BEATING BLADDER CANCER

When Frances Dobrowolski noticed blood in her urine in August 2019, she didn’t think much of it. But then it happened again, and since she was scheduled to see her GP in two weeks, she mentioned that strange fact. Her doctor immediately referred her to a urologist, and it proved life-saving for the 78-year-old retiree and grandma. When her urologist threaded a tube with a tiny video camera into her urethra and bladder (a cystoscopy), she immediately saw the cancerous tumours. Frances, who was able to watch the procedure on a screen, also saw the tumours—they were growing from her bladder walls into the bladder. “It was a lot of cancer,” she says.

Frances also learned that smoking could have been the cause. “I quit 13 years ago, but I smoked two packs a day for 40 years,” she says. “I thought that if I got anything, it would be lung cancer, but I got bladder cancer instead.”

Frances had surgery