What Losing a Testicle to Cancer Taught Me About Masculinity

I’d always felt serious pressure to conform. Now I’m making a conscious choice to live authentically.

July 31, 2024

Two pictures of Kyle DeLeon one with a mustache and one as he is undergoing treatment for testicular cancer.

Kyle DeLeon, 35, of Texas, was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2018. After having a life-saving surgery to remove his testicle, he started to question his masculinity: Was he any less of a man after losing this part of himself? Ultimately, DeLeon learned to embrace his queerness like never before and harness his newfound confidence into cancer advocacy work. Here’s his story, as told to senior health writer Katie Camero.

I’ve always felt like I wasn’t enough. Not queer enough. Never Latino enough or man enough. But then I lost my testicle to cancer and everything changed.

I’ve always felt serious pressure to conform or live my life in a certain way. I started dating my now ex-wife when we were just 21. On our first date, I told her I was bisexual, which she was very understanding of. We ended up getting married at 25, and it was tough. We were coming to grips with our own sense of self as young people and simultaneously dealing with all these expectations from others about what our lives should look like. Just a few months into our relationship, we were getting asked when we were going to move in together. When we did that, the question turned into “When are y’all going to get married?” When we made that happen, it was then, “When are y’all going to have children?” We were actually contemplating the next step in our lives, whatever that was, but little did we know that my cancer diagnosis would change everything.

I noticed a lump in my testicle in 2018, two days before my 29th birthday. A doctor diagnosed me with a bacterial infection, so I started a 10-day regimen of antibiotics, but that didn’t work and my testicle just kept growing. I was eventually referred to a urologist who also thought my lump was an infection but ordered an ultrasound to be sure. I left after the procedure, but just as I pulled into my parking spot at home, the physician assistant called me and said the images didn’t look the way they were expecting them to. She requested I get a blood exam, so I turned my car around and did the test just before the office closed for the day. Lo and behold, I had testicular cancer—the same cancer that killed my grandfather 39 years ago—and it was beginning to spread: A CT scan showed that the lymph nodes surrounding my left kidney were already swelling up. Two days later, I had surgery to remove my testicle.

Losing this part of myself made me question my masculinity. Was I now less of a man because I only had one testicle? I had already been feeling pretty powerless leading up to my diagnosis, just constantly feeling like I had to suppress such key parts of my identity.

But what my chemotherapy journey did (other than keep those cancer cells away) was help me grow my sense of self and what it means to be a man, irrespective of the composition of my body. It made me cognizant of who I am on the inside and who I really, truly feel that I want to represent myself as. And it has certainly made me a lot more understanding of the folks who don’t feel like or identify with the gender of their assigned sex at birth. Slowly but surely, I started to feel more at home in my body. I became a little sillier, a bit freer, more flamboyant. I felt like I finally had a license to be more me in every way. I just felt…free.

Cancer also gave me a lot of perspective on the brevity of life. It was this realization that showed my wife and I that we needed to move forward and start thinking for ourselves in a different way. She was a wonderful caregiver and is a lovely human being who I still love and adore. But her power was depleting as well, because of the burden she carried to get us both through this tough moment in our lives. In the end, it was our conscious decision to live authentically that ultimately led to our separation in 2022 after 11 years as a couple. We were together longer than we probably should have been, and we know that now. But I certainly hope that in the event she ends up in a situation where she needs the care that I got, that I’d be able to support her in any way I can.

As I continued to embrace not being afraid of being perceived as gay, or “fruity,” or all those other terms I’d been bullied with as a child, I learned that I could harness my newfound power into my advocacy work. In 2019, I became a grassroots manager for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network here in Texas. Part of my job involves bringing people in front of elected officials who have historically not had a seat at the table in cancer advocacy, including Latinos, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. I felt so energized joining a team that was so capable and motivating and that trusted me.

And there’s something else this experience has taught me—I don’t have to be afraid of speaking up, which my grandfather, who I never met, unfortunately couldn’t bring himself to do. Even as his testicle swelled to the size of a grapefruit, he just kind of sat through it with this whole machismo attitude. My grandmother begged him to see a doctor for a while, but when he finally did, it was too late. I pity my grandpa in a sense that he felt like he couldn’t show weakness, but at least now we can acknowledge that when you speak up, catch cancer early, and get the treatment you need and deserve, you can survive.

I’m now going to be six years cancer-free this fall. There are still times I walk down the street and people yell slurs at me, but it’s moments like those that remind me why the queer community is as strong as it is. We find individual and collective strength by being outsiders—different from what society says is acceptable and normal.

But I’m proud to stick out from the bunch, and I’m very, very proud of diving into my queerness through this whole messy cancer experience. Now, I have no problem having painted nails and glossy lips as I shake a staunchly conservative senator’s hand. I’m just going in feeling confident and cute! I’m that guy with the mustache and nail polish—and I couldn’t be happier.