The week before last I attended a follow up appointment at the Urology department, after having my bladder tumour removed. I was also told that I would be having chemotherapy to make sure that the cancer didn't return. The man that I have been seeing is a lead nurse practitioner and very reassuring.
He explained that the tumour was indeed cancerous and had been completely removed.
He gave me a booklet from Macmillan Cancer Support with the title ‘Understanding non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer’. The booklet is very informative and has some fabulous illustrations. He used one of the illustrations to point out that the tumour had only affected the inner layer of the bladder lining.
As you can imagine, this has been a great relief and I’m so glad that it was caught before it became any worse.
If you ever spot blood in your urine, you really must get it checked out as soon as possible.
Chemotherapy after bladder cancer
I was also informed that I would need to have some chemo sessions. The leaflet that I was given says that it’s the ‘Instillation of Anti-Cancer Drugs in the Bladder for Chemotherapy’.
In my case it is a drug called Mitomycin which goes directly in to the bladder. I did a little research and there’s some useful information about it on the Cancer Research UK website in this article.
It means having a catheter inserted in to my bladder via my urethra. It’s not very comfortable but it has to be done. I have to have this once a week for six weeks. If it stops the cancer returning to my bladder then I’m quite happy.
I will write a short post about my chemo experience in the future.