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  Well, if you missed Part 1 and 2 then you're joining this adventure in at the middle of the end and welcome! I'll just continue where I left it and begin with my experience with BCG. However, I must open with a salient fact

A little over a month before I heard about things like papillary carcinoma, stages, grades tumors I was blessed with a beautiful granddaughter - Addie Jane. I mention it here because during the BCG process she was a great comfort to me along with my two daughters, a son, my wife, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews and my mom. But Addie - at the time six or seven months old - would always take a nap with grandpa or sit on my lap to distract me with books and stuffed animals Her amazing appetite for discovery stimulated my own and I  began a process of living with the disease instead of against it . A huge step I thought. Before now I was afraid, depressed and unknowing. If fact the less I knew the better since it all just filled my mind with crazy rants and uncontrollable thoughts. Some may call that denial I call it - well - denial.

The lesson here is distraction. I am not advocating we all run out and convince our children to provide a distraction in the same form as mine; but do find something to stimulate your mind, body and - perhaps most of all- spirit. Anyway, I think I've made the point.

BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) treatment is a biochemical immunological treatment. They basically fool your body into believing it has a virus but instilling a dormant form of the bovine tuberculosis virus into your bladder. The process is fairly simple, a tube is inserted through the urethra, urine drained and BGC is instilled and left to brew for at least two hours. The immune system then rallies to kill the little buggers putting your immune system into overdrive. All this physiological hide and seek seems to combat tumors in a way no one has been able to explain to me any better than I just explained it to you.

To take just a moment here, if you are like me you have to wonder who sat up one day and said:

"Heck, I know what we need to cure bladder cancer! We'll just fill our patients with a dormant strain of the bovine tuberculosis virus, crank up their immune system and after doing this six times - eureka!"  

But everyone assured me it worked well enough to make it worth enduring and I began enduring December 28, 2008. That day I began a six week course of BCG while praying the more serious side effects like organ transfer and lymph node involvement would give me a break and - like most patients involved in little self research my first BCG treatment was very frightening. Mistake number two!  

A little knowledge can sometimes hurt more than it helps. By all means do your independent research but before flying off on a tangent, discuss your thoughts and finding with a qualified professional. It would probably save the late afternoon pharmacy runs to refill the Xanax prescriptions and might even eliminate the Ambien CR before bed.

What I read about side effects made me think I was going to get pretty sick and get sicker still with each instillation since the effects are usually cumulative. Or - alternately - would breeze through it all without as much as a sore throat or runny nose. As the nurse prepped for the first procedure I certainly was hoping (there's that word again) my experience would land in the later group and with optimum benefit.

When the actual procedure was in process I felt nothing, not a thing. Two hours later I was in bed and feeling a little weak- minor side effect to say the least. I rejoiced in my good fortune, spent one day in bed and was up to cook breakfast that Sunday for my family. Round one goes to me!

I schedule each session for early Friday afternoons with the idea that I would have the week end to recover and get back to the salt mine bright and early Monday morning. A great plan and so far - week one behind me - it appeared to be working.

Week two and three I walked in with a smile, hopped up on the table, dropped the jeans and was ready to move forward with great confidence.  Heck I was convinced I could feel this stuff killing all the little cancer bugs.

Week four - January 18, 2008 - treatment number four went close to the others with a little more muscle pain and some urinary tract inflammation and it took several more days to recover this time.

Number five resulted in continued the back pain, pain while urinating and joint aches so I called the doctor and asked for an appointment. This time - and every time - he saw me right away and a decision was made to suspend treatment for an extra week.  I was seriously bummed. I wanted all of this stuff over with, I wanted to move on and get past all this crap as quickly as possible but I was just too sick and knew it was the right thing to do. At this point my "back to work by Monday" plan was history.

Number six and I met on February 1, 2008 and my hospital visit was scheduled for the 18^th thereby giving the irritation chance to subside and affect a full recovery following this, the final treatment. Almost immediately after the nurse drained the drug I was nauseous and felt awful. Much worse than the presiding five events. By the time I got home I had a temperature of 103 felt like my back would explode and that every muscle in my body had been slammed with a baseball bat. I took a pill, went to bed and literary woke up six days later. I am sure I must have opened my eyes but I never sat up, stood up or moved out of bed and finally arose sometime mid-eighth day feeling weak but human and wanting to get on with the in-patient cystoscopy to put a final period the entire affair. Of course, Dr. Dato had a different Idea. He wanted me to consult with an immunologist just to be sure the BGC treatment had indeed remained in the bladder and there was zero risk of other organ involvement - a rare but serious side effect of the treatment. Needless to say, clean bill from a great immunologist and all systems were green.

Bright and early on February 18, 2008 Dr. Dato and I met again at Grossmont hospital with one last - I hoped last - mission and a great deal of hope (do you see a trend). As with all of these hospital knock out sessions - it was over before I knew it began and I was settled into a comfortable room with a view of the hospitals generator stack. The next morning Dato showed up with that good news smile of his and let me know there was no sign of cancer inside and the urine pathology was also clean. I was ready to go home, take a few days of rest and get on with my life.

Of course my new life is lived in increments of the three month between tests and has so far been excellent. A few overly cautious scares but for the most part I am again symptom free and about to see the Doc for the first time since February. We will share one of those dreaded cystoscopies. He will poke, prod and look for a good long time - hours if you measure it by how I feel - and then announce his visual finding. He will also ship my urine of to the lab to look for microscopic markers that indicate the cancer may be planning to spend the summer. I hope not and I will keep you posted.

In closing I would say that is it, the end of almost a year and the road traveled by one patient. To this day I have never called it "my cancer". It is not mine! I don't own it, want it or welcome it. In fact the sooner we part ways forever the better I will feel. I invite you - no, beg you - don't lose hope no matter the grade or classification. Don't own it, fight it instead. Miracles still happen and often enough to make them worth praying for. Have I mentioned that - oh yea - pray. I do and will for you.

Thank you.