💛 Bladder Cancer Basics: A Caregiver’s Guide (AARP Article)

[Winter2025VA]

FROM THE ARTICLE.

Providing care is a relentless balancing act, combining medical management and emotional support.

By Paul Wynn, AARP. Published November 26, 2025.

On Thanksgiving Day 2016, Irv Cherny expected a quiet holiday filled with family, gratitude and his favorite meal of the year made by his wife, Eileen. Instead, he found himself doubled over in pain, unable to urinate, and hours later in a Memphis emergency room watching a catheter bag fill with blood. When the ER doctor looked up and told him he likely had tumors growing in his bladder, Cherny’s life changed instantly.

Twenty-four hours later, after emergency surgery, the diagnosis was confirmed: Bladder cancer, with seven to eight tumors that had gone undetected for years. As a retired dentist, Cherny prided himself on having annual physicals and staying healthy and active, including running with his wife in several half-marathons. “I had no warning at all — no symptoms and no pain,” says Cherny, now 72. “I walked into the ER because I couldn’t pee, and I walked out knowing I had bladder cancer.”

USE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE.

https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/medical/bladder-cancer-caregiving-guide/