This past weekend Stacie and I spoke with three neobladder recipients whose names were given to us by Dr. Holzbeierlein's office. Overall we were very encouraged. For the sake of this blog, we will refer to them as "Bladder Buddy #1", "Bladder Buddy #2" and "Bladder Buddy #3".
Bladder Buddy #1: underwent the surgery at age 65 - three years ago. Ironically, he was a former instructor of mine at UMKC. He was very inspiring to listen to as he indicated no problems with post-operative issues.
Bladder Buddy #2: underwent the surgery at age 63 - one year ago. He said he was standing in a deer stand hunting bucks 6 weeks after surgery! This made us feel good... not that we plan to kill Bambi, but at least we could if we wanted to. (Also... he saw the 3D IMAX version of Avatar and sat through the entire 3 hours without having to take a restroom break! Yess!)
Bladder Buddy #3: underwent the surgery at age 38 - five years ago. He had a mix of encouraging experiences and some complications (he is a diabetic) that were unusual. But, he never had to self-catheterize. I was extremely happy to hear this!
Summary: We are confident a normal life is not only possible, but expected. All Bladder Buddies are cancer-free and lead normal lives. We are going into this thing with more confidence and expectations of normalcy. Next steps -- a CT scan of my lungs and a full-body bone scan to make sure it hasn't spread.
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I had neo bladder surgery in December 1996 in Melbourne, Australia. I was 38 years old. While the ordeal of the surgery and recovery were intense, it was worth it. 15 years later all appears fine. I only wish the doctors found the bladder cancer earlier, before it started to abut the muscle lining.
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