Am I Naively Optimistic?

I'm pretty active on a subreddit called r/BladderCancer (d'uh). I find there's lots of people there that have been coping with this disease for a long time - the majority have NMIBC (non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer) where the prognosis is generally good, and the disease is managed in the short and long term. Less often, I find another case of MIBC (muscle-invasive) bladder cancer. This week, a son wrote about his 54 year old dad with MIBC who had a radical cysectomy, and found one involved lymph node in the pathology. 

Sounds just like me.

His dad's surgery was in January, and the pathology was just recently given to the family and he was wondering what the probable next steps were. He gave some details on the pathology, so I went back and looked at the details of mine, specifically about the involved lymph node:

When I reread my pathology, with many months of research and introspection, as well as my general feeling right now (quite good - pretty normal), I dove deeper into the details of the affected lymph node.

Specifically the terms "subcapsular" and "Extranodal Extension". Subcapsular means inside or below a capsule, and Extranodal Extension means the cancer has escaped the capsule(s).

So I guess this means that, although the cancer escaped the bladder itself, it was still incapsulated in one lymph node. The node itself was pretty large (2cm - average lymph nodes are about 12mm), and the "largest metastatic deposit" was 2mm.

Because I've had no symptoms of any kind in the last 10 months (except that UTI in the summer) that maybe indeed the entire mess was removed in the surgery a year ago.

Everyone teases me about being a fatalist (even before the bladder cancer), but I'm finding more reasons now to be an optimist.

Seventy Seven

I had session number ten (of thirteen) yesterday. Again, completely uneventful and the nurse even got the IV catheter in on the first try (this has been somewhat hit and miss over the last forty weeks).

The only other stuff going on is that Laura is back in Harrison Hot Springs for her annual five week job at the Canadian Labour Congress. She has been providing child care for their "Winter School" since 2012. It's her favorite gig and she looks forward to it all year.

As for me, I've been occupied selling off three of my watches - I now have three left. One was a SARB035 that we gave to Dave years and years ago - but he doesn't wear a watch, so was OK with me selling it for him (better somebody get use out of it than sitting in a drawer somewhere). The other two were recent purchases that I never really bonded with - so out they go.

The ones on this page are the ones I'm keeping. You probably don't care what they are. But in the off chance you do, just hover over the image.

So I'm in the home stretch now - the last immunotherapy session with be on April 15. Dr. Noonan wants to have a phone call in February (she doesn't even want to "see" me) and we'll determine where we're at.

Oh - Seventy Seven is the percent I've done now.