Hi Chelseatoo. 

I had a TURBT surgery two weeks ago to remove a small bladder tumour. This is the usual first step in treatment.  Having just been through it, I can say that it's not too bad and recovery is quick.

Often, the surgery alone is sufficient to effect a cure, but these cancers do have a tendency to recur and the TURBT might need to be repeated a couple of times.  My understanding is that after the TURBT, the removed cells are send to the path lab, and are graded into either low risk or high risk of recurrence. I'm now awaiting these results, but the treatment appears to be same either way. 

If recurrence happens then the consultant may recommend either chemo or BCG therapy after a TURBT.  This involves instilling either a chemo drug or a dose of BCG vaccine into the bladder, and holding it there for two hours, then it's removed.  This is done once a week for 6 weeks.  The object is to provoke an immune reaction in the body which kills off any remaining tumour cells.

I take comfort in something that a GP told me: that bladder cancer is a ruddy nuisance, but with today's treatments it is very rarely a killer. 

Hi, 

thanks for your response, had a call this morning from the nurse to say they booked my dad in for a ct scan to see if the cancer has spread this scan is from top of Chest to bottom of amdomen ... did u have to have this also  ?

thanks Chelsea 

Yes, I did have a CT scan. It didn't find any cancer spread, but it did find a small aneurysm in the artery leading to one kidney. That might or might not need treatment. It seems that diseases are queueing up to have a go at me ;-)

Fingers crossed your Dad's CT is ok. The process itself is pretty easy and quick. The scans only take a couple of minutes, unlike an MRI which is more time-consuming.