Tag Archives: Cancer

Cancer

MY CANCER AND ME, CONT’D

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In November 2025, I learned that my kidneys weren’t functioning properly and this truly accidental discovery led me and my primary care provider on a relatively short investigation that was finally diagnosed as UTUC or upper tract urothelial carcinoma, a rare and incurable cancer of the urinary tract.

Since that time, and this was diagnosed around March of 2026, I have undergone major surgery to remove a non-functioning left kidney and a left ureter that was completely blocked by a tumor the size of a golf ball. I also underwent a TURBT procedure (transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) is a procedure healthcare providers use to diagnose and treat bladder cancer) at the same time. The ureter has a diameter of about 3mm so this tumor was by comparison enormous but as of April 9 and its removal it had not broken through and the margins were intact and good.

My recovery was quite swift and uneventful and within a few weeks I was back out walking each morning that the weather permitted it, doing 4–5 miles of Vermont’s uphill and downhill walking in just a little over an hour for 4 miles. I hope you understand that I am 73 going on 74 in November and I have a cancer that has metastasized to a lymph node, yet I still walk at a rate of just a tiny bit less than 4mph! Many 30 year olds can’t do that!

I have remained quite happy and active despite my diagnosis, even after metastatic cancer (a single lymph node) was confirmed by PET scan and by a subsequent biopsy in May. I continue to make art and I speak French for an hour nearly every day with friends, both local and abroad. Also since March 2022, I have been speaking with and emotionally supporting a woman in Ukraine who has been displaced from her home in the Russian-occupied east several times to where she now lives in a shelter dormitory in western Ukraine. This last has given my life additional meaning and purpose, as I know how much she depends on our near daily conversations.

You might ask me how I can be happy now with such an illness and an uncertain prognosis but my response is this: How can I not? I could dwell on how “unfair” it is to have this potentially life-shortening disease when I spent so much of my adult life miserable, fighting mental illness. I could worry about how I will cope in the future knowing death could be on the horizon. But neither railing against “unfairness” nor worrying about an as yet unknown and unrealized future seem to me either productive or a useful way to spend my time.

It truly is, as is said too often without a deeper understanding, what it is. I will reiterate this: it is what it is. Accepting reality without protest truly is key. Once you accept things in life as they are, especially things you have no power to control or change, life becomes immeasurably easier. What is real is now, and this “now” includes cancer yes but it also includes my walk most mornings and my art and French and my many friends and my wish to support and speak with my friend in Ukraine for as long as I can. This pushes me onward and gives my life meaning and purpose. I was miserable much of my adult life, but I’m happy now. What a blessing that is! Far better to have my life approaching its ending when I am happy rather than ending when miserable . Some have had a happy past, but become misery-beset when age brings on debilitating or chronic conditions. I used to be misery-laden but no longer. And to me this is precious: that the end of my life, whenever that is, might come at a peak of happiness rather in the “slough of despond” and in misery.

i remain immensely grateful for these past ten years and for any future that still remains to me. As for the past? It remains only in imagination now, just like the future. I refuse to dwell on either but to live my life in the present, and in reality. I love life but I accept as well the fact that it must end some day. This brings both peace and happiness, and not just happiness but joy: acceptance of what is. That’s the key. That and an unconditional acceptance of other human beings.

i will end this with the same words that are added to each email I send: “To love the whole world, to welcome the most odious and hate-filled with open heart, to accept and cherish each being completely, human or non-human alike, and to love without reservation or condition, this is our task, and the only risk worth taking.”

Art

MY CANCER JOURNEY CONT’d plus INKTOBER, 2026

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My recovery from the major abdominal surgery I had in early April was easy and uneventful. By May I was back walking the hills and streets of Brattleboro, every morning that it wasn’t raining. These walks I have kept up, interspersed with rest days or rain days once in a while.

In March I had had a Ct scan which had shown no metastases, so the surgery and bladder scraping and resecti was done on that basis. But in May I had my first PET scan and while the initial report was terrific, I soon learned that the experts at Dartmouth-Hitchcock medical center believed the report was in error. So I had to undergo a biopsy and they found one lymph node, the one closest to the kidney now removed, was cancerous, though not very big. Three months later I had a PET scan confirming what the biopsy had already told us.

