I have had a fortunate life of good health up to now. Never smoked, drank moderately and take plenty of exercise, mostly mountain walking with some cycling. Out of the blue my urine turned brownish-red one day in January 2017. I let this go for a couple of days and then went to my doctor, taking a sample of urine with me. The doctor was able to test the urine and confirmed that I had blood in it. He referred me to the hospital where I was given an appointment in a couple of weeks time.
I was apprehensive about having a cystoscopy. This is where a tube with camera is fed up from the penis past the prostate and on into the bladder. A local anaesthetic was given and I was able to watch the TV screen showing what the camera was seeing as it was fed up the urethra. It was a very curious sensation watching pictures of my own insides. The expectation was that they would find an enlarged prostate but there was no evidence of this. After the cystoscopy the doctor felt up my back passage and was able to confirm that the prostate was in fact quite small, so no worries there.
In the bladder the camera panned around and I spotted a curious flower like structure, very different to the bladder wall. I said "what's that?". The doctor said we would come back to that and carried on looking around to check whether there was anything else. There wasn't. The growth I had seen was similar to a cauliflower and the doctor said it was around 1-2 cm in size.
After the camera was withdrawn and I had a wash, I was able to speak in a relaxed fashion to a Macmillan nurse. This was an extremely useful discussion about what would come next. The answer was an operation accessing the bladder in the same way but under a general or spinal anaesthetic to cut out the cancer. As I type this I am due to go into hospital for this operation (TURBT - trans urethral resection of bladder tumour) tomorrow. Plenty more anxiety but the Harrogate hospital staff have been excellent so far at alleviating such feelings.
So more to follow but how was the cystoscopy? The answer was that this was mildly uncomfortable especially as the camera passed through the sphincter that holds back the urine until you pee. In the week following the cystoscopy there was some slight pain passing urine but by the end of the week that disappeared. Overall not too bad an experience. Fingers crossed for the next bit.
