Today's update

Saw Dr Konety this morning. He confirmed the visual diagnosis and since he felt that it's possible that TURBT will be the only indicated treatment the plan is to schedule the TURBT and then based on pathology results from the removed tumors to decide whether we will just do the wait-and-monitor-closely-for-recurrence or do additional intervesical immunotherapy (or some other -therapy).

Of course it turns out scheduling the TURBT procedure isn't that simple - apparently first I have to have a pre-op exam at least a week before the "op" where they'll make sure I'm fit to undergo surgery. When I last had major surgery (a lot more major than this) in 2002 I didn't need to do this, maybe they've added this for CYA protection or maybe it's because I'm a few years older now :).

Once they check my blood, heart, etc and pronounce me fit for surgery I can have the procedure. So later this week I'll schedule the pre-op and then the op a week after. I'm guessing we're looking at roughly two weeks from now.

He did confirm that my CT scans were clean and my heart, lungs, etc. all seem normal and clean. My pain in the lower back which normally I would attribute to a pulled muscle was confirmed to be likely a pulled muscle. :) Funny how it doesn't seem to hurt that much any more now that my paranoia has been calmed down a bit.

He was surprised I had never been a smoker, but I do have a "risk" factor in the form of a huge amount of second hand smoke I was exposed to between the ages of 17 and 25 when I spent a lot of hours in smoky bridge clubs, smoky bridge tournaments, and even occassionally smoky bars. He said they are seeing more and more women non-smokers with bladder cancer whose only risk exposure may have been second-hand smoke.