Brief update

Had the cystoscopy today. It's a very minor procedure taking less than ten minutes, and in fact
is quite interesting as you get to see for yourself what's going on in there. During the prep, the details of which need not concern us here, I had a nice conversation with the Russian-Ukrainian nurse about her paternal/maternal languages; she claims that Ukrainians can understand Russian but that it's harder for Russians to understand Ukrainian. Also Ukrainian does use the Cyrillic script, in case you were wondering. She came to the United States at 17 and has only a mild accent.

Linguistics aside, as expected there's a tumor at the base of the bladder (where it joins the urethra), but nothing like the weird stalactites that were growing before. So at some point I'll need another resection to remove the tumor, but there's no urgency they say. That's good because Winter quarter, which started yesterday, is going to be very busy. I can wait until Spring unless further problems arise.

I took the opportunity to ask this doctor (also a member of my "Care Team")  his view of survival rates for metastatic bladder cancer. He said that a complete cure via chemo is very rare, but that
there are many "long-term survivors". This is with periodic repetition of the chemo, but with the timing at the discretion of the patient. I really am very lucky to have such a Care Team working for me.

In any case, I feel great and better get back to work on my classes!