Today I turned 58, but what a miserable day it was. As you may know, last Friday I had my cystoscopy and biopsy under anesthesia at Marin General Hospital. The results were not favorable, but also not so bad. There was some microscopic cancer still on the bladder wall, but Dr. Neuwirth thought that it could be removed with one or two six week treatments of BCG. The cancer was down to grade I or II, so, all in all, it is slowly going out of my system. The BCG treatments start next Wednesday.
This morning, we went to the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) to meet with Dr. Norton about the schwannoma. I expected a forty-five minute visit followed by a nice lunch at the Cliff House and a stroll through the de Young Museum or the Palace of the Legion of Honor. This would have been a lovely way to spend my 58th birthday, but Dr. Norton changed all my plans. He wanted to remove the schwannoma on Friday – the day after tomorrow! Dr. Gullion supported his plan, and it seemed reasonable based on getting that thing out of my leg before the BCG treatments begin. I was in a state of shock about the urgency in his analysis of my problems. He went so far as to say that the lipoma on my left shoulder blade should also come out. So I spent the rest of the day registering for the surgery on Friday.
I was a bit disappointed because I had worked so hard to get appointments with neurosurgeons next Monday. I thought that because the schwannoma was a nerve sheath tumor, it should be removed by a neurosurgeon. Dr. Gullion did not share my ideas about the neurosurgeon. He thought that Dr. Norton was better because he understood the oncology. Dr. Norton has done many of these, so I feel confident in him, but the schwannoma will be gone before I have a chance to see the other surgeons.