Hi folks. Diagnosed with Bladder Cancer on 2/12.

Hi all,
I thought I'd introduced myself. I'm Jay, and let me tell you, the last four months have been a roller coaster!

I visited the GP back in August after seeing blood in my urine and experiencing persistent lower back pain. The GP did a dip test, found an infection, and prescribed Nitrofuratoin.
Unfortunately, that didn't clear things up, so I went back again after a couple of weeks, and the GP found nothing, so he referred me to the '2 -Week Wait' Urology cancer screening at the local hospital.

I had the usual. Blood test, urine test, a CT scan, followed finally by a flexible cystoscopy on the 11th Sept. At the follow up with the consultant he assured me there was no sign of any cancer but that I had Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia. The bleeding was due to an inflamed vascular protrusion on my prostate. They fitted me with a urethral catheter as a temporary measure until they could get me in to fit a suprapubic catheter before a TURP procedure. At that point, I'd completely put cancer out of my mind and it was never brought up again by the urologist.

I went home and took a few weeks off work due to the bleeding. That's when things started to go wrong.

The bleeding took a turn for the worse in late September. The catheter bag darkened to something resembling Claret. I contacted 111 for advice and was reassured by the on-call doctor it was nothing serious. Ha! The following day, after about 48hrs of claret-coloured urine, I started to feel seriously ill and called 999. They took me straight in with severe Haematuria, borderline tachycardia and low blood pressure (94/53).

While I was in A&E, I suffered a mild heart attack from blood loss and was left semi-conscious for much of the day. They gave me three units of blood before I stabilised. I was in the hospital for the rest of September. They pushed my TURP procedure back a couple of weeks and got me into the operating theatre to remove some trapped clots from my bladder and fit the supra-pubic catheter.

By early October, I'd had three CT scans and an ultrasound on my abdomen. They'd opened up my bladder, looked high and low for clots, and still, nobody had spotted a tumour.

Again things got worse.

Fours days after the operation on my bladder, I suffered a pulmonary embolism and spent several scary days coughing up blood. Again they pushed back my TURP and CTed my chest to inspect the clots. The pulmonary specialist said they had found 3 small clots in my left lung and I'd need to start a course of Dalteparin on the smallest dose. They warned me this could worsen my haematuria and trigger the need for more transfusions. Predictably, it did.

After spending most of October and early November in hospital with severe bleeding and receiving another 7 units of blood over the month, they finally got my Obs stable enough and the clots small enough that they were happy to go ahead with the TURP surgery. That happened on the 16th of November and thankfully went well. The Haematuria had finally stopped and they were happy to send me home after a few days to bed rest. I was finally on the mend. To say I was relieved is an understatement!

And now this. Last Thursday I went back for what I thought was a follow-up appointment. I started cheerfully blathering away telling my consultant how much better I was feeling when he interrupted me and informed me that tests of tissue samples from the TURP had found cancer cells. They had gone back and reviewed my CT scans and found a T2 (T2G3 N0 M0) tumour in my bladder.

I'm still reeling. After four CT scans, three cystoscopies, a dozen blood tests, god knows how many urine tests. They finally caught the bladder tumour by chance. I don't know whether to be angry they missed it so many times or relieved the tumour was small enough to be so repeatedly missed. Mostly, I'm still in shock.