BCG Week One:

When I first found out that the next course of treatment I would be having was BCG I began to do my research pretty much straight away. I knew from conversations with all my doctors that there could potential be a lot more side effects with BCG than there had been with the Mitomicyn and I wanted to be prepared (Knowledge is Power)


I've included a link here to a page that explains what BCG is much better than I ever could, just in case anyone wants to know more.

I also decided that I wanted to document the whole 6 week process, if possible. Both through blog posts and via Instagram stories in an effort to give an honest account of how treatment was going and how we were managing to balance it with family life and keeping everything as happy and normal for Oscar as possible throughout.

Week One: 

Things that went well: 

I will be receiving my treatment on the surgical outpatients unit, the same place where I had my course of chemotherapy in January. Its always a little bit more reassuring when your in familiar surroundings and you know the drill.

The installation was very quick and painless, even holding the BCG in my bladder for the two hours after didn't cause me any issues, in fact the most upsetting thing was not being able to have a cup of tea (or anything to drink) until after 12pm

They let me leave the ward as soon as I had had the treatment. *Getting home sooner meant I could keep Oscar in his routine as much as possible which is always a lot easier for everyone involved!

*The only thing that really worries me about this, and I mentioned it briefly in my insta stories yesterday, is that BCG is a live Tuberculosis vaccine, which means that in theory if anyone was to come into contact with the solution they could contract TB. This really does give me a lot of anxiety with Oscar in the hose and I follow the bleach down the toilet and scrubbing my hands to within an inch of their life rule religiously for a minimum of 6 hours after we are home.

The side effects so far have all been very manageable and I am really happy that we had the foresight to arrange childcare for Oscar before hand so that I could spend the day after taking things as easy as possible and not having to worry about him too much.

Things that weren't as great: 

No less than 3 nurses did an actual double take when they saw which treatment I had come in for. Every single one asked my age and explained they had never given this to anyone my age before and one asked if there was a long history of Bladder Cancer in my family and looked even more shocked and concerned when I explained that no, I was in fact the first!

Non of this is there fault and I am not even remotely annoyed or angry with any of them. These are simply the facts. Bladder Cancer is very rare in people my age, rare but not unheard of! Yes it did make me feel for a moment like a little bit of a freak, and it stired up familiar feelings of fear that there must be something really wrong with me to have got this at such a young age. I do regularly question if there is something major that I did or didn't do that could have in any way caused this to happen, but I learnt a long time ago not to go there as we will never actually know! All I do know is that I do not have any of the risk factors most often associated with Bladder Cancer, which include smoking and working with industrial chemicals.

What these interactions also showed me is that I need to keep talking about Bladder Cancer, because there will be others out there having the exact same experience as me, yes there won't be many but that just means they could be more likely to be feeling exactly the same as me about it all!

I also hope that if more people start talking about Bladder Cancer we will be able to do something about the stigma and embarrassment that surrounds it. People might become more aware that in reality it can happen to anyone and at any age and we will all know the signs and symptoms to look out for. Knowing what Bladder Cancer looks like and not feeling embarrassed by it means people might go to the doctors sooner and receive treatment faster because just like with any other cancer, early detection can make all the difference!

Thank you for reading :)

If you would like to follow my Instagram stories you can find me @katieefirby

If you have any questions about Bladder Cancer and BCG that I haven't yet covered then please just get in touch

Katie xxx