I read that brochure in the hospital that time, at having not heard a thing about it at all at the age of 22, maybe I was uneducated about the whole thing. But I wasn’t aware of it at the time to be honest. I was young, I was in great shape, in relation to my fitness and everything from a sporting point of view, and I thought I was in great shape at the time. I felt invincible so I was thinking ‘how could I get it?’

It never crossed my mind that there was or could be anything wrong with me, so it was hard to believe that I had it.

Then somebody in the hospital when I got in there started talking to me, and I developed some great friends that had cancer themselves, people I still keep in contact with now. They encouraged me to talk about it. To be open about it. So I did that.

I started talking to all my friends about it. I just started getting out there and opening up and as soon as I did that, I was a different man and I said to myself, ‘I can deal with this’.

I tried to bottle it up for a long time, about a month, as I felt very uncomfortable about the whole thing, but as soon as I opened up about it, the weight just came off my shoulders and meant that I could just start dealing with it.

The first step you need to do is to accept it. The next step you need to do is start talking about it. And the third step is you just need to go out there and defeat it. Whether you do that being positive, or even be ignorant with it and fight it and believe that you can beat it. And that’s what you need to do to overcome it.

Testicular cancer is definitely more heard about now. A lot of GAA players, I’ve read about them coming out about having testicular cancer, but I suppose Lance Armstrong was the big one who stood out for me. He was a worldwide figure. I actually read both of his books, and that gives you a lot of encouragement. It’s definitely out there now. It’s great that people are coming out about it.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of or anything. I know when I had it, I was ashamed of it, but I don’t know why – like I said, maybe I was young and uneducated, and hadn’t heard about it. But now it’s out there, and it’s great that it’s out there and people are aware of it.

There’s a great recovery rate for this type of cancer. For a lot of people, if you catch it early, you don’t have to go through chemotherapy. Because I took so long to get it checked out, I had to go through two or three major operations and six months of chemotherapy. I could have avoided all of that if I had just told the doctor that one time in February that I thought I had a problem. But, unfortunately, I was ignorant about it and didn’t deal with it at the time. When I look back now, I feel stupid, to be honest. You live and learn, and I’m lucky to be here now.

One thing that I was lucky to be able to fall back on was the GAA. My teammates were like a family to me. My mother and father were with me the day I was told about it for the very first time. They set a sort of standard for me then and there. They didn’t show any negativity in front of me – I know now that they broke down later on that night, but they didn’t break down in front of me, and I think that stuck with me. My friends, and the GAA, particularly the club, Castleblayney Faughs, we had a great bunch of lads there at the time.

When I was diagnosed, I went to the doctor in the morning, and I was in the hospital that evening with an operation done. There were six or seven lads sitting around the bed when I woke up that evening. Every week after that, when I was in Dublin, the boys would always come up and have a McDonald’s with them! It was always about twelve of them coming in, and we’d be sitting there, reading magazines. They’d come up for two or three hours and maybe for an hour we would all just sit back and chill out. It was just great to have that support, even if we didn’t talk – there were times when I didn’t feel like talking at all. But they knew that and they didn’t try to knock it out of me, I may have fallen asleep in front of them.

Even when I was going through chemotherapy at the time, we managed to reach the County Final that year when we beat Truagh. Ahead of the game, the lads asked me to tog out for the game. It was phenomenal. There’s actually a photo up in the house of us as a team that day. At that stage of things, all the hair was gone due to the chemotherapy, and it’s still gone now! But in the picture, you can pick me out clearly with the hood up and about three jackets on me as I was worried I’d pick up an infection with the cold. But it was great to come back, we went into the changing room and it just meant a lot to me. The friendships I got from the GAA were phenomenal, and I’ll always be grateful to Castleblayney Faughs for that. I’ll also always be grateful to other clubs too. You’d be surprised, the amount of people who came up from other clubs, it was great. The GAA is one big, happy family and I certainly realised that at that time.

I was so lucky to have had great support from family and friends. The one thing I notice about it when thinking back, although I had never heard of testicular cancer, was the amount of people I encountered who had got it, and the amount of people I’d met who had cancer. Even within our own club, there was this great woman Ann Cole who still comes out to cheer on the team and watch them. I nearly had a shock when she told me that, and it was great encouragement. The amount of people I met who told me, who I wasn’t even aware of, it’s phenomenal.

It’s been about seventeen years now, but still to this day it stays with me. I hope my story can help people to increase their awareness and mind themselves – the two things I would take out of it are to be open about your health – just talk about it. And finally at the end of your day, your health is your wealth.

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