I had a radical cystectomy and chemo a year and a half ago after having the same symptons as your dad. I'm 60 and very fit and play tennis and golf every other day as well as I did before surgery. My local uro was very specfic..you need your bladder out! I had something like 9 tumors, stage 2-3 muscle invasive. Because I have insurance, I went to John's Hopkins to have the surgery, thinking this is my life, why not go to one of the best uro hospitals. Because my doctor specialized in neobladders and had done many of them, I went with a neobladder and am very glad every day that i did.Frankly, I pee less now that I used to. OTOh,a neobladder is a highly specialized operation, and if your doctor is not too experienced, I think I'd go for the external bag, it's much more common and recovery is faster and easier and there's less room for error. Life is still normal with the external bag as many on this board will testify. To re-state the obvious, even a little research shows the sobering survival rates even with surgery. All of us on the board were frightened and shocked with the diagnosis, but I just dug in and did the best i could with the resources around me.
Either way, Like everyone else is saying, he's got to do something. How to convince him is not easy. Sloan Kettering(sp) has a web site with a questionaire that shows life expectancy with various levels of bladder cancer. It's frightening, but maybe that's what he needs. If talking to survivors is what he needs, my wife and I love to counsel and tell people about our experiences and if you or he need to talk, we can be emailed or called on the phone anytime. We even spoke to one family from Ireland for 20 minutes. Who knows what that phone call cost. We have bc friends all over the country.
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Mike and Eileen