Supporting Testicular Cancer Patients with Oneball

The Cause

Imagine that you are 21 years old and are spending your evenings working at a restaurant to pay for tuition while pursuing an education. Suddenly, your life is turned upside down when a routine doctor's visit leads to an ultrasound on a sensitive area that looks cancerous and needs immediate surgery. You don't have savings and your family doesn't have the means to support you. How can you pay rent and feed yourself while you recover and go through chemotherapy?

This story is not uncommon. It also illustrates why the Oneball Charitable Cancer Organization ("Oneball") does what it does as a charitable organization. Our financial assistance program is a fantastic opportunity for Field Law to partner with us to provide an immediate, tangible impact to a growing number of testicular cancer patients in Alberta, and will support our program costs for 2024. These funds will go directly to qualified patients, since we run quite lean, with little in overhead costs. With your help, we can make a huge difference in the lives of people affected by this disease!

Who Will it Benefit?

Testicular cancer is unique amongst cancers in that the time from diagnosis-to-operating table is typically within the 24-48 hours, to have the suspected testicle immediately removed.
Following this, they may need to take time away from work and/or school to undergo further treatment, such as chemotherapy. Testicular cancer's statistical patient demographic (ages 15-35) often does not have the funds to handle unexpected expenses that are caused by this crisis, especially when their livelihoods may be disrupted because of their diagnosis.

Prior to any radiation treatment, patients must quickly confirm whether to do sperm banking, a roughly $700 per year expense that has been increasing annually. We don't want patients to have to make the decision between a future family and maintaining a roof over their heads. This is why we created our Winter Soldiers Sperm Bank Fund as part of our overall financial assistance program, which allows us to give funds quickly to confirmed testicular cancer patients to allow them to proceed.

The pandemic also resulted in many cancer patients being diagnosed with more advanced stages of the disease due to decreased access to healthcare. This was largely due to the fact that many delayed going into the hospital to check their symptoms, and ultimately their cancer diagnosis. These more advanced stages of testicular cancer resulted in patients requiring more time off for more aggressive treatments – and therefore greater financial assistance – on top of the regular influx of patients requiring financial assistance.

Among the so many stories that we hear, at the end of the day, your support would directly help testicular cancer patients that are receiving treatment at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary. For patients to receive support beyond sperm banking, they are pre-qualified and referred to us by the social workers there, meaning that these patients tend to face significant financial hardship caused by the illness and undergoing treatment. Our typical patient then receives reimbursement for eligible expenses like rent, food and prescriptions.