It was thanksgiving day in November 2010, like we did yearly, we were planning to visit David’s parents for lunch, then my Aunty/Uncle’s house for dinner.

I was about 8 weeks pregnant with our second child and my older daughter was watching the Macy’s thanksgiving parade.  Fatigued from the early stage of pregnancy, I eventually managed enough energy to take a shower in preparation for our road trip.  Shortly after I got in the shower, David came in and said he wanted to talk to me.  He looked serious, I immediately got concerned.  I already know he had seen his urologist in October but he had completely down played that it could potentially be serious.  Initially, he told me there was a 2 mm cyst in his bladder but now he told me it was closer to 2 cm and they were not sure what it was and he would need a CT scan to further assess.

I was overcome by fear probably because David also looked concerned and immediately feared the thought of raising our children alone. I went online and googled everything I could about my worst fear, bladder cancer. Eventually I relaxed a bit knowing that if caught early enough, bladder cancer could be cured. I made myself believe that at the worst it was bladder cancer in the early stage. We started feeling hopeful and dug ourselves out of the trenches but we knew we were not mentally ready to visit our families.  We stayed home without a thanksgiving meal, this was fine because we did not have an appetite.

The next day we visited our families but did not mention anything about what was weighing heavily on our minds. It would be until mid to late December that we would have a better idea of what we were up against.

This is one of several posts that will detail our experience with bladder cancer. A concise summary of the overall experience can be found in the blog post titled “breaking the silence”.