Bladder cancer survivor’s story: in his own words

50-year-old Chris Lee of Newmarket, Ont. works in hematology and began his career in the laboratory at Women’s College Hospital in 1989. He moved to the Sunnybrook campus in 2010 when the Women & Babies Program relocated to the Bayview site. In this post, Chris talks about his health journey and struggle with cancer, as well as his fundraising efforts.

Chris’ story – in his own words

I, like many, brushed my initial symptoms off as trivial. I convinced myself that blood in my urine was benign. I did not want to face the truth about what was happening.

As I became ill, I started to look it, too. One day in May 2013, my co-workers in the lab insisted I get help. I was practically forced to go to Occupational Health and then to the Emergency ward at Sunnybrook.

In Emergency, they found I was severely anemic; my hemoglobin had fallen to 61 g/L – a critical level. An ultrasound showed two large masses in my bladder. After a night in the ER and the transfusion of two units of blood, I was admitted to the hospital where they performed a cystoscopy and found two large papillary tumors in the bladder. The next day, I was taken to surgery for a TURBT (Transurethal Resection of Bladder Turmor) and pathology reports found the tumors were Papillary Urotheial Carcinoma, high grade, stage T1, bladder cancer.

I was lucky. My cancer had only invaded the Lamina Propria (the second layer of the bladder). If it had gone into the Muscularis Propria, I would have faced a Radical Cystectomy, which is a complete removal of the bladder.

Six weeks later, I was restaged with a second, more invasive TURBT. This one dug deep into the wall of my bladder to ensure the cancer was not muscle invasive (it was not). I still feel the effects of that surgery even now.

A month and a half later, I began a type of chemo therapy called Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). It’s a vaccine based on the tuberculosis bacterium and is instilled directly into the bladder through a catheter. I had it once a week for six weeks.

At first there were no real side effects. After the third instillation, however, I began feeling severe flu-like symptoms as a result of the treatment lasting 2-3 days each time…

Finally, two weeks after my final BCG treatment I was able to return to work and resume my normal duties. I’d been off from the middle of May 2013 until the end of September 2013.

Recently, I had another cystoscopy. This one, thankfully, came back as “all clear.” I will have another “maintenance” round of BCG treatments near the end of 2013, followed up by another cystoscopy in January.

Bladder cancer, particularly the form that I had, has a very high re-occurrence rate of 80 per cent and in about 30 per cent of these cases, the cancer progresses to T2 or muscle invasive. This requires the patient undergo a Radical Cystectomy and often extensive standard chemotherapy.

Sometimes, the cancer can progress to stage T3 or T4 where it has spread beyond the bladder to surrounding tissue (T3) or metastasized throughout the body (T4). Those cases are usually fatal. Because of this, bladder cancer patients must be followed for the rest of their lives. In my case, I will be getting cystoscopies every three months and “maintenance” BCG treatments every six months, for the next three years at least.

If everything stays normal, then I will “graduate” to a cystoscopy every six months for a few years and then annually for the rest of my life. If I have a re-occurrence, then it’s all back to the beginning again with surgery and full treatments and I can only hope that the cancer does not progress beyond the T1 stage.

One thing that has helped me greatly during this time is all the love and support from my fellow lab workers here at Sunnybrook. Everyone showed me how much they really cared for me. It brings a smile to my face each time I think about it. They are all some of the best people I have ever known in my life.

I have also been helped along my journey by Bladder Cancer Canada. BCC is a support group for patients with bladder cancer. They maintain a web forum for patients and caregivers as well as raising awareness and promoting research into bladder cancer. It was from BCC that I learned the most about this nasty disease and how to fight it.

This past September, I, along with several of my fellow Sunnybrook colleagues, my brother and my dog, participated in the Bladder Cancer Canada 5km walk to raise awareness and funds for bladder cancer research. Personally, I was able to raise $1,600 for the cause and in total the event raised in excess of $400,000 nationwide.

Everyone involved in my care – from the doctors, nurses, orderlies, phlebotomists, secretaries and receptionists— has been extremely professional and caring. Everyone of them seemed to genuinely care about my well being. We sometimes hear stories in the media of unfeeling or rude staff at other hospitals. I can say that that I have yet to come across anyone fitting that description here at Sunnybrook. I was also able to witness many of them as they treated other patients in the same way they cared for me.

I’ve always been happy to be a member of the Sunnybrook team, but being on the other side of it all, as a patient, and seeing how hard everyone works and how dedicated everyone is to patient care has made me even prouder to be a part of the Sunnybrook family.