Within a couple of days of my cancer diagnosis, back in February 2020, my friend Karst asked me if I wanted to do something with Movember this year. In all honesty, at that point I (still!) didn’t know what Movember was about. Turns out, it’s about men’s health in general, and specifically about testicular cancer! After giving me a quick rundown of what his company did for awareness and fund-raising each year, I decided I wanted do help out where I could!
Luckily, come October, I felt a lot better. Karst invited me to participate in the Movember activities by telling my story at Topdesk, his workplace.
I also wanted to spread awareness in the (Dutch) games industry, which is **overpopulated with men between the ages of 20 and 40 - a group that unfortunately has a higher risk of developing testicular cancer.With a lot of help from Aryeh Loeb at **Dutch Game Garden and Karlijn van Driel from the Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek cancer hospital, I set up a mini awareness campaign within the context of Movember to tell my story.
It ended up comprising a live interview at the Dutch Game Garden network lunch, a presentation at Topdesk, the three blogposts listed here and a Movember page with daily moustache-updates that raised the humble amount of 270 euro’s. Hopefully, I added to the invaluable awareness on testicular cancer and what men (and women!) around the world can do to prevent the unnecessary suffering that comes with a late diagnosis.