Urbanlamb
I have been overweight my entire life. Twice during my lifetime I managed to lose a significant amount of weight, but only managed to do so with extreme discipline in diet and gym, that I just couldn't keep up long term.
Last year I tried again to lose weight, but badly hurt my knees in the gym, and realized that I'm getting too old to do this sort of extreme thing again.
It used to be two hours in the gym before work, and one hour after work...five days a week. Then 3-4 hour afternoons on the weekends. Then of course adding to that the diet thing which was mostly veggies and protein shakes and fruit.
*sigh* This is not practical anymore for long term maintenance....especially now with damaged knees.
I decided to consider surgery, so now am on that road. My first orientation is at the Civic on May 31. I can hardly wait!!
January 11, 2014
What a long road it has been so far. i passed all the requirements for pre op and was just waiting for an appointment with the surgeon. Then late in August, I noticed a smidgen of blood in my urine.
I'm in health care, so I knew that blood did not belong there. I headed to emerg, since i work in a hospital and had it documented, and a urine sample was given.
The blood disappeared later that afternoon and there was no further follow up. But then again a month later, blood again. This time there WAS follow up with different procedures and ultimatley I found myself in day surgery to have a tumor removed.
When pathology came back, the news was not good. Aggressive bladder cancer. Good news was that we caught it early...bad news is that it's a super fast advancing one. It has an 80 percent chance of coming back.
I was frightened. Why now of all times? My urologist came up with a plan. Six weeks of treatment (done as of this week). It's weekly doses of BCG inserted into the bladder.
Now I get an 8 week rest. He will check me after 8 weeks, and if I'm tumor free, give the go ahead for WLS...but not RNY,a gastric sleeve.
Reason being is that once I've lost weight, he's taking out this pesky bladder and constructing a new one from my lower intestine. It's called a neo bladder.
This is going to be an intense year for me...waiting for results of BCG...will it have worked? Is cancer in remission? Then getting a sleeve. Then losing weight. All the while, getting my bladder monitored to ensure the cancer is not flaring up.
Then bladder removal.
Hoo boy...let's get 'er done.
