1. < Bladder Cancer

How long from surgery to start of BCG treatments?

Posted by Retep51 @peter51f, Mar 9 11:28pm

I had the 2 cystos and both came up with cancer in the bladder. Doctor said next step for me was BCG treatment. 6 treatments over 6 weeks.
The doctor told me that the BCG drug takes time to get so I will have to wait a bit. When the drug comes into his office they will call me to set up the appointments.
It is now 3 weeks. I called the office and they said it has not come yet and when it does they will call me.
Has anyone else had to wait that long or longer? How long did you wait.

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talltxlady | @talltxlady | Mar 10 7:56am

I think it was about 6 weeks. My doctor always wanted some time in-between my last cysto and my BCG treatments.

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summerlibra | @summerlibra | Mar 10 2:09pm

My first surgery was February 4th, second surgery was February 24th. My first BCG treatment is set for March 24th. I am under the impression the doctor wanted my bladder to have a little time to heal from the surgeries before beginning treatments. BCG treatments are to begin about 5 weeks from last surgery.
A little humor; I have a colostomy bag from a 2023 surgery. I wore a Foley catheter for this cancer for about 2 weeks as a result of the cystoscope surgeries. I introduced the stoma to the Foley and asked that they make themselves friends. Bag maintenance became priority no. 1. I smiled and called myself the bag lady. I allowed someone else to do all the errands and I rested. That’s called self-care, a necessary component of cancer patients for both physical and emotional health.
Again, kudos to everyone.

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skybolt | @skybolt | Apr 10 2:34pm

Hi Retep, did you get your 1st treatment yet? Hope all went well. Did you mean you had a cystoscopy and secondly a TURBT (surgery to remove and identify the bladder cancer tumor type and size) ?

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Retep51 | @peter51f | Apr 12 6:35am

Going on my 4 treatment next Friday. No major problems just a general weakness after the treatment and it lasted about 3 days. And I slept a lot for those 3 days.

Yes it was the cystoscopy and a TURBT. The urologist did the cystoscopy and took out the tumors, a few weeks later he did the TURBT to check for any remaining cancer cells. And there were more cancer cells.

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quahog | @quahog | Apr 13 9:02pm

I waited ten weeks between the TURBT and the beginning of the BCG treatments. Part of that time was due to an attempt to get into a new trial testing BCGplus. Unfortunately my genetics got in the way of acceptance into that trial. I think standard wait time is six to eight weeks. My Doc was not concerned about the ten week period.

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