"Testicular cancer saved my life."

Major Hugo Toovey was 21, fit, and training at Duntroon when he found the lump. He knew it was there for six months before he told anyone. What came next changed the course of his life and eventually, his purpose.

Hugo in hospital with his son Teddy (supplied)

Hugo Toovey joined the Army in 2010 without much of a plan.

The Australian Defence Force Academy offered structure to someone who felt a little lost, and the idea of completing a university degree alongside officer training felt like the right fit. He threw himself in, and sixteen years later, he is still serving.

That fact alone surprises him.

"From my cohort, I am actually one of the last few of my close friends still serving," Toovey said.

"Which is ironic, given what I've been through. I would have thought I would not have lasted this long."

18 June 2013 is a date he won't forget, it was his father's birthday.

Hugo was 21 years old, six months from graduating at Duntroon, and probably in the best physical condition of his life. He called to wish his dad a happy birthday, and somewhere in that conversation, he told him about the pea-sized lump he'd found on his right testicle.

Hugo said he had known it was there for more than six months, but had kept telling himself it was probably nothing, a benign cyst, because he was running and training and going outfield and otherwise feeling completely fine.

His father didn't let him off the hook.

"Mate, don't be an idiot, go to the doctor."

Within 48 hours of making that appointment, Hugo had a diagnosis of testicular cancer that had already spread to his abdominal lymph nodes.

"By putting it off, I learnt the hard way the importance of early detection."

What followed would test most people's resolve.

Hugo delayed chemotherapy, not on medical advice, but because he was weeks from the finish line at Duntroon, and he wasn't willing to give that up.

He continued training, going outfield, completing his studies, knowing cancer was spreading through his body the entire time.

"I didn't tell my cohort because I didn't want to become the person people felt sorry for," he said.

He wanted to earn his graduation on the same terms as everyone else, and he did.

A few days after the ceremony, he started chemotherapy in his hometown of Adelaide.

His first posting as a young lieutenant was a compassionate one, to Headquarters 9th Brigade, and the next two years unfolded as an unconventional beginning to a military career, moving between chemotherapy, major surgeries, recovery, and long stretches in and out of hospital.

In June 2018, he shook his oncologist's hand at his five-year all-clear scan, posted to Brisbane, lined up for deployment, with life feeling like it had finally returned to something resembling normal.

That feeling lasted exactly two months.

His bowels started playing up in a way that felt different to anything he'd experienced before, and this time he went straight to the doctor.

A colonoscopy found several large, concerning polyps, and when the specialist called him in the very next day, Hugo already knew it wasn't good news.

He was diagnosed with bowel cancer at 26, just two months after receiving his all-clear.

"Testicular cancer saved my life," he said.

"There is no way I would have had a colonoscopy at 26 if I had not learnt what I learnt."

Bowel cancer now kills more young Australians aged 25 to 45 than any other cancer, largely because people are diagnosed too late.

Hugo's early detection caught the cancer before it spread beyond the bowel, and he is clear that acting fast made all the difference.

Since 2018, he has had more than ten major surgeries, including multiple open bowel procedures, with the most significant coming in October 2025, when surgeons created a permanent ileostomy, removed his anus, and closed him completely.

His quality of life now, he said, is dramatically better than the daily pain he had lived with for years, and he wishes he had done it sooner.

Today, Hugo works in the welfare space at Headquarters 2nd Division, facilitating welfare boards, working with formation welfare officers across brigades, and contributing to the Lived Experience Advisory Framework on mental health and suicide prevention.

He also founded 25 Stay Alive, a preventative health charity built on the idea that '25 is the new 50' and Hugo wants young Australians to start taking their health seriously at that age, not when symptoms become impossible to ignore.

The charity runs workshops, health campaigns, and partnerships with providers, all focused on making prevention and early detection a normal part of life, guided by its A.L.I.V.E. framework, which asks people to act on symptoms, look after themselves, initiate conversations, visit their GP, and express their emotions.

For anyone serving and putting off a health concern, Hugo understands the fear intimately.

"You worry it will impact your employment, your deployability, your career," he said.

"I get it. But at the end of the day, your health should always come first. The earlier you get on top of something, the easier it is to treat. That goes for anything, physical or mental."

Hugo has spent more time in hospitals than most people twice his age, and he will be the first to tell you that none of it needed to be as hard as it was.

The lump was there, he just needed someone to tell him to go.

"Don't wait until it's too late."