My husband is only 52. Last Easter we came home from a camping trip and when he went to the loo and was peeing blood, it was literally red wine.
I took him to our local hospital, who did a prostate exam, which was clear and ordered an ultrasound the next day being a Thursday. The following Monday myself hubby and daughter went to see the dr for the results, a tumour in the bladder, off to the urologist who did a big and scraping and big, news wasn’t good, cancer, the biopsy showed a malignant tumour grade 4 grown into muscle wall.
It was decided to have a bladder removal and illeal conduit performed. News was good after taking the bladder, prostate and surrounding lymph nodes the all clear was given, no cancer in surrounding lymph nodes, a follow up appt was ordered for 6 months. 3 months later hubby had pain in his back and the local dr thought, and so did we, sciatica, off we went camping again, pain was bad and nobody enjoyed the camp. Went back the next day to the dr who then ordered an X-ray to see if a disc was damaged, it was back, the cancer had metastasized to the spine, rib, both legs, it was now in the bones. 😭
Oncologist was seen and the next day he was having radiation, 10 days of 6 zaps a day, followed by 4 months of chemotherapy, last week we were told the lymph nodes were almost back to normal size, the tumours had stated to shrink and no more chemo for a month. He will be having a bone scan at the end of April 2017, and will go from there. This is my husbands story, he had been given 12 to 18 months to live back in November, we will keep fighting and will never stop.
Bladder cancer needs to be made aware of more than it is.