An Excerpt from "Back To Life: A Bladder Cancer Journey" by Frank Sadowski

Here is a short excerpt from my new book. It is now available at Amazon.com in both Kindle e-book and paperback formats. Go to Back To Life to view and purchase!

Part way through chapter eight......

      Recovering a bit, I then asked him about the surgery. I said I assumed that I would have a hole in my side and an external bag for urine. He said that was certainly an option and a possibility, but that there were other options, such as a neobladder. I had never heard of this, and he began to explain it to me in some fairly technical medical terms. It was at this moment that a nurse came in and told him he was needed in another exam room for a few moments. He excused himself, and I sat by myself in shock and terror. Even though I had known he was from the surgery side, I didn’t think this was how this day was going to go. Dr. Reid knocked and entered. He told me he understood that Dr. Daneshmand was beginning to explain the neobladder option. I said that was true but I really didn’t understand it yet. He sat across from me on the stool where Dr. Daneshmand had been sitting and put his chin in his hands, elbows on his knees.

      “Here’s what we do,” he said. “We cut you from stem to stern, and take out your bladder, prostate, seminal vesicles, and thirty to fifty abdominal lymph nodes. Then we cut out a one-meter section of your small intestine, the ileum, still alive and hooked up to the blood supply. Then we use the intestine to build a new bladder in the cavity where your original bladder came out. We hook one end up to your kidneys, the other end to your exit pipe, and you’re good to go.”

      I was completely floored that an actual doctor had put it in such terms. Dr. Reid looked at me and winked.

      “Actually, Frank, it’s just a little more complicated than that.”

Chapter Nine

      When Dr. Daneshmand returned a few minutes later, he resumed his explanation of the surgery he was proposing. It was pretty much exactly as Dr. Reid had paraphrased it; a new bladder would be constructed from my own body tissue. I told him that I would need to talk to my wife and think about it for twenty-four hours or so. He said of course, and the day was over. It was after six o’clock. I had been there for almost seven hours. I was yawning as I retrieved my car from the underground garage and drove to my hotel. When I got there I called home and gave Laura the long version of the day. She was encouraged that I thought so highly of Dr. Daneshmand and his team, but expressed her concern that he was asking me to jump into exactly what I had been so emphatically warned against: a quick decision to undergo radical surgery.

      We had lived in Portland from 1999–2001 before moving to the Seattle area, and I had lived in a company apartment downtown for five months before the family moved out there, so I knew downtown Portland very well. It was a typical November night, forty degrees or so with a light, steady rain. I walked up to Broadway and then north a half-dozen blocks to Higgins, one of the best known Pacific Northwest “farm to table” restaurants. I can’t remember eating, but I guess I did, and an hour or so later I was back on the wet streets, walking down Salmon Street to the Willamette River waterfront. I walked the length of the Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the west side of the river and crossed the Steel Bridge to the East Side Esplanade. It was getting late, but there were plenty of Portlanders out on a rainy weekday night—walkers, runners, and bikers, all oblivious to the steady rain. I walked on, pondering my situation. Was I ready to put my faith and possibly my life in the hands of a doctor I had met less than ten hours earlier? It was hard to grasp, but the more I turned his statistics and his logic over in my head, the more sense it made.

      I returned to the hotel sometime after 2:00 a.m., took a hot shower, and fell asleep quickly, to my surprise. I woke without an alarm at 6:15 the next morning, and felt amazingly well rested. A weird feeling of calm and confidence had come over me. I was also starving. As I ate bacon and eggs and drank good strong Portland coffee, I realized from where my calm confidence was coming. I had made my decision without consciously knowing it.

      I would put my life in Dr. Daneshmand’s hands, play offense, and have the surgery.

                               

                                                    *************************

“As a Stage 4 melanoma survivor, I found myself deeply moved by – and profoundly grateful for – Frank Sadowski's honest and enlightening account of what it's really like inside the cancer experience. But more than that, simply as a reader, I was enthralled with his effortless gift for compelling storytelling. Back to Life is full of humor, suspense, and grit, a medical drama that brims with heart and soul.”

-- Mary Elizabeth Williams, staff writer at Salon.com and author of Gimme Shelter and A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer.