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OT - anyone with experience with bladder cancer?
My father called me yesterday to let me know his bladder cancer has recurred. He's beaten it twice, in 1994 and 2001, and both times he caught it early and was able to treat it with local therapy.
Now unfortunately his case is more serious and advanced. He's doing a biopsy tomorrow to confirm staging and so on, but the ultrasound showed an infiltrating mass that has already invaded the fat/muscle outside of the bladder.
He told me that the doctors advised him to do a complete cystectomy (full bladder removal) with a neo-bladder reconstruction (bladder routed out of the small intestine). I'm very distressed about this news, especially since my father is almost 74 and lives back home in Brazil.
If anyone of you has direct experience with a surgery of this type, I'd love to hear from you. I don't know if he'll need to do chemo after the surgery (or even before) but he hasn't even seen an oncologist yet. In any case, any help/suggestions/tip on going through the surgery will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!!
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ER+ (30%)/PR-/HER-2+, stage 3
Diagnosed on 02/18/09 at 38 with a huge 12x10 cm tumor, after a 6 month delay. Told I was too young and had no risk factors. Found swollen node during breastfeeding.
March-August 09: neo-adjuvant chemo, part of a trial at Stanford (4 DD A/C, 4 Taxotere with daily Tykerb), loading dose of Herceptin
08/12/09 - bye bye boobies (bilateral mastectomy)
08/24/09 - path report shows 100 % success in breast tissue (no cancer there, yay!), 98 % success in lymphatic invasion, and even though 11/13 nodes were still positive, > 95 % of the tumor in them was killed. Hoping for the best!
September-October 09: rads with daily Xeloda
02/25/10 - Cholecystectomy
05/27/10 - Bone scan clear
06/14/10 - CT scan clear, ovarian cyst found
07/27/10 - Done with Herceptin!
02/15/11 - MVA-BN HER-2 vaccine trial
03/15/11 - First CA 15-3: 12.7 and normal, yay!
10/01/11 - Bone scan and CT scan clear, fatty liver found
now on Tamoxifen and Aspirin
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