Firstly a disclosure -- I have Bladder Cancer. I found out I had bladder cancer in a strange way; every few days I would have dark pee. It wasn't red pee, it didn't look like borsch, it was just a bit reddish brown. Since I'm an old white guy (or just an old guy), I ignored it. What I didn't ignore was when the bits started to come out. These bits looked like bits of hamburger. They were bits of my insides on the outside where they didn't belong. My wife MADE me go to the doctors. He asked what was going on. I explained about the hamburger and he referred me the urology department.
I couldn't get the main guy for a few weeks so I made an appointment with the physicians assistant who it turned out was a young lady. The following week I met with her. She was very impressive and very competent. She asked me what was going on and I told her my hamburger story. By this time I had looked on the internet so I was getting suspicious about the source of my hamburger. My PA scheduled a CT scan in 3 days and a Cytoscope with the main man the following week.
The CT scan is a modern X-ray where they pass you through a hula hoop and inject you with contrast agent. Some noxious chemical that makes the pictures pretty. A few days later I reported for my Cytoscope. I met the main man, the urologist who told me that the CT scan revealed an 8mm thick tumor on the inner wall of my bladder. The Cytoscope was only confirmatory since he pretty much knew that it was a malignant bladder cancer tumor. Oh, shit! The Cytoscope consists of poking a camera into the bladder to see what's going on. The un-fun part is how they get in in there. Suffice it to say that it hurts, not as much as riding a bicycle without a seat, but it hurts. It also feels really weird. At this point I have to acknowledge that the female of our species are a lot tougher and resilient than the males. Anyway, I got to visit with my tumor. It looked like red cauliflower.
A week later they went in again with the Cytoscope, this time with a hot wire loop to capture and remove the tumors. I was under anesthetic for this part of the story. Two weeks later they did it again, this time taking biopsies to be sure they got all of the bad hamburger. Two weeks later I started on a weekly course of BCG infusions into my bladder -- yes, using the same way in as before and equally appealing. For those unfamiliar with it BCG is tuberculosis vaccine. They fill your bladder with it and demand that you not pee for the next two hours. When you do pee you have to do it into a bucket of bleach to kill the live agent. It's kind of like chemotherapy except its bio-therapy.
A month after finishing up my six weeks of BCG treatments I had another Cytoscope. This revealed that all the tumor was gone but that I was growing calcium stones on the bladder wall where the tumor had been. These stones break up into smaller or larger bits that I have to pee out. The smaller bits are uncomfortable, the larger rocks are very exciting. Yeuch!
In the coming weeks I will be having another three BCG treatment sessions as part of a long term preventative regime to stop the cancer coming back. In the meantime I am now drinking a minimum of half a gallon (2 quarts or 2 liters) of water per day. I turns out that smoking is the primary cause of bladder cancer so in deference to all those who have been working hard to keep me alive, I finally gave up the evil weed.
In summary, if you catch bladder cancer early (within 6 months) while it is superficial and before it invades the bladder muscle wall, the treatment is manageable and quite successful. This is especially true if you get the kind of dedicated and capable medical team who treat me. Most important of all, quit smoking and start drinking lots of water. If you notice dark pee, get a urine test looking for blood as soon as possible.
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