Please take a moment to listen to Matt Wright's message

I have a promise to keep, which requires the attention of our male readers, particularly the younger guys.

On Friday, Sept. 18, I had the good fortune to run into 2008 South Elgin graduate Matt Wright before the South Elgin football team's home game against St. Charles East at Millennium Field.

Matt was standing along the fence line in the north end zone. He was on hand to support his younger brother Justin, a junior linebacker for the Storm.

It was beyond heartwarming to see him. Last winter a South Elgin coach told me Matt was engaged in a fight for his life with testicular cancer that had spread. He had endured several surgeries and his weight had dropped from his 175-pound playing days as a vivacious South Elgin baseball player to 87 pounds during the most tenuous months of his ordeal.

He looked good that September night. Surprisingly good. His voice was breathy, which he went on to explain, but he had regained most of his weight and was upbeat about his odds of finally emerging healthy. He said he was cancer-free.

We spoke for 20 minutes right up until kickoff, pausing only for the national anthem, as Matt detailed the chronology of events that had transpired in the past 16 months since he was diagnosed.

Sports writers often use the term "fighter" to characterize the gritty play of athletes, but I stood flabbergasted, listening to this young man matter-of-factly detail all he had overcome just to be standing there. How many people could have found the will to fight like Matt, I wondered.

As the conversation progressed Matt made it clear it had become a new goal of his to speak to kids his age about taking measures to identify testicular cancer early.

"I'd like to visit schools to tell guys not to be embarrassed about it, to check themselves for it," he said. "You know how guys can be about stuff like that."

I told Matt that together we could deliver his message to a lot of guys at once. The idea of doing a story about self examination in this very space in today's paper seemed to invigorate him.

Matt said he was flying down to Houston in two weeks with his father, Scott, and his stepmom, Michelle, to get a second opinion on a final surgery to remove a large, though benign, tumor in his chest near his left lung, called a teratoma.

The surgery was going to be risky because one-third of his right lung had already been removed during a previous surgery due to the intrusion of a separate, invasive teratoma. Thus, his breathing had already been somewhat compromised. Matt said he was already on oxygen to help him breathe when he slept.

I promised to give him a call in three weeks after he returned so we could conduct a more in-depth interview and handed him my card in case he got back early and wanted to get in touch. We shook hands and said goodbye for the time being. However, the interview never took place.

Matthew Wright, 19, of Bartlett, passed away peacefully in his sleep in a hotel suite in Houston in the early morning of Oct. 5, hours before his scheduled appointment to see doctors at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

This column is dedicated to Matt and his desire to become an advocate for early detection of testicular cancer via self examination.

According to the Mayo Clinic, testicular cancer mainly affects men ages 15 to 34, though it can occur at any age. There are no methods of prevention. A man either develops it or he doesn't. But the best way to beat this disease is to detect it early and seek medical help. Testicular cancer has a better than 90 percent cure rate if caught in its early stages.

Simply put, gentlemen, you cannot be shy about checking yourselves for early signs of testicular cancer. Put any embarrassment you might feel aside.

Before we go on it is important to make clear that few men who develop testicular cancer endure the breadth of complications Matt experienced, an aspect Scott and Michelle pointed out in our conversation last Saturday. When Matt was diagnosed shortly after his high school graduation in June of 2008, the cancer had already spread to the lymph nodes in his abdomen. He had germ cell cancer, which was eventually eradicated by chemotherapy.

However, he also developed teratomas. Teratoma in Greek translates literally to "monster tumor." They are large, they don't respond to radiation and they must be removed surgically because they will continue to grow and eventually compromise vital organs.

Matt's first surgery to remove lymph nodes in his abdomen in September of 2008 revealed a teratoma had compromised a kidney, which had to be removed during the surgery. He had another procedure on the teratoma invading his right lung a month later, followed by the removal of another in his neck a month after that.

"He had teratoma syndrome that went along with the testicular cancer, but that doesn't always happen with patients that have testicular cancer," Michelle said.

"Matt's was a rare, rare case," Scott noted. "The most important thing about this disease is that it's one of the most curable diseases out there as long as you catch it within a reasonable time. With chemotherapy there's a 90-95 percent cure rate.

"Matt was a rarity, more of an exception than the rule. The size of his teratomas were larger than they had seen and spread more than most. Matt was cured from the germ cell cancer, but it was the teratomas that eventually caused all the problems."

According to the Mayo Clinic, a self examination consists of gently grasping the testicle between your thumbs and forefingers, rolling it to feel for lumps, hardness, swelling or other changes. Stand in front of a mirror and check for swelling on the skin of the scrotum. If you feel a lump, see a doctor immediately. The self exam is simple, but men can and should consult their family physicians for precise advice.

Other symptoms can include a heaviness in the scrotum, a dull ache in the abdomen or groin or a sudden collection of fluid in the scrotum.

Matt sensed something wrong during his sophomore year at South Elgin and was taken to see his pediatrician. Unfortunately, an MRI didn't reveal anything at that point and it was assumed the irritation he felt had been caused by his protective cup playing baseball, a relatively common occurrence in male athletes.

Toward the end of his senior baseball season, Matt hurt his shoulder diving for a ball. When he went to see an orthopedist, Matt again told the doctor he thought something wasn't right with a testicle. It had grown to the size of an orange, the same description cyclist Lance Armstrong described in his book about his fight with testicular cancer. Armstrong said he thought the inflammation was due to hours spent on his bicycle seat, similar to how Matt thought his problem was due to his cup.

Sensing the urgency of the situation, the orthopedist got Matt an appointment to see a urologist the next day. His condition was swiftly diagnosed as testicular cancer and he underwent surgery to remove the cancerous testicle within a week. The surgeries on the growing teratomas followed.

Another surgery to remove a bowel obstruction not directly related to his cancer caused his weight to plummet last December. Doctors gave Scott and Michelle less than a 10 percent chance of Matt's survival on Dec. 23, 2008. Yet, Matt kept fighting.

He was in intensive care at Indiana University-Purdue University Hospital in Indianapolis for three months before he was finally well enough in February to be transferred to the Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton. There he fought through a blood clot in his lung, which needed to dissipate before surgery could be performed on the remaining teratoma in his lung.

When Matt had regained enough weight the Wrights made the appointment to seek a second opinion in Houston about the surgery on the remaining teratoma in Matt's chest, which is about when we ran into each other at the football game.

Scott and Michelle want you to know Matt's full story, as difficult as it was for them to retell and for others to read, in order to motivate young men to examine themselves in the hope of avoiding what happened to Matt.

"He told me he wanted to make sure that everybody knew how to check themselves," Michelle said. "He became like a parent, telling everybody to do stuff before they were supposed to do stuff.

"I think it's similar to what they promote with breast cancer, that self examination is the best form of prevention. It's the same with testicular cancer. It's the No. 1 cancer among young adult men, and it can be detected easily be a self examination. Don't be bashful. As a parent I believe a parent should ask questions, same with girls. Communication is a key.

"I know it sounds funny and (young men) might laugh and think it sounds stupid, but I would tell them to check themselves and make sure you're OK. If you don't know how to do it, ask your parents or your doctors and they'll show you how to do it. Don't be afraid."

Please, guys, take just a little time to do the self examination. It could save your life. By doing so we're all keeping a promise to Matt Wright, one of the bravest fighters I've ever met.

jfitzpatrick@dailyherald.com