2024 was supposed to be an exciting year for me. I was turning 50 in the February, and I was embracing it! My bladder cancer diagnosis, which I received in the week of my birthday, came as a massive shock.
My first instinct was to start Googling. Initially, I was quite positive because what I’d been reading seemed to imply that bladder cancer was quite treatable and I thought ‘I can live with that’. It turns out my cancer was muscle invasive, so I had to prepare myself for the possibility of having my bladder removed. At first, I was hysterical. I’m 50 years old; I didn’t want a bag for life.
From diagnosis to surgery was a long time; I didn’t have my surgery until July. The amount of waiting, for scans and assessments was really challenging.
But I thought long and hard, and spoke to my amazing network of friends and family, and suddenly my outlook started to change. I decided I wanted my bladder out!
I explored having a neobladder, but decided it wasn’t for me, I was slowly starting to feel so much more positive about the prospect of a urostomy bag as I researched other people who had them.
Then I spoke to my kids about it and that was another turning point. When I said I was going to have to wear a bag, they couldn’t see the problem. They told me they followed loads of people on TikTok and Instagram who had bags. They were so laid back and cool about it, and this was incredibly reassuring.
My nurse gave me a little rubber stoma that I could try out, and samples of urostomy bags which I could stick onto my body to see how they felt and looked. I tried them out at home with my kids and my mum. I practiced changing it, and trying on different outfits, and even filled a bag with water to see how it felt.
Suddenly I was feeling so much more confident about having a urostomy bag. It was the beginning of my new life.
I’m finding life with my urostomy much easier than I imagined; I genuinely forget I’ve got it at times. I haven’t found any major issues so far. In the early days I took every day, one day at a time; some days I could do things, and other days I couldn’t.
It wasn’t all plain sailing. I was having immunotherapy every four weeks, and I feel poorly for a week afterward. But the immunotherapy will hopefully stop or slow the recurrence of my cancer, or reduce the risk of it returning somewhere else.
I am back doing everything I did before. So far, I haven’t come across any situations where I’ve thought ‘I can’t do that because of my bag’. I have a good relationship with my stoma, and I call her Paloma. I’m really proud of it!”