Another TURBT

February 19, 1997 – Another TURBT

I went into the hospital early this morning to have another TURBT procedure done by Dr. Neuwirth. I was taken into the operating room about 75 minutes early, along with Dr. Rossman’s pre surgery tape! This time, I was not given the opportunity to have an epidural. Instead, I had a general anesthetic. Luckily, I did not experience any side effects from the anesthetic.

My recovery was a little uncomfortable this time, probably because of the catheter, but maybe from the anesthetic. I was rolled up into my room about noon time and immediately started drinking. I wanted to flush out the disease from my bladder as soon as possible. In between visitors, I spent the afternoon comfortably doing “mind stories“, listening to tapes by Dr. Keith Block and Dr. Carl Simonton, and reading Love, Medicine and Miracles. Later that evening, E. M. and D. F., two of my favorite tennis partners, came by. It was so nice to speak with them about how I use tennis as a spiritual practice and introduces them to visualization and guided imagery.

My wife is very clever! She talked Dr. Neuwirth into letting me spend the night in the hospital, which is not normally done after a TURBT. I was grateful for the overnight stay because I don’t have to deal with a catheter until Tuesday.

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Happy Anniversary!

February 14, 1997 – Happy Anniversary!

Today, Mala and I celebrated our sixteenth anniversary. We did this by heading up to the famous “wine county” in Napa County, California. We are so fortunate to live only 45 minutes from this most beautiful part of the country. Mala had made reservations at the Silverado Inn, which we were lucky to get at the last minute. With lunch at Don Giovanni’s and dinner at Tra Vigne, we had two wonderful meals at our favorite places.

Before heading north, however, we met with Dr. Francine Halberg at the Marin Oncology Center attached to Marin General Hospital. Through Sara Huang’s guidance and support, we decided to use Dr. Halberg for the radiation therapy, which is scheduled to begin on February 25, along with the chemotherapy. The consultation with Dr. Halberg went very well as far as it could go, but she couldn’t tell me that this was going to be an easy protocol (RTOG 95-06). She mentioned that Shipley had great success with this protocol and that it was evaluated thoroughly in France and found to be very successful. She explained that I would have to be seen again on Tuesday, February 18 to do a test run to map out the area to be irradiated, which was part of the RTOG 95-06 protocol.

Before we left for the “wine country,” we stopped in the Circle Library at the Marin Oncology Center and checked out a few tapes, including one by Dr. Carl Simonton, whose work was just beginning to be noticed when my son had cancer twenty-one years ago. Another tape was by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen.

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