I mentioned on July 23 that there was something about my round with bladder cancer that I didn't think I should blog about yet. I said I was considering a law suit. Well, here are the details, though it's all pretty anticlimactic, and I feel pretty dumb about it.

In 1995 I developed bladder problems that were very much the same as the ones I developed this spring. I saw a urologist in '95 and had two cystoscopies and two biopsies, and the diagnosis at the time was Interstitial Cystitis. This was weird at the time because I don't fit the demographic for that ailment at all, but I took the urologist at his word. So since '95 I've believed that I had IC and I've tried to monitor (somewhat) what I eat and drink in order to avoid flair-ups.

OK, so fast forward thirteen years to last July. I had bladder surgery twice this summer, the second time at UVA Hospital, and the urologist presented my slides to the pathology department at UVA because something about my cancer cells seemed a bit odd. Well, guess what ... the pathologist at UVA remembered my name. He remembered me because he had seen my biopsy slides in '95 and had diagnosed my condition as cancer way back then. The local urologist had sent my slides to UVA all those years ago and the pathology department at UVA had called it cancer and no one had told me.

Well, I didn't remember anyone telling me.

So it's conceivable that I've been walking around with cancer for 13 years. Granted, I have a particularly non-aggressive, superficial, slow-growing cancer ... but as far back as '95 it was recognized as cancer by the good people at UVA.

I was pretty angry when I found out late last month that the pathologist at UVA had diagnosed me as a cancer patient all the way back in '95. I felt that if I'd known that UVA thought I had cancer all those years ago I'd have certainly done something other than go about my business and allow the cancer to grow. So I considered filing a malpractice suit against the local urologist, now retired, who I'd seen in '95.

But as I got my paper-trail together I was surprised to realize that I still had a number of letters and forms from '95. I'd kept track of them all these years. And at least one of them makes reference to a diagnosis of "transitional cell carcinoma" from a pathologist at UVA. Granted, this particular letter, from a local pathologist, disagrees with the UVA diagnosis. But, nonetheless, I was informed (at least informally) in '95 that a pathologist at UVA thought I had cancer. I have the letter to prove it.

How did I forget that? How did that go in one ear and out the other? I don't know, but obviously it did. I guess I was so happy to embrace a diagnosis of something other than cancer that I just dismissed the UVA diagnosis completely.

So the moral of the story, I guess, is that even if a doctor who thinks you have cancer is in the minority, make sure you follow up on it. The Pathologist at UVA recognized my condition as cancer thirteen years ago, and if I'd followed up on that it would have been caught long before it took over half of my bladder.

Labels: Bladder Cancer, Personal