Treatment #1

It took considerably longer for me to drive up to Seattle, park, and get checked in than it did to get my first dose of BCG.

Before I had my cystoscopy, the part of this whole thing that I was most worried about was having a catheter placed. I’ve been a nurse for a while now and I would hesitate to even guess how many urinary catheters I’ve put in people. Many of them were sedated or otherwise unconscious at the time but of the people who were awake reactions ranged from saying that it was uncomfortable to screaming like they’d been hit with a branding iron. That wide a spread in peoples reactions had always prevented me from forming any firm opinion on how uncomfortable it may or may not be, objectively speaking (yes, I know – pain is subjective, pain is what the patient says it is, blah, blah, STFU & GBTW).

My experience was that with enough lidocaine gel it really wasn’t that bad. This was quite a relief since I will be getting an in-and-out catheter intermittently for the next few months.

So the treatment itself was quick and not terribly painful. The only difficulty is that I have to not pee for at least two hours after I get the dose of BCG. This is further complicated by the fact that I will need to provide a urine specimen before each treatment. This means I have to find the balance between being hydrated enough that I can give a specimen but not hydrated so much that I’m going to explode when I can’t go to the bathroom for two hours. Fortunately my years working in the ICU and frequently being too busy to take a bathroom break for 12 hours has prepared me for this.

As far as any side-effects, I am unquestionably feeling fatigued but I really think that is more related to going straight from working Saturday night to working on clearing out the basement on Sunday followed by not sleeping terribly well Sunday night. There have, so far, not been any other symptoms.

Interestingly, I got a list of instructions to follow when I do urinate for the first time after getting a dose of BCG. I was told to sit down rather than standing (to reduce splashing I assume) and that I should pour two cups of bleach in the toilet bowl and let it sit for at least 15 minutes before flushing. Obviously there is something with the BCG that they don’t want wandering around in the sewers but what that might be and how bleach stops it from happening is something I will maybe have to investigate more.