Patient Story ID: 1420313

Background

One day in 2006, as I was sitting on the commode, I heard someone at the front door knocking harshly. I quickly raised my pants and rushed to open the door. There was my 7-year-old granddaughter. She zoomed in from the outside to the bathroom I had just used. Within a second, she was yelling out loud: Whose blood is this in the toilet? I was shocked and frightened: I knew it was mine because I has just been there and had not had a chance to flush the toilet.

A week later, an abdominal CT scan with contrast was performed at Emory University Hospital. Soon after, I was called to make a visit to Emory’s Urology Department. I was hoping it was nothing severe, possibly an enlarged prostate, because I did have some difficulties urinating for a while, possibly, I thought, due to kidney stones in my bladder. However, when the doctor put one of my CT scans on the light box, I followed his finger and saw a huge, almost completely solid mass in my bladder. So, my diagnosis was 99% probability of a huge bladder cancer. (Later, a cystoscopy confirmed a 6 × 9 cm cauliflower-like malignant tumor.) My case would be randomly assigned to a surgeon.

Approach

My daughter and I were sitting without words in the waiting room. I saw her tears. Although I was 84, I had been actively handling our daily life routine, including caring for my 88-year-old wife and 7-year-old granddaughter. Life was busy but full of happiness. It was the first time I was forced to think about death, withdrawing from my loving family forever…I felt my breathing become difficult…could hardly feel any part of my body.

Not long after, there was a knock on the door; a young man, very tall with deep blue eyes, walked in. “I’m Dr Kenneth Ogan… a surgeon, a urologist.” My daughter asked him immediately, “Can you remove the tumor?” At that moment, for the first time ever, I felt that I had no choice at all; I was at the mercy of others, either die with the tumor or live without the bladder.

Dr Ogan first looked at me sympathetically and then waited patiently until my daughter was calmer. He said that he had carefully reviewed all my CT scan images and he planned to do a surgery on me to remove my tumor. Not only that, he said that, since the tumor was growing away from the ureter opening side, though it was huge, he could possibly avoid removing the whole bladder. He was not sure, but he was willing to try. I saw the holy light despite the depth of sorrow.

Maintenance

My first attempt at surgery failed because I had shortness of breath prior to general anesthesia. After evaluation by several Emory cardiologists, the conclusion was that, to bear general anesthesia, I had to have a triple bypass heart surgery. I fell into a slump once again. I was frightened to have any open-heart surgery. At the same time, I could not tolerate that big tumor in my body for even a moment longer.

At this point, I contacted several other urologists in China to see if there might be anyone there who would be able to remove my tumor without using general anesthesia. Sadly, they all suggested to me that I give up all possibilities of surgery, just do and eat whatever I wanted to enjoy for the rest of my life since I was already in my 80s. That meant waiting to die. I realized how lucky I was that at least Dr Ogan was willing to operate on me. So, I finally decided to have the open-heart surgery, and the procedure went well.

Six weeks later, I saw Dