It really is discouraging to have a recurrence, no mater how tiny, and no matter how much you tell yourself that the odds of a recurrence are very high statistically. I was just plain mad myself, especially since it happened at the 2 year anniversary when I was looking forward to going to 6-month check-ups.
I concur that you should make sure the uro excises the tumor, even though it's tiny. My recent recurrence was two tumors, each the size of a pinhead, and the uro cut out one for biopsy, then "zapped" (fulgurated) both of them. This was an in-office procedure, and went fine (he had me take a sedative and painkiller ahead of time, and used local anesthesia). Even though he was sure the new tumors were the same type as the original one (low grade, papillary, non-invasive) he wanted to do biopsy to make sure. Because of the recurrence, he's now got me on my first round of BCG. I gather you've been on BCG; have you done a full course of 6 weeks, with follow-up 3-week maintenance over a period of time? I think you can continue with BCG even if there's a recurrence, but they may want to try BCG+interferon. My uro uses mitomycin when BCG doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
Best of luck!
Ann
if he's going to be "zapping" it probably will disintegrate. Hmmmmm....
