Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer

Although I worked in healthcare for 30 years as a genetic counselor, Melanie was shocked to learn that she had bladder cancer. She told BCAN: Melanie and her husband In 2018, a year before my diagnosis I was having heaviness of the pelvic floor that prompted me to schedule… Read More

Vietnam Veteran and BCAN volunteer, Jim Scott shares his bladder cancer story at the 2018 Bladder Cancer Think Tank Read Jim’s interview with the American Homefront Project, “More Vietnam vets now qualify for disability benefits, but it may be years before they see the money.” My name is… Read More

It was summer of 2018, one night in late July, about two o’clock in the morning. I woke up with this horrific pain in my back on my right side, but I did not think too much of it. Maybe I slept wrong. So, I turned over hoping it would… Read More

My dad, Simon Lowy, was born July 3, 1929, in the Bronx, NY, to Helen and David Lowy. He had one brother. My dad played ball on the streets—stick ball—they used the sewer tops as the bases. My dad had many friends growing up. Wendy Sloane and her dad, Simon… Read More

A very happy Annmarie with her grandson I am a schoolteacher at a high school in Mashpee, Massachusetts. I started to have symptoms in May 2018. I was at school and I got a sharp pain in my kidney area and I thought, “Oh, kidney stones.” I knew something wasn’t… Read More

I am a nephrologist and have been practicing medicine since 1976, so I look at my bladder cancer journey somewhat differently than others might.  I was having some difficulty urinating and in the process of having my prostate looked at, my doctor came out afterwards and said, “Oh, by the… Read More

I was diagnosed with stage IV bladder cancer in April 0f 2012.  I was 34 years old.  I had been in and out of the hospital prior to that because I could not urinate.  As it turned out, I had tumors wrapped around part of my bladder. When the doctor… Read More

Kimberly and her mom at the 2018 Walk to End Bladder Cancer in Washington, DC. My father was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2012, just days after his 58th birthday. He lost his mother to the disease years before I was born. Right after his diagnosis, I remember telling myself,… Read More

Tell us about your husband’s journey. My husband, Jerry, was asymptomatic. One day, his urine looked like pure blood. And was bright red. At the time, we thought it might be a bad kidney infection. The doctors ran tests, a CT scan. They told him he had a spot on… Read More