My grandfather had bladder cancer.
I say had because they cant find it anymore. It's not in his bladder, and it's not showing up anywhere else on the cat scan and that means his untreatable and uncurable deadly bladder cancer is gone.
This cancer in a way saved his life.
Let me explain.
In September before my wedding my grandfather had some medical problems crop up. Not to be too gross about it but he basically started peeing blood... continuously... all night long. Around 4am he finally decided it actually was a bad thing and they called an ambulance.
After they got him to the hospital the bleeding stopped on it's own but while they were testing to figure out what caused it they discovered that he had an abdominal aortic aneurysm the size of a grape fruit. Which is incredibly life threatening. With it being so huge it meant the the blood vessel wall was so delicate that the surgeons told us he was surprised that hitting pot holes on the way to the hospital didn't cause it to rupture.
The survival rate for a ruptured aortic aneurysm is less than 40%. IF you can be in surgery in under ten minutes. My grandparents live 45 minutes from the hospital. So it was a death sentence.
The hospital he was at couldn't perform the surgery for several days (small hospital/unqualified doctors) and since their suggestion at that point was for him to go home for the weekend my parents stepped in and drove him to a bigger hospital. He there had the surgery and made it through fine. The doctors there basically ignored the hematuria (blood in the urine) for the much bigger aneurysm issue. He went home and a few weeks later they readressed the hematuria. Where unfortunately the doctor discovered a very aggressive bladder cancer.
A few rounds with chemo had no results except weakening my 85 year old grandfather. So they decided that the only way to keep the cancer from invading the rest of his body they would do a cystectomy (complete bladder removal.) This is drastic surgery that results in the placement of a stoma and the use of a bag attached to your stomach to collect the urine. This was at least supposed to buy us 5 more years with him and it was the only option at stopping the spread.
After they opened him up for the surgery they discovered that the cystectomy was impossible. The aneurysm repair had required the placement of a stent around the abdominal aorta. That basically means they had put a support tube around the aorta so it couldn't bulge out again since it was already weakened. The problem was the stent placement was so entangled with the ureters and the blood supply to the kidney that removal was impossible.
This basically meant he was going to be sent home to live with cancer and just wait for it to kill him by spreading throughout his body.
We were devastated.
The doctors arranged for him to have radiation treatments that MIGHT have a chance of slowing the progression of his cancer. A big maybe they told us.
The year went by, Grandpa went to his treatments every day for weeks on end. We pretended like there was no problem.
Two weeks ago he went back for a cancer screening to see how far things had spread. First they did a cystoscopy where you look inside the bladder with a scope. It was completely negative. No cancer. So they did a full body cat scan to make sure that the cancer just hadn't metastasized to somewhere else in his body. It was negative. No cancer.
NO FRIGGING CANCER. NONE ANYWHERE.
They treated the untreatable cancer. And because of the aneurysm he got to keep his bladder. And because of the cancer he didn't die from a ruptured aneurysm. Huh. Lucky right?
So now he's home, healthy, and happy.
And so am I.
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