This year has been a blur...

Hello Annalee... So sorry to hear about your diagnosis. You are the only other person I have heard from that had an adenocarcinoma. I did not have to have any repair done to my bladder. He just removed the portion of the wall around the tumor site and sutured it up. My tumor was also at the dome and relatively small (1.6 cm) and was only inside the bladder. They did not call mine a "urachal adenocarcinoma". During the surgery, the doctor did remove the urachal remnant but the pathology report showed it clear of any cancer.

How did they diagnose you? Is the tumor outside the bladder and present in the urachus? Perhaps that is why he needs to do some repair there. There are many people here who have had a portion of the colon used to create urinary diversions after their bladders have been removed. Using it to repair a portion of bladder, if that is what he is planning to do, is something I am not familiar with either.

Did he give you other options? I was thrilled to be able to have just a partial rather than to have my bladder removed. I do understand a small percentage of patients fit the criteria to only have the partial procedure. It will be a year post-op on Feb. 25th and my bladder looks like it did before I had the surgery when viewed onscreen during my last two cystoscopies.

Write down your questions or things you are uncomfortable with to discuss with your doctor. Ask him how many times he has performed your suggested procedure. It may not be too many since these tumors are relatively rare.

You will find a lot of expertise and comfort by sharing your experiences, questions, and concerns here. I wish you the best as you work through your treatment. Please keep us informed of how things are going. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

Hi Nancy... Thanks. It does seem that my life is now carved into 3-month chunks. At my first cysto, I was so stressed out because I feared it would be painful. As it turned out, it is just really no big deal and the nurses are so gentle and kind during the prep. The doctor showed me the little crater where he had done the resection. In August, he could not even tell where the surgery had been because it had healed over completely. Both of those were huge reasons to celebrate.

I return on 11/22 for the next one and I think I am more nervous about the CT finding something that "escaped" or was overlooked the first time than I am about another cysto. In my saner moments, I know chances are better than good that all will be well, but getting a clean CT scan would be the best Christmas present ever.

Congratulations on being "promoted" to your 6-month cycle!

sara.anne wrote:

Hello Sara Anne... Great to meet you. That is such a great point about 20 years ago and one I had not considered. In another post Pat mentioned that half the people on the site had never smoked, and it occurred to me that while I never smoked myself, over the first half of my life I was exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke at home as a child and later in the workplace. So just because we didn't smoke, it doesn't mean we escaped some of its harm. Of course, that and hundreds of other things that are part of existing in the world! Too much to worry about as I am quickly finding out.

I appreciate so much your point of view!