Living with Bladder Cancer

Several years ago I started having incontinence. It was bad enough that I peed my pants whenever a restroom was not available, like when driving and the urge strikes. I am usually able to hold it back for about 40 seconds to 1 minute so you can see that I dont have much margin to work with when the urge strikes. After beibg told by the doctors at the VA clinic that there wasn’t anything more they could do for me. The hadm over about a 3 year period tried most every medication available, but nothing worked. I asked them to consider me for one more procedure and that was the insertion of Botox into the bladder muscle to strengthen it. They agreed and I was scheduled for a cystoscopy so the doctor could look the situation over and prepare to perform the procedure. This was 2 years ago. The cystoscopy yielded the results that I had stage 1 bladder cancer Since then they have been going in my bladder every 3 months. One time they go to view the latest results and find that it has grown back so they schedule another cyctoscopy to go into the bladder and remove the three small tumors. Then in a couple of months they go back in for a look see and they find the tumors are growing back again so they schedule another cutting session. Over the last 2 years they have done this 3 times and I am scheduled for another cutting session on the 6th of November. I hope that they get it asll this time, but I won’t know until they schedule me back for another look see. If it wasn’t for the fact that this doctor works for the VA, I would be thinking that he was using me as a cash cow, but I don’t think that holds true at the VA. I guess that I will just have to put up with all of the cystoscopys ubtil the cancer decides to become stage 2 and then maybe they will do something about it.