Thank you for the kind words! I'm hopefully on the other side of it now having gone through it about 1.5 years ago. Smack in the middle of the original COVID peak, which made the situation all the more fun. I'm in what they call "careful observation" or "surveillance" now - blood work every 3 months, CT scan every 6. So far, so good!

I did perform the monthly self-exams, and that is how I was lucky to have caught it so early. I had a similar feeling about "how am I going to feel a lump on this thing" for years, but when the time came it was a combination of feeling what I thought was a lump but feeling what I KNEW was a difference.

The trick is in doing the exam enough times to know the lay of the land well. Then it becomes an exercise in detecting a difference, rather than a specific bump.

A decent plan of attack might be to start with your next physical/yearly visit. The doctor should check them out, so take that opportunity to ask any questions or even ask for a walkthrough on how to do it yourself. At that point you know you're "good", so anything you are feeling is just how yours are. Then just practice the exam and build your mental map.

For what it's worth, most of the lumps we think we feel tend to be the epididymis which is at the top and can run down the back of the testicle. Also, the cords can get in the way sometimes. We've got some space down there, take advantage of it to shift things around to get a different angle!