Thank you, Sara Anne. We've been referred to Dr. Mark Wakefield, who is the chief of the division of urology at the University of Missouri (Columbia) Hospital. We will find out next week exactly how many of these he does. If we're not happy with the answer -- because his online resume seems to indicate he leans more toward prostate issues and renal transplant -- we will seek another opinion.
Another question we have is, do the doctors normally do some other tests before they remove the bladder to try to determine if the cancer has spread outside the bladder? It seems to me that if the cancer is already at a stage IV, there's no point in removing the bladder and going through all that. So would at pet scan or MRI or some other type of scan or test show that, before the radical surgery? Or maybe that's just something we have to wait and ask the doctor. This waiting is so hard, as I'm sure everyone knows. It's hard to keep our minds from going to the worst case scenario place over and over again.