Too afraid to ask...

'this is not life threatening' .....the four little words you never knew you needed to hear, or were too afraid to ask.


Your brain does an amazing job of keeping you going, of getting you through no matter what. So you don't ask...it's not that its not on your mind (so much more than you realise) but no one else is talking about it so you assume you shouldn't either, for fear of overacting....or hearing something you really don't want to hear.

A couple of weeks ago we took a drive up north and met with a Bladder Cancer specialist. We had a long chat and she laid everything out on the table for us. She talked more frankly than any doctor I have met with so far and it was refreshing, in fact it was so so necessary!

We talked through all of my options, given that my six week cause of Mitomycin appears to have been unsuccessful and we came up with a new plan.

We're going with immunotherapy or BCG. As I understand, its a form of Tuberculosis and it helps your body to fight off cancer cells. It is given in exactly the same was as the chemo was, straight into the bladder so hopefully the side effects will be minimal, although I've been told more noticeable than last time, but there is also a huge success rate with this treatment and the aim now is quality of life without numerous surgeries rather than life or bladder preservation, which is the path we feared we were on before.

It took a while to sink in but in hind sight I definitely feel like right then would have been the right time to pop some champagne. We are in this for life and celebrating in most cases seems wrong, or premature but little victories like this definitely warrant acknowledging.

Yes a life time full of checks and possible treatments has also been confirmed 'bladder cancer' is for life, not just for Christmas' and there is no such thing as 'all clear' but at the end of the day it won't kill me and I could even think about more children in the future. (Something we had completely written off as impossible prior to this.)

It's what we'd always hoped for, its what we'd always told ourselves but until you hear it it doesn't really mean shit. Its really helped us throw the last two years into perspective and we're feeling pretty happy right now!

Thanks for reading :)

Katie xxx