Every time I see lumbago, my mind goes to various dishes I enjoyed when I was stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam fiasco. Lumbago was never on the menu, but if it was there would be slices of various tropical fruits and vegetables along with bits of some unrecognizable cooked meat swimming in a sauce that was hot enough to blister your teeth.

In reality, one of the symptoms of bladder cancer is lower back pain. I didn't have lower back pain. Actually, I didn't have most of the other symptoms. Just blood in urine, lots of visible blood. I've had recurring bouts of that since 2013, but every time I went in for a cystoscopy exam (think colonoscopy up your dick), nothing showed up until the one last September. This time there was a big ugly papillary tumor sticking out of the lining of the bladder. That got me a Transurethral Resection of Bladder Tumor (TURBT) on September 21, which was followed by second TURBT on October 27. Final diagnosis was Carcinoma In Situ, that's a tumor restricted to the epithelial lining of the bladder.

Last Monday, I had my first of six Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) installations in my bladder. Basically, 50 ml of BCG fluid is delivered into your empty bladder via a small catheter. The body's immune system recognizes the bacteria as foreign matter that must be destroyed, and in their frenzy to rid the bladder of bacteria, they attack the cancer cells in the epithelium. It's a proven first course of treatment that has been shown to delay the inevitable total resection of the bladder, which leads to two options for stomas to drain urine from the kidneys (urine only beside the navel or urine and intestinal fluid from lower right abdomen), or a neo bladder fashioned out of a length of small intestine that goes out the old way.

Considering I receive my medical care at a teaching hospital (VA), I've decided that if my cancer leads either of the two stomas, I'll opt out of having to collect waste fluids in baggies from holes in my body that tend to get severely infected at the most inopportune times.  I'm 74 and have arthritic knees and feet bad enough I need a cane and probably could use a walker if I didn't have to pick up dog shit when my son is at work. I should be on a beach somewhere watching the boys play volleyball instead of having to babysit two female German Shepherd dogs (you have to say dogs or people associated with the AKC will suppose you're speaking of real Germans who take care of sheep in your back forty) and a Pit Bull-Australian Shepherd-Jack Russell Terrier (imagine a skinny dog on long legs with a brown merl coat) youngster that thinks he's boss dog.