My Mom, 94, was seen this AM by an excellent doctor who is the head of the bladder cancer department at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philly. The gist is that he is having her do a CT scan of the bladder on Dec. 6 to see if he sees any abnormalities, rather than go in and start a more invasive exam first (we’d been concerned that the urologist didn’t go deeper into biopsying the muscle because he didn’t think what he saw and removed was cancer. He said it is important to consider her age and would not want to do anything too aggressive if the bladder looks good and there are no obvious symptoms like blood in her urine. He said it could be possible that the urologist may have gotten everything and monitoring it for a recurrence might be best at her age. He also said that even if the urologist didn't dig deeper way into the muscle, that he would have scrapped and burned/cauterized the layer below where the cancer has invaded. He said the CT scan will give him the direction to go next, which might be redoing that initial procedure. I feel very comfortable with this, so that’s the initial plan. My Mom felt good with it too.
