1. Getting to Know Your Bladder
Your doctor will take note of your symptoms first. So first off, you may want to watch out for blood in the urine, slightly rusty to bright red in color. Do you also need to go to the rest room often? Or have pain while urinating or suffer from back pain at all? Your doctor will begin by testing your urine for infection. Any cancer cells should show up. Your urine may be checked for color and contents, such as sugar, protein, red blood cells and white blood cells. Your doctor may now proceed to test your bladder internally, if indeed he suspects bladder cancer.
2. Lighting Up the Bladder
Your doctor may want to insert a thin tube made of optic fibers and a light to illumine your bladder. He may ask you to insert a little gel up your urethra before getting started with the tube. You will be given a local or general anesthesia before he inserts the tube. The technique is called cystoscopy. Your physician is looking for abnormal areas or growths inside the bladder. Any such stuff may be taken out for further examination under a microscope for signs of cancer. In fact, it may be possible to remove the entire bladder cancer during cystoscopy. So it all depends on how well you are.
3. How far Ahead are you?
If your bladder cancer is really advanced, your doctor might want to run a few more tests. These might include an x-ray of the entire urinary system in a technique called intravenous urogram or pyelogram. It is possible that your physician might ask you to go in for additional tests such as the CT scan (CAT scan). You may have been familiar with a photographic camera shooting pictures outdoors. How about doing it inside for a change? And CT does just that, and far more exquisitely. A computer linked to an x-ray machine makes a series of detailed pictures of areas inside the body, taken from different angles. You may be asked to ingest a dye or may be injected into your vein to help the organs or tissues show up more clearly.
Your doctor might also have you get magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, or ultrasound and bone scan just to make sure your cancer hasn't spread to other parts of the body.
