2nd opinion

Hello Islander1der,
I realize your post to the bladder support website is from 2 years ago, but I am searching for people like yourself who has had to deal with this disease. I hope you are doing well. Can you share with us your experience? A little history - my husband (age 67) is otherwise very healthy, altho he had left kidney removed in 2011 due to transitional cell carcinoma. In February 2013 CIS of the bladder was discovered. He has had 20 BCG washes since Feb 2013 and his last 18 biopsies (since Feb 2014 this year) have all been negative! Regardless, the Cleveland Clinic urology oncologists tell him he must have the bladder removed because the cancer will come back. It is very hard to remove a bladder that has proven to not have any active cancer for the past 5 months. We feel my husband is at risk but can't help but wonder if CIS can be continually surveyed and treated to avoid bladder removal and the change of life it creates, in spite of what the surgeon is telling us. Whatever you may be able to share, we thank you. Laurie & Phil 8/5/2014

Best of luck to you on the treatments. Glad to hear you got the 2nd opinion. It usually helps with comfort level on the path forward. BCG has a great track record for treating CIS.

Mike

I had my 2nd opinion consultation this week with Unhiversity of California Irvine specialists, and it appears that the BCG therapy is the most common one used when the cancer is in situ and hasn't invaded other areas. A couple of things came up that I hadn't really thought about. One being that since I had my left kidney removed last january, my bladder is somewhat smaller than normal, and it will somewhat lessen the amount of medicine I will be given. It wasn't something that will be an issue. Also, with the 1 kidney, the percentage of success is lessened somewhat but not dramatically. I was also relieved of a lot of fears of the safety of this virus that is introduced. While safety and sanitary proceedures need to be adhered to during treatment, my fears of infecting myself or my wife are very remote. I will see my uro next Thurs. and we will set treatment dates. I am a lot more comfortable going into this now. I thank everyone for their comments, and will post after treatment begins.