I've been told over and over again how unusual my case is, so I don't expect any perfect line up with me personally, but I'm guessing that people will go through treatments relatively similarly, and people who are further ahead in the process certainly know a lot more than I do.
I first found out that I had bladder cancer in January. I then had to have 2 different biopsies to get the staging, since the first time was inconclusive. Eventually, I got the final diagnosis of superficial CIS, which I think is about the best that I could hope for.
The only thing that makes my case different than most is that I'm a 20 year old college student. I've never had any sort of medical issues before now except for a couple broken bones from falling and sports and the like. I don't smoke, and don't seem to do anything that is listed as risk factors, so I'm not really sure how it happened. But it did, so I'm basically in the same boat as anyone else with the same diagnosis, only I have to think about hopefully the next 60+ years of my life.
I was started on weekly BCG treatments, and have now completed 4 of them. My schedule is to do 6, take 3 weeks off, do 3 more, then wait a month or so to do a biopsy. Symptoms so far haven't been too bad; the last 2 times I've had a little pain, and some blood and pieces of lining or whatever have come out, but I assume this is to be expected. What I really am most concerned about is the future.
From what I understand, BCG has a very good success rate on superficial CIS. But is this going to haunt me for the rest of my life? I feel like there's a whole lot of time left in my life for this to cause some sort of problem in the end. How likely am I to have to deal with this again after this treatment, and is it still entirely possible even if I manage to go through 5+ years of check ups? I'm used to being the strong, reliable one, and I'll need to be for a long time still, so it could very easily be terrible timing for this to come back on me later on.
Finally, this is a pretty general question, but how long should I expect urination pain or other symptoms to last? In my second biopsy, I also got a TURP done. Ever since then, there's been some pain in urination, though it is decreasing significantly (with small increases the day of BCG treatment), so I think that the majority of my pain is still from the recovering surgery sites more than the cancer itself. Anyone know how long until I can expect this to be gone completely?