I thought I was the only person to experience this until I ran across this at askphysicians.com...it sounds very familiar...I wanted to know if the experience of the bubble phenomena is a sign or symptom of bladder cancer. I have been experiencing this for years...I have never mentioned it to Dr. I thought it was a vaginal thing...
I know that people here have much larger problems than this...but I am curious about this...thanks...if you'd like to read the physician's reply to this post, it can be found at:
www.askphysicians.com/cgi-local/forums.cgi?display=thread&id=6817&forum=62&interface=0
"After having a cystoscopy because I felt the sensation of air bubbles coming out of my bladder, not during urination, but throughout the day on and off, they found a .5cm papillary bladder lesion, no fistula could be seen. the pathology report said, papillary lesion with proliferating epithelial cells forming on a vascular stalk. Some nuclear atypia. Some areas of proliferation not very thick, other areas thickened. Diag: papillary transitional cell carcinoma of urinary bladder, grade I. No evidence of invasion seen. Smooth muscle available in biopsy. I was age 30 at time.
I was exposed to heavy smoking parents for 22 years. And I worked in the x-ray field, including working with dark room chemicals.
Later, and a long complicated story and history, I was told it may not have been cancer, because a month after the lesion was removed, they thought they found a fistula from bladder to rectum, caused by endometriosis. The possible fistula site had mucous coming through it, and some tiny piece of what they thought feculant material, and the pathology report on that said, foreign crystalline material, with no evidence of fatty material. I have endometriosis and it inlvolves the left anterior bladder flap and cul-de-sac, and they thought the endometriosis fused my bladder to rectum. They could not intubate the fistula site, or get the methylene blue to go from bladder to rectum, but said edema could have caused the site to close. They then said if the pathologist was told I had a fistula, he would not have called that papillary lesion cancer. A month later The fistula disappeared, and then I was told the fistula site could have been an endometriosis implant cycling at the time that went dormant, but will stick to the original diagnosis of cancer. I did have the patholgy slide looked at by another pathologist who felt there wasn't cancer.
This is my question, does some nuclear atypia without a doubt mean transitional cell cancer?
Or could it be possible that a patient with h/o possible endometriosis inside the bladder, possible fistula, or definite recent past h/o kidney stone, or definite past h/o chronic UTI, develop a lesion due to irritation, that shows the lesion to have some atypical cells, and be non-cancerous?
Does patient history have such an impact on what the pathologust decides the biopsy shows when it comes to these lesions?
3 years later, I have routine cystoscopy to make sure no return of lesions, and so far, nothing. They do not do a urine analysis though, which I think they should do. "
