Wendy’s Story: “Facing cancer helped me realize I wanted to live, and living is beautiful.”

Facing a life-threatening diagnosis is never easy, but sometimes the journey through uncertainty reveals true strength. Wendy Williams’s story follows her diagnosis of aggressive bladder cancer, navigating multiple treatments, tests, and a search for alternatives when conventional methods seemed limited. With the support of a dedicated medical team, family and friends, as well as guidance from BCAN, a new path of hope emerged. This is her story:

I was diagnosed on March 4, 2019, with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, T-1, very aggressive. I couldn’t hold my urine. I also had some blood clots. I went to see my general practitioner and she sent me to a urologist.

The urologist performed two TURBTs, transurethral resections of bladder tumors. After the two TURBTs, my surgeon was concerned about a few growths she saw during a cystoscopy, so she performed a procedure using a laser. My urologist thought that all the cancer was gone. There were six weeks of BCG treatments during the summer of 2019. Then in the fall, I went back for a checkup and all the tumors had returned, and I had a lot of them. They were crowding my bladder. She sat me down and said, “If you don’t get your bladder out, you are going to die.” Those were her words. I didn’t want a nine-hour surgery. I had surgery as a baby, and it was very, very difficult for me, and I didn’t want to have one at the other end of my life.

I was already 67 and I thought, well, okay, I’ll get another opinion. So I went to a very famous doctor, very nationally and internationally known. I went to see him and he did a cystoscopy. He told me that my bladder was like a garden growing all these tumors, and if I didn’t get my bladder out, I would die. My first urologist just left it at that. She didn’t have suggestions for any alternative treatments. She just said I could try to get in on a trial. Then my second doctor said he would try to get me in on a clinical trial, but he was unable to. So they just left me there like that and I went home. All this time, I was in touch with BCAN, which I learned about from one of the doctors. BCAN was instrumental to me.

During the time I was seeing my first urologist and getting TURBTs, the BCAN Bladder Cancer Basics handbook was fantastic. I studied it for hours. Everything BCAN offered was free, and Basics broke down all the stages of bladder cancer and gave all kinds of tips.

BCAN also set me up with a co-survivor through its Survivor to Survivor program. The person I was matched with had been through a lot herself.  I was grateful that I got connected with somebody personally who I could call during the BCG treatments to support me through them. She helped me with my hygiene around how to take care of myself, washing myself afterward.

BCAN is a beacon. Since I was told to go home and die if I wasn’t going to get my bladder taken out. I went home and began preparing for that. Then I thought, “Let me go online and see what I can find myself.” So I started Googling all kinds of things.

I found this wonderful book titled, “Taking Control,” and it was by a woman whose husband had muscle invasive bladder cancer, and he decided to do alternative treatments. I thought maybe I could do something else. I found this term called bladder preservation therapy, and recently I just looked again in the BCAN Basics and saw that term. I discovered Dr. Peter Carroll at the University of California, San Francisco, and got an appointment with him. He sat me down and said, “Why would you want to get your bladder out if you haven’t tried anything else?”

Podcast: Is Bladder Preservation Right For You? with Dr. Jason Efstathiou

It was affirming because he wasn’t just telling me to go home and die. He was saying let’s try some other stuff. He suggested doing three TURBTs and then doing six chemo instillations, using gemcitabine and docetaxel. I had six sessions of these instillations from February to March of 2020, which were not easy, but I’m glad I did them.

Dr. Carroll turned me over early on to Dr. Sima Porten, a member of the BCAN Board of Directors. She’s phenomenal. She’s the one who did my surgeries. She’s my doctor now who I see every year. After six weekly chemo instillations ending in March 2020, the cancer was gone. Then I had four more chemo instillations once a month, which brought me to September of 2020, and the cancer was still gone. Dr. Porten decided that my bladder had had enough chemo. That was four years ago. I just had an exam and the tumors have not returned. And, I still have my bladder.

I’m really healthy. After my chemo instillations, I went to True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, California. I water-fasted for seven days with a team of doctors. They put me on a new diet, whole foods, plant-based, S.O.S.-free (salt, oil, sugar-free). No meat, no dairy, no bread. I’ve been on that for four years. I just feel grateful that I’m in remission. I feel healthier in many ways than I’ve ever felt.

Most of my family has passed away, but my friends and my wife were phenomenal. I also went to UCSF, the University of California at San Francisco, Osher Center for Integrative Health. It is kind of an alternative clinic where you learn different strategies to cope with cancer. I went to see Kathleen Kavanaugh who was sensational, and she turned me onto this book called, “Radical Remissions,” by Dr. Kelly A. Turner.  

Dr. Turner interviewed all these cancer survivors and found out they did nine things that kept them healthy. One was creating a super support system. There were other things too such as upping your spiritual game, making sure you’re changing your diet, exercising every day, and so on. I did all nine. I devoted myself to doing all those things while I was doing the chemo instillations.

People drove me to my chemo and brought me food. I wasn’t living near San Francisco when I was getting the treatment, so a friend of mine said I could live in her home in Oakland for six weeks while I got the chemo instillations. That was amazing. I couldn’t have done this without my friends; it can be so isolating to have bladder cancer.

BCAN is a great organization. It was key to my survival. I think a lot of doctors don’t know that you can do something besides have your bladder removed. I want people to know that there are other alternatives if you qualify for them. It’s not for everybody, but it’s worth trying.

Don’t feel ashamed about having bladder cancer. I think people feel shame because it’s about our privates. Despite this, I would talk about it quite a lot. I was upfront when people would ask how I was doing. I would encourage those battling this disease to talk to other people about it and get beyond their shame if they have it.

I was a community college teacher, and I told all my students that I had bladder cancer, and that if they had any kind of blood in their urine, unless they had their period as a female, to get checked right away. I left teaching because of bladder cancer. I was 67 and I retired from my job. My students were upset I was leaving, but I said I had to go save my life.

If I could talk to my newly diagnosed self, first, I would give myself a big hug. I would just give her a big hug and say, thank you for how you handled cancer because you were amazing. You never gave up on yourself. You were so brave because you looked into the unknown and the uncertainty. I embraced uncertainty. Cancer was, in many ways, a very positive thing for me because I kind of learned not to be ambivalent about life anymore.

Facing cancer helped me realize I wanted to live, and living is beautiful.