What is Bladder Cancer

There are about five million pages out there that describe in great level of detail what bladder cancer is, how it's treated and what the prognosis would be for someone newly diagnosed.

I'll include links to some of the better ones below, but in a nutshell, for me I will summarize this:

Bladder cancer is a common, recurrent condition that may exist as superficial or invasive disease. Superficial bladder cancer will recur often and patients who are found to have superficial tumors should be surveilled (followed with cystoscopy and X-ray examinations) to catch any recurrent tumors at an early stage where they are easily treatable. Only occasionally will superficial bladder cancer progress to the more dangerous invasive bladder cancer.

Invasive bladder cancer is the other kind that I hope I don't have.

• I am not in a high risk group, so maybe I'm genetically predisposed. I might never know.
• I have not yet had any biopsy or pathology done on the tumors so everything I know now is an opinion of one doctor based on visual examination.
• Actual pathology will be done when I have them removed.
• The procedure used to remove them is called TURBT and I should be out the same or next day.
• I do not have the procedure scheduled yet, I will know more when see my doc on April 6th.
• Whether or not we use adjunct therapy at the same time or as a follow-up isn't known yet.

This is one of the most comprehensive pages on the subject: EMedicineHealth.
This has some good discussion and summaries: UCSF Urologic Cancer page.
So does this page: NCI Bladder Cancer Patient Information.