It was just a few days before Christmas 2011. The exact date was Tuesday 20th December and the day began like any other. I got up early and went off to work. Mike woke a little later and began his getting-up routine. He went to the bathroom and noticed that there was blood in his urine. He was quite taken aback. A little later in the day, he called me and said that he had seen blood in his urine and so he had made an appointment to see our GP at 6pm that evening. The GP looked at his urine sample and it looked okay, until he put a testing stick in it. It had a lot of blood in it, but no pus. This was not an infection. He did a few more tests and everything was normal. He suggested Mike go for an ultrasound. Mike asked if it was urgent. The doctor said, “go within the next week.” The next day I made an appointment for Mike to go and have a scan. They had an opening the next day which was Thursday 22nd December. I went to the hospital with Mike and so began a number of unexpected “God-incidences” in this story.
I knew the lady doing the ultrasound. She goes to the Methodist Church in Fish Hoek and we had met before. She allowed me into the room and I stood next to her as she did the scan. As she looked over Mike’s bladder, she noticed something. To me it was just a small white spot. She said, “oh he has what looks like a polyp. It’s very small – only 9mm, but he should probably see a urologist.”
Just a polyp.
All sorts of organs have polyps….nasal polyps, bowel polyps, cervical polyps. Polyps seem to abound. It didn’t sound too serious.
On leaving the treatment room, we were told to wait for the results. We immediately got onto our phones and started googling ‘bladder polyp.’ Immediately, to our shock, we discovered there is no such thing as a benign bladder polyp. All polyps that appear in the bladder are malignant!
It was a horrible discovery.
Immediately, I left Mike and hurried to the urologist rooms in another part of the hospital. I explained to the receptionist what had happened. She answered that the urologist was going away for a number of weeks (after all it was three days before Christmas), but he did have an appointment for us the next day at 12 noon. I made the appointment and went back to Mike. We left for home, somewhat stunned by what we had discovered. It was very small. Surely that must count for something?
The next day we were at the urologist promptly at 12 noon. He was crazy busy, but eventually we went in at about 12-45.
His first words were to explain that on the bladder cancer spectrum, what Mike had was on the “benign side”. He told us what happens. This little polyp develops and within it is a blood vessel. As the polyp grows, eventually the blood vessel pops and there’s blood in the urine. What can happen is that the man will see the blood and be a bit concerned. He will keep an eye on it and when it goes away, he will forget about it. Unbeknown to him, the blood vessel heals, the polyp continues to grow and eventually the blood vessel pops again and there is more blood than before. Hopefully, the man will do something about it. If he doesn’t, the process recurs with the polyp getting bigger until eventually it is about 4cm in size. The blood vessel is substantial and when it ruptures, the man is horrified at the huge amount of blood he passes. The bigger this malignant polyp grows, the greater the chance it has of penetrating the bladder wall and spreading the cancer into another part of the body.
He went onto say that the patient he had seen just before Mike had a 4cm polyp and that it just so happened that he would be operating on him on Tuesday 27th December. If Mike wanted to, he could go into theatre right after that patient. We immediately said yes, and on that day, one week after Mike first saw the blood in his urine, he was operated on and the 9mm polyp was removed. It had not penetrated the bladder muscle. No further treatment was required.
How very grateful we are. How wise Mike was to seek treatment immediately. It was a really good lesson.
So on Thursday last week Mike went for a check up and all is well.
#306 of my 1000 thanks is for a productive day – I did the two yachting blogs and 3.5 hours of recruitment work. It sets me up for a restful Sunday.
Proverbs 16:4
The LORD works out everything to its proper end
These are the days!
Keep the smile going.
God bless you!
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂
