In summer 2020, Ronal Salvador, then 16 and a high school junior, noticed a lump on one of his testicles. “I didn’t think much of it,” Salvador, now 21 of New Orleans, tells TODAY.com. “It was just getting bigger.” As it grew, he worried that the mass was a sign something was seriously wrong. In the fall, he asked his mom about it, and she examined it. Concerned, she took Salvador to a hospital, and he eventually learned that he had stage 1 testicular cancer.
Pinki Prasad, oncologist and hematologist at Children’s Hospital New Orleans and one of Salvador’s doctors, tells TODAY.com. “Ronal actually had a type of sarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, that can be found very often in the … testicular region,” she explains, adding that it's more common in children than adults.