Karen had an appointment with the urologist the day after Thanksgiving. They did a urodynamic test, which is where you urinate into a special toilet and it measures things like flow rate and volume. Then they follow up with a bladder scan to check if there's any residual urine in your bladder. During the test her flow was weak, and there was a very small amount of retention. Retention had been a consistent issue during her initial stay at Mayo. The general consensus was that as the body healed and the swelling from the surgery went down, things would continue to improve. But bladder issues have been slowly returning.
So today the urologists did a cystoscopy to look for other problems. However, everything seems to be good. It's possible there's still nerve damage from when they removed cancer in the area. Neuropathy can also affect the bladder, so it could be a combination of the two. It's likely this is still something that will work itself out. Either way, they've given Karen some medication that works on the smooth muscle tissue of the bladder, which should help alleviate the problem.
Karen had some more blood work before the procedure, which, unfortunately, showed a slight all around decline from her previous results. Nothing significant or worrisome enough to hold her back from today's procedure or warrant a blood transfer, but we're interested in what the oncologist would say about it. The neuropathy seems to still be getting worse, so maybe it's connected to that. That said, she's getting better at walking on numb feet. Which might sound like a positive development, but being on her feet longer makes them hurt that much more. The gabepentin they gave her to control the neuropathy induced pain can make you sleepy and dizzy; so she's taken about two weeks to work up to the full dosage. It's not really working yet, but if it's still not working in a week or two, there's a higher dosage we can try before trying something different.
