I am so sorry that you are going through all of this. I have no experience, so cannot offer any advice.

I will say that you are loved and my virtual arms are around you (((((hugs)))))

uia

but I am sending you good thoughts. Stay strong, my friend.

are restored to good health.

I found the same as you. I was glad to see that it is used in early stage.
I do a lot of research for new treatments for different cancer due to my son's diagnosis of ACC cancer.

What I found for Mike C treatment was very positive.

Please know everyone here at DU is rooting for your speedy and full recovery.

Be gentle with yourself

I have always loved your posts! Mike

Hang tough. You're going to be alright.

Or carry gene therapy somehow.

is the function it serves. I’ll have to look it up tomorrow.

that is supposed to attack cancer cells.

I hope it works.

Y'all take care of yourselves, ya hear?
🫂 another hug for good measure.

Healing vibes to you!

You're in my thoughts, gopiscrap.

Take care.

I'm betting it stopped you in your tracks.
All this seems like a good excuse to stop and smell the roses. Treat yourself well, squash negative thoughts when you hear yourself thinking them. Watch a lot of comedy and listen to music often. Life hands us these situations. How we react to them, I believe, is the most important part. Your friends here are pulling for you and are here if you need to talk or laugh or cry. Do it all at once if you like. You are precious! They really are doing some good stuff with cancer still. 💜🤟🏼🙏🏼

the best vibes for healing

Please know you have all of us behind you each step of the way. Our prayers, Vibes and thoughts will cushion your journey and most importantly, always be in your company whenever you need us!
God Speed!

And a hug

Cancer does suck.

I wish I could send you advice to help you in this fight, but I’ve got nothing to offer there. Know that you’re being thought of and held close by many du-ers, and we will be here whenever you need us.

Mike C. 💙💔☮️🌻🕯️🕊️💜

I hope the new treatment goes well with few side affects.

Is this an experimental tx?

What is the prognosis?

Questions I would ask.

Take good care!

When it’s possible, and easier for you, please do keep us posted. We’re gonna want to know how you’re doing. I’d guess everybody who reads this update is pulling for you and sending lots of good thoughts and healing vibes.

I always like to “think green.” Trees and gardens always feed the eyes AND the soul. However much you can surround yourself with beautiful green leafy and flowery growth, it’ll feed your spirit. It can be really invigorating! Give yourself the gift of beauty, renewal, and abundance every time you look around, outside. Enjoy every new sprout or planting or budding that you might see, anytime you take even a short walk outside. It’s Spring! This is the time of year when EVERYTHING is blooming and the bees are all busy working overtime out there. Sometimes it just seems like there’s magic everywhere! And, come on, don’t you deserve it?

Natural beauty can be a serious tonic for your mind.

care team Mike C. Sending hugs as you navigate and win this challenge .

healing. Your DU family is here for you. Lean as hard as you need. As SKITTLES says, someone is always here.

I am so sorry to hear you are going through this!

for a rapid recovery, and may your journey be swift. I hope you have a good support system at home, too!

I hope the doctors plan B takes care of the bladder cancer fast!

but you do have my very best wishes for an effective treatment and great outcome!

All the best to you.

but I know three people who had bladder cancer and had some sort of infusion. In all three cases, it worked well. Two are still living many years later, and one died of other causes just recently. I hope this helps ease your mind a bit.

Healing hugs to you.

going through some stuff - they know what they are doing!!
Just fasten your seatbelt and think forward.
Best to you!

First I had prostate cancer and it was removed 15 years ago. Then 2-3 years ago. I started passing blood in urine. I was diagnosed with bladder cancer and a TURBT determined it was muscle invasive. I underwent 3 rounds of dense dose MVAC chemo which shrunk the tumors to undetectable by a CT scan. Know it would recur we settled on a radical cyctectomy with ileal conduit. This means I have a urostomy..

That they are thinking of using BCG infusions you cancer is probably stage 1. Iirc the infusions will probably be self administered. Something else when urinating in the toilet it is highly recommended to sterilze it with chlorine bleech. The BCG can be dangerous to others.

Good luck to you on your treatment.

for bladder cancer and it was a success! As I recall, it wasn't any worse than regular chemo, but we did have to be careful that he not infect anyone in the family. He is many years out now, and just had a scan to check last week. Still cancer-free!

Good luck!

Reading upthread, this could be successful. I hope it is.

I personally know next to nothing about the topic and I am in no way a medical professional, but in this small way, perhaps I can be of service. The paper to which I refer is in the journal ACS Pharmacology Translational Science 2025 8, 2, 286-307 and is a review article entitled "A Comprehensive Review of Current Approaches in Bladder Cancer Treatment."

It may or may not be useful to you but I can share it.

I have not opened it and read it myself as of yet, but whenever a family member faces a health crisis this is how I approach it, checking out related scientific papers on the topic. I'm not a doctor but the process helps to demystify what we're being told.

Good luck.

Even if we're not doing it here, medical science is progressing, and new discoveries are happening. I recently read an article about using bacteria to fight cancer cells, which sounds like it's in the same ballpark as using the mild form of TB.
You've got this. Just remember that it doesn't matter what the "cure" rate is of any given protocol, even if it's small. If you're in that small percentage, YOUR cure rate is 100%. Keep us in the loop...we've got you.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11790194/

Palliative care doctor here. It's actually a neat treatment, your body can't tell the BCG apart from the cancer, so it attacks the cancer as well.On average, it's a lot less bothersome than radiation, most of the effects can be described as general vaccination response (i.e. the flu-like symptoms after a covid or shingles shot) and "we messed with your bladder so it'll be angry for a little while" symptoms. They'll givr youna bunch of instructions that make it sound like you're a walking biohazard, it's pretty much theoretical-precautionary, I've never heard of anyone getting cross-infected from a treated patient.

If you search BCG treatment you will find information like this https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17908-bacillus-calmette-guerin-bcg-treatment

Typically I would have a cystoscopy and if a tumor was spotted. I would then have a surgery via the urinary track and the cancer was removed. The pathologists would determine the stage and grade. What they find will likely determine the best treatment.

After a healing period I would then go to the urologist and BCG was inserted into my bladder via a catheter. I was asked to hold the BCG in my bladder for several hours. It was difficult to do sometimes. I was supposed to relieve myself only in a toilet and to add bleach to kill the BCG. Infusions were done weekly for six weeks.

After three months they took a another look inside my bladder. They saw more cancer and we started over with a surgery. The pathologists said it was a lower grade (aggressiveness) this time. After healing, I had and additional six weeks of the infusions and then had a cystoscopy (a look inside) in three months which was clean.

I then did a maintenance BGC regime where I had single infusions spaced at increasing intervals.

This has been going on since 1995 and I had several surgeries and courses of treatment. I still have annual looks in my bladder, but haven't needed a surgery since 2012 (I think) and haven't had BCG for roughly ten years.

There was no radiation as treatment for my cancer. I did let them try a chemo agent in my bladder immediately after a surgery, but my understanding is that trial was not successful and it was discontinued.

Please feel free to private message me with questions or concerns. I'll try to relate my experiences directly to you.

Will be thinking of you and your family as you go through treatment and hoping for the very best.

May your body respond well to treatments 🙏🏼

I have had bladder cancer for about 10 years now, the TB infusion is the first one, it is basically very easy and the main side effect is some tiredness, for me it was very minor.. I have had 3 different chemo infusions, just finished the thrid one a week ago.

They have a new device that they insert and it remains using the same as the TB infusion only quite a bit less it is a slow release system that remains in the bladder .

The "pretzel" (TAR-200) is a, flexible, pretzel-shaped device designed for slow, sustained release of the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine directly into the bladder to treat high-risk, non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). It offers a higher, more consistent drug concentration for weeks rather than hours, showing an 82-83.5% complete response rate in trials for BCG-unresponsive patients.

Take care of yourself and get well. It sounds like your doctors are on top of these conditions

Hope you are victorious in your battle and gain your health and strength back soon.
Good luck!

But hoping for good results with your treatment. Please keep us posted. Lots of people care about you here.

I had a good friend/coworker who had this exact treatment. In his case, it was the first treatment tried, if I remember rightly. He responded VERY well to the treatment, and has now been cancer free for about two years.

This did, however, cause him to re-think his priorities, so he's now retired (miss that guy).

The worst part for him was sanitizing the bathroom after the treatment. The Doctor cautioned him to have his family members use a different bathroom if possible (it was), and to throughly clean and sanitize the bathroom before letting in his household use it. At least he only had to do that was for only the first couple of days after each treatment.

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨🩷✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

Sending lots of forest energy from northern Wisconsin.
It's a lot to take in. Let yourself take in the beauty of our world and let yourself heal.
Hugs

Along with wishes from DUers from all over the country..good advice and the best news was the ones saying how far the advanced generation of medical technology has come for your health issue and its success rate for a healthy future. Keep us posted 🌺

From the others on this thread, sounds like you're in good hands that know what to do. You'll be fine and now is the time to relax and do things you like to do. Oh, and Mike, go outside and collect some of those healing negative ions. I'm a firm believer in the powers of Mother Nature.

Looks like you’ve got company here.

Love your posts. Get well soon and get back to us.

I can’t give you any advice, just good wishes. My partner has prostate cancer. He’ll have keyhole robotic surgery at some stage this summer.

Keep the good fight going. We are all rooting for you.

Comfort, peace, and strength as well.

There are some amazing new treatments.

Best of luck with any treatment that you decide to go with. My best wishes are with you.

and I will continue to pray for you, Mike. May you experience permanent healing and find inner peace.

Dave

I'm not able to do much else while getting chemo. So I've got you covered with prayer and positive thoughts. I know nothing but it sounds like you have all sorts of hope. Stay strong!

cancer. He had BCG treatment and it was successful, as he was cancer free for the rest of his life. He did have a couple of rare side affects from it: conjunctivitis (easily treated and lasted only a few days) and reactive arthritis which was managed well with Methotrexate. He originally had surgery to remove the small tumor, but after a year it grew back. He had surgery again to remove it and following that is when they scheduled him for the BCG treatments. That did the trick and I sincerely hope this will be successful for you, too. Get as much restorative rest as you can and know we are all pulling for you!

My husband has bladder cancer treatment and it totally messed up our tank. Spent a lot of money on that

At one time I was spending so much time at my urologist’s office that I thought I might have to change my drivers license to reflect my new permanent address. It’s tough stuff but it sounds like you’re with the right people who know what they’re doing.

Looking forward to hearing good news about you down the road…

By the time his bladder cancer was discovered, it was too far along to treat. He was told he was in acute danger of it spreading, and his only option for survival was to have it removed altogether. He adapted surprisingly well to it, and lived over a decade with it—or, more accurately, without it. He probably would have lived longer than his 76 years, but he couldn’t leave his big steaks, and since he was a fairly big guy who didn’t get cardiac checkups, he was felled by an unexpected heart attack at age 76. With his missing bladder and no other complications, he might have gone on another 15 years.

Listen to some favorite anthem while getting the infusions
That helps me calm down when undergoing procedures.
All the best.

He had direct infusions monthly for 6 months, followed by every other month for an additional 6 months. At the end of the year of treatments, he was declared cancer free and suffered no long term ill affects, was able to keep his bladder and only the onset of dementia and other kidney related ailments caused him more trouble years later.

Good luck with your treatments and I wish you a full recovery and no side effects.

... ineffective for my cancer. I also had colon cancer two years before with a partial colon removal. Been cancer free since 2019.

It's not easy, but it can be tolerated. I was looking for the light at the end of the tunnel and it does show up. I chose the radical surgery because the BCG and tumor removals were not working and chemo and radiation weren't going to work. I have NO regrets.

All I can suggest is committing to the regimen you choose and riding it out. There are a bunch of us survivors here on DU. Reach out to me whenever you want.

I'll message my phone number to you.

His prostate required surgery. His bladder was ultimately treated with a mild form of tuberculosis. He was 100% cured without recurrence. The only thing notable about the tuberculosis treatment is he had to wash toilets with bleach after each use so no one else could catch it.