Fast forward to August: I was not a candidate for most chemotherapy regimens, given that my one kidney was functioning only at 50%. One doctor suggested a chemo/immunotherapy combo, but the side effects would have been awful and frankly my quality of life matters to me far more than eking out a little more time. So I’ve opted for just immunotherapy with a med called nivolumab hyaluronidase, which can be given as an injection into the subcutaneous tissue of my abdomen. So far I’ve had 3 treatments as they occur once every two weeks. The first and second time I had some minor side effects, but the third injection, last Wednesday, has had no ill effects on me at all. I feel great! In fact I feel perfectly well, so it’s bizarre to me that I actually have metastatic cancer. Sometimes while walking uphill and downhill at 4mph I tell myself this, but it always feels absurd and unbelievable.

I need to leave for Bone builders soon, so instead of adding Inktober drawings quickly, I will simply post those in another post asap.

Would love to know who is reading this blog, if anyone is. Do think about commenting to that effect, if for no other reason.

Art

MY CANCER JOURNEY

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Well, I’m back after a long absence and having not posted for many months. I want to let my readers, the few who remain and who may be alerted to this post, that tomorrow I will go to Concord Hospital in Concord, New Hampshire for surgery to remove my left kidney and left ureter, and to re-biopsy my bladder. What follows is my account of how, almost purely by chance, I have arrived here, diagnosed with “invasive, poorly differentiated carcinoma” (but non-metastatic)

of the ureter and bladder. (I’m having trouble with this damned block editing and find now that the above paragraph cannot be edited!). What I tried to write above was that the cancer is so far non-metastatic but as it is a high grade urothelial cancer, meaning aggressive and fast growing, it could metastasize at any time. That said, it has not yet done so. So how did I get here, on the eve of major surgery? That’s the story I’d like to relate.

Back in September or maybe October of 2025, after having read about a study done on elderly patients with some evidence of cognitive decline, who seemed to improve significantly when given daily micro doses of lithium orotate, I asked the psychiatrist, with whom I meet twice yearly largely just to continue getting my narcolepsy meds, if a tiny dose, truly a micro dose of 1-5mg of lithium orotate, would be worth trying. She is aware of my fear of developing dementia, and responded that it was worth a trial, that it could do no harm.

So I ordered a single vial of Lithium orotate, 5mg, and soon began taking it. I noticed nothing in particular, no changes, no side effects either. But after a month of taking it, and during a routine visit to my PCP, I mentioned the tiny dose of lithium I’d had added to my daily pills, and I asked him to check my kidney function, just in case. Well that “just in case” turned out to be if not precisely providential, at a minimum it was just in time lucky. Because we learned that my kidney function had dropped significantly since it was last tested in April 2025.

At first my PCP chalked this drop to my having taken Lithium orotate, and as I had immediately stopped taking it after seeing the kidney test results, he figured my kidneys would heal and that the numbers would return to normal. But I think he must have rethought this, as he ordered some additional tests. First he had me have an ultrasound of the kidney vasculature, as I had developed stubbornly resistant hypertension. This came back as entirely normal. Then a little later, he asked me to schedule an ultrasound of the kidneys themselves. I was out of state at the time, taking care of a dear friend’s cats while she was in the hospital, and I spent an additional week helping her once she was discharged. So it took me maybe 4 weeks to get this second ultrasound scheduled and done. And the results were not at all what I had expected.

This test showed that my left kidney was severely distended due to an unknown blockage, probably in the left ureter, which was preventing urine made in the kidney to drain normally into my bladder. This condition is known as hydronephrosis and as it was rather severe, I went in for a CT scan (with contrast) of my kidneys and my abdominal organs. When I got the results, I was surprised but not entirely shocked because of my first foray into ChatGPT had suggested this might be the diagnosis: urothelial carcinoma, later qualified as high-grade.

Since then it has been a whirlwind of tests and appointments. Because the large medical center to which many Vermont residents go when Brattleboro Memorial Hospital does not provide the services needed could not even get me in for a preliminary appointment with a urologist until April 16, my PCP suggested I try a smaller hospital with a urologist-surgeon he particularly liked. He sent them a referral and the very next day I got an appointment at Springfield Hospital. This was on a Monday in March and the appointment was for Wednesday.

Martha, my one remaining sister, herself a breast cancer survivor and an APRN to boot, offered to come with me and I gladly said yes. On Wednesday late morning, she picked me up in her truck and we drove the 45 minutes up to Springfield Hospital. From the start, this hospital has been truly a wonderful place. We arrived 30-45 minutes early but were immediately taken into an exam room, where Leanne, a very competent and kind PA explained that the first procedure I needed was to have a stent placed in the left ureter, in order to drain my kidney and let it heal. Although this was a surgical procedure, it would be day surgery and I would go home afterwards.

Stent day arrived, just a week later. Colette, a friend, drove me to Springfield Hospital and waited while the procedure was done. When I woke from the anesthesia, the surgeon told me he had not been able to place the stent between my kidney and bladder, he said, because the tumor was too big. He couldn’t even pass a wire around it. “Tumor?” Thid was the first time I had heard this word, but he sounded more hopeful than before. As he left he said he thought the bladder looked red and irritated but not cancerous. So surgery to remove the left kidney, which was all but nonfunctional now, and the left ureter might just be all I needed. “Chemo?” I asked. He looked at me, shaking his head, and said, “There may be no need.”

Fast forward now to the biopsy results, which I found one morning in my springfield hospital patient portal. The surgeon had not been correct, I understood, reading the words, “invasive, poorly differentiated carcinoma of the bladder”. Not at all the good news I had been hoping for. So I had to readjust my thinking, from having a possibly curable cancer, to having one that could metastasize and was characterised as aggressive and fast growing.

Martha drove me once again to Springfield Hospital to discuss biopsy reports with the urologist/ surgeon. Just as we arrived I found my chest CT scan reports in the patient portal and with my heart in my throat, I proceeded to read…and finally read out loud as Martha was parking the truck, “No metastases or lymph node involvement”… I smiled with huge relief. This was one splash of good news, which I welcomed, after what had seemed a tidal wave of bad news.

(still don’t understand the block editor! Why can’t I edit any paragraph I’ve already written? Why can’t I correct typos? This is so frustrating!) We — Martha and I — went directly to the Urology Department, and were shown into an exam room as before. I thought we’d be meeting with Leanne and maybe also the surgeon, so I was surprised when the surgeon strode into the room, and sat down, introducing himself with his first name, and not just that, but a shortened form of it! I must tell you that I really dislike it when a young doctor introduces himself calling himself Dr XYZ but then proceeds to call me Phoebe! I usually tell these sorts that I prefer to be called Miss Wagner if they are going to call themselves Dr. But this surgeon, and surgeons are often the worst when it comes to asserting a hierarchy of power, was different, and told us his first name right off the bat! This endeared him to me immediately and I listened carefully as he presented us with 3 options for going forward, as he saw it. One was to schedule removal of the kidney, ureter and bladder in one fell swoop. This would not be minor surgery and recovery would be difficult. But it might eliminate the cancer entirely. Unfortunately he could not get me in for that on April 9, but on that date he could remove the kidney and ureter and re-biopsy the bladder. This second deeper biopsy would tell us whether the bladder muscle had been involved or not. The difference between MIBC and MNIBC, that is between Muscle invasive bladder cancer, and Muscle non invasive bladder cancer, can be important. In MIBC the only option is the remove the bladder, unless the cancer is localized in one place, in which case I imagine it could be resected and the rest of the bladder spared. In NMIBC, there is an opportunity to use various chemo therapies and to retain the bladder, which most people want to do. Then there was the third option, which I no longer recall. Talking with the surgeon and my sister, I decided to go ahead with the April 9 date and surgery to remove the kidney and ureter.
The biopsy that will also be done will give information on how far the cancer has gone. So it’s that MIBC versus MNIBC question that need to be answered.

Tomorrow is my date with surgery, April 9. I think all will go well, and I hope I wake up with my usual equanimity intact, pain or not. But we will see. In any event, I just wanted to let readers who still follow me know what’s up.

take care, all of you!

Phoebe

forgive the errors and typos but I cannot correct or edit anything!