All is good

True to her word my surgeon had me out of the OR in 23 minutes total. I was already waking up in recovery a few minutes after one.

I'm being read the official after-care forms and then I get to go home!

Long overdue update

I'm writing this from my pre-op "waiting room at UCSF/Mt Zion.

No big deal, but after my last recurrence and TURBT in March I had much harder time with healing than last year. Part of it was that this time they used different chemo drug post-surgery (mitomycin C) and my bladder did *not* like it at all. I had also had a mild bladder infection that I either re-caught after surgery or maybe it didn't go away completely before, in any case for months since March I was between "uncomfortable" and "in pain".

So mid-June I had my next 3-months cystoscopy and we saw that the removed tumor sites are not fully healed and also that I had one small recurrence in another area. So here I am back for what my surgeon called "about five minutes" of actual surgery time.

She'll remove the recurrence and clean up the poor traumatized burnt-by-chemo scabs and I'll be home later this afternoon. This time the plan is to totally take it easy (even though this one will be the shortest of my three TURBTs). No chemo instillation this time so that means no irritating my poor bladder lining for minimal decrease in chances of recurrence and no painful side effects.

I might post an update later this evening or (more likely) tomorrow if I stick to my take-it-easy plan to ease recovery which involves sleeping the rest of the day off after they discharge me.

A few more details about today

So it went better than I expected - we got there at 6am sharp, like we were told and things happened right on schedule. Dr. Greene popped in a few minutes before 7am to answer my questions and tell me my CT scan looked normal, the anesthesiologist came by a few minutes later followed by Dr. Greene's resident (another woman urological surgeon, cool!) By 7:30am I think they'd already given me the "happy juice" in my IV and off to the OR I went.

Apparently the entire surgery took about 25 minutes and I woke up around 9am in the recovery room already half way through my mitomycin torture uh I mean treatment. 9:35 they flushed it out, and then they let me rest a bit before moving me to the visit-able part of the recovery room and bringing Mark there. (That's when I got my hands on the blackberry and sent my pre-written "I'm fine" message so that was 10:35am)

Between more visits by Dr. Greene and nurses giving instructions and getting my stuff and writing prescriptions it was almost 11 and by the time Mark got the car and they took me downstairs in a wheelchair (strange hospital custom) and we drove home it was getting close to noon.

I napped most of the afternoon but seem pretty much fine now - quite tired and it hurts to swallow a little (from the breathing thing they put in the throat during general anesthesia) and my bladder feels a little burning/raw from the chemo but hopefully I'll be feeling less discomfort tomorrow and I hope to be back to normal by Monday morning after taking it easy all weekend.

Last time I definitely was off doing too much too soon and feeling quite tired from it so this time I'm going to take it easy for a week (next work trip is just over a week away).

My post-op is on March 29th so that's when we'll review pathology results and maybe discuss what other preventative measures there might be against further recurrence (I'm not sure there are any).

All went fine

This message is prepared in advance cause I'm sure I won't be up to typing that all went fine and I'm recovering, but I figure I'll save this as a draft and then all I have to do is hit send so if you're reading this, then that's what I did!

Today's the day

I'm supposed to be at UCSF at 6am for 7:30 TURBT.   If last time was typical that would mean we'll actually start around 9 which would still mean I'll be out of surgery before 10am and probably done with all the mitomycin (chemo) before noon.   Last time they kept me for another hour after that to make sure I was all good before sending me home.

The funny thing is that I remember the ~2 hours in the recovery room pretty well, but I have no recollection whatsoever of getting dressed and going home (I do remember Jeanne calling for a cab).  I'm pretty sure I didn't come home dressed in the hospital gown so I guess I must have gotten dressed at some point...

I'll see if I can get an update to here in the afternoon, but no worries if there's no update till the evening - who knows if they'll let me use my Blackberry in the recovery room...

Oh well...

I had my 9 month routine check-up today.

The 3 and 6 month check-ups were completely clean, so I guess I fully expected that this one would be too, even though according to research the recurrence rate is high:

"The recurrence rate for superficial transitional cell cancer of the bladder is high, and as many as 80% of patients have at least one recurrence"

Somehow though, I convinced myself that I would fall in the 20%. Especially after the first two follow-up visits came up all clean.

I'll post some additional details later, but the summary is I've had a recurrence. They are small (one small and one tiny) and appear to be the same low grade (less dangerous) kind as before, which is what was expected, and the surgery which will probably be in 3-4 weeks is expected to be even easier/quicker than last time. I will probably get a course of different chemo intravesically after this surgery to reduce the chance of another recurrence further.

That's all the news that's fit to print for now.