Testicular cancer is one of the few subjects that is still taboo. People have vaguely heard about it but few know what it actually is and, because of all the mystique, some sufferers do not seek treatment until it's too late.

Rob Plant, who studied architecture at Oxford Brookes University, was diagnosed with testicular cancer nine years ago. He is disarmingly frank when talking about the disease and the impact it has had on his life.

Honest: Rob Plant with his son SamHe says men have been embarrassed to discuss the subject for too long but it is only by talking about it openly that ignorance will ever be broken down.

Rob, 35, from Abingdon, has given his support to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund's Dads and Lads campaign to highlight the dangers of the killer disease.

In the months before diagnosis he had been having problems breathing at night and was waking up in hot sweats.

He also had constant backache and had noticed a slight swelling in one of his testicles.

He went to see his doctor and was told it could be mumps. But when he returned a few weeks later, on Christmas Eve 1991, his doctor said he suspected he had a tumour and he urgently needed to go to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, for further tests.

Not only did the doctors confirm the diagnosis of testicular cancer but they found the cancer had spread to his lungs and spine.

He was sent back to his home, in The Vineyard, for Christmas Day and told to go to Oxford's Churchill Hospital on Boxing Day to start treatment.

Rob remembers it as his worst Christmas ever.

"I went home for the day and my wife Melanie and my parents tried to be jolly but we all had long faces," he says. "It was a dreadful time. I thought it might be my last Christmas.

"I felt scared by the word 'cancer' and had no idea what testicular cancer was. I was only 26 and kept thinking that I was too young to die."

On Boxing Day, Rob started his course of chemotherapy and was also told it was unlikely he would ever be able to have children.

Despite this blow, he responded well to the four-month treatment programme and started trying to live a normal life again.

Rob and Melanie, now 34, decided to try to adopt a child and just more than five years ago 20-month-old Nick found a home with them. Two years later they adopted Nick's half-sister Annie, now five. Then in 1998 a miracle happened, Melanie found she was pregnant.

"I remember Melanie phoned me at work to tell me," he says. "You could have knocked me over with a feather. I couldn't believe it."

Sam was born on Christmas Day in 1998 - seven years to the day that Rob was diagnosed with cancer.

The couple thought their family was complete but fate had another surprise in store for them.

Melanie found she was pregnant again in 1999. Last year baby Silas was born.

Rob says: "It's hard to believe everything that's happened to me. My advice is for men to keep an eye on their health and not to be embarrassed if they suspect that anything is wrong. There's no point worrying in silence."

Research by the ICRF shows about 1,700 men are diagnosed with testicular cancer each year and about 20,000 are diagnosed with prostate cancer, which grows in the prostate gland.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men after lung cancer and usually affects men over the age of 50. In contrast, testicular cancer often affects younger men and is on the increase.

However, in more than 90 per cent of cases the disease can be successfully treated if diagnosed and treated early enough.

**For a copy of the free leaflet about advice on how to spot the symptoms of prostate and testicular cancer send an A5 stamped addressed envelope to Testicular Cancer/Prostate Cancer Symptoms Leaflet, Communications Department, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, PO Box 123, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3PX.

More information is also available on the Internet at www.imperialcancer.co.uk