Opining Online

My husband had his first treatment for bladder cancer yesterday. This is his third primary cancer and, of course, he has asked, “Where next?”

Two biopsies were performed, but neither got enough muscle wall tissue to rule out the spread of the cancer there. It was a transitional papillary tumor at the top of the bladder which makes it more difficult to get a “good” muscle wall sample. Location, location, location.

His options were to assume that the cancer had not spread to the muscle wall or to assume that it had. After talking it over with his doctor, he chose to assume it had not. Removal of the bladder is still an option, but hopefully it won’t have to be done.

What is fascinating to me is the treatment when the assumption is that the tumor has not spread to the muscle wall. It consists not of chemotherapy, but of immunotherapy. In a nutshell, BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guerin), a tuberculosis vaccine is inserted into the bladder to “call” the immune system to battle the cancer.

See: Bladder cancer, Treatment and Drugs, Mayo Clinic. Also, NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines. Registration is required, but it’s free.

Because the biopsies were inconclusive, my husband was faced with the choice of trying the immunotherapy or with surgical removal of his bladder. Surgical removal is sort of a guaranteed cure, but it is also a drastic cure. My husband chose the less drastic, but less certain treatment.

We shall see.

Obviously, I haven’t been posting.

My grandchild was here for a few days. She’s 2 1/2 and very energetic. Her favorite game is “Get me” which involves first chasing her a bit then tickling her. Step two is her chasing you and “getting” you. Repeat for however many times the adult involved can stand it. The child seemingly never tires of it.

She’s a bit like her grandma in that she doesn’t wake up in the best mood. She needs a little time to adjust and I’d have offered her coffee, but figured her parents would object. When she’s getting tired, I find it amusing that she begins to refer to either of her parents as “MommyDaddy”. Either will do, as they represent a unit of comfort and safety for her. I’ve witnessed this before, but noticed it especially when she asked me to look at pictures with her.

She was, of course, fascinated by pictures of herself. I’d ask her to identify the other people in the picture. She was almost always correct. But this was often a “quiet” time activity just before her nap or bedtime and as she got tired, she began to refer to any picture of her mother or father as “MommyDaddy”. 

She’s certainly not confused as to which is which. When she meets a new person (as she did a few times when our friends dropped by while she was here), her first interaction with them is to point out who is her Momma and who is her Daddy.

One of the things I noticed is that she is quite capable of entertaining herself. This makes me quite proud.

We have a cable strung between two large pine trees in our front yard for tethering our dogs. Since my daughter’s dog, Daisy, was staying with us while they visited New Orleans, this was very useful. She’s 11 or 12 years old (got her from the pound, so no one is sure) and it just didn’t seem a good idea to house her with our two young male dogs who are larger than she is.

Daisy was indoors and my granddaughter, Issie, was outdoors with me, my husband, and a friend of his. She began playing with the cables. I was a bit nervous about this because I am an over-protective motherly type and was concerned that she’d strangle herself.

For some unknown reason, my husband had tied a length of rope on the cable. (I do not question why my husband does some things.) This rope was just out of Issie’s reach. She jumped, but could not grab it.

I was amazed when she returned to the middle of the cable where the cable leash for the dogs was attached and pulled the main cable down where she reach it and “walked” with her hands to the rope, pulling it down where she could reach it. I wish we’d taken a video of this, but I didn’t have my camera handy.

I’ve got to say that I am impressed with her problem solving skills. Perhaps I shouldn’t be, since her father is an engineer and her mother a mathematician. It’s also possible that I’m biased. But not really that likely…

Also, I can announce to the world now, since my daughter has posted it on Facebook, that they are expecting another child. Needless to say I am thrilled! 

I have three other grandchildren that I do not get to see so often (as if twice a year is often) and it is my goal to somehow remedy that.