Questions about Surgery Tomorrow

Sara Anne,

Thank you. My mother's father actually died of kidney cancer several years ago. They said they'd found his early and it was completely encapsulated and he needed no further treatment other than a nephrectomy. But within a year or so it spread and he eventually died from it.

They did a biopsy on Mom's bladder the day the gyno found the "spots" and it came back as low grade.

My mother seems to think that this means "scraping" the lining of her bladder is all that is necessary.

I'm not sure how detailed CT scans are but all her Urologist said about the results were that he could see the two spots on the scan. He didn't say whether they were shown as penetrating the bladder wall or how large or anything else. Is this lack of information normal?

What should I be prepared for tomorrow? Are there specific questions I should be asking to make sure we have as much information as possible? I'm assuming we won't know anything about the pathology until after which is so frustrating.

Hello,

My mother was recently diagnosed with bladder cancer. She is 60 and it was discovered accidentally during a routine hysterectomy and bladder sling surgery she had to treat prolapses. When they used to the cystoscope to check for knicks in the bladder they saw two spots that they biopsied. The biopsy results came back before she left the hospital and they told her it was low-grade. When she thought back on it, she had a few episodes about a year ago where she'd passed gross blood and clots while peeing and had seen her doctor and they told her to wait to see if it went away and it did so they didn't pursue it further. This is infuriating to me because I worry that this has been growing inside her for over a year now and they knew back then that she wasn't bleeding due to an infection. Anyways, what's done is done...

She was sent to a urologist and he ordered a CT scan of her pelvis. He told her he was able to see the two tumors on the CT scan. She is scheduled for some sort of procedure tomorrow which she described as a "D&C" of the bladder.

What I'm here for, other than support and information, is what I need to be asking for questions since she is under the impression that once she has this "scraping" done, all is well.

What questions should I have at the ready? How do they know if it's spread to the lymph nodes without taking a node for biopsy? Why didn't they do a PET scan? (The reason I ask this is because my grandmother had a non-invasive, stage 1 breast cancer, and she is scanned head to toe every year).

What else do I need to know going into this? I'm very concerned for her and want to be informed.

Thanks everyone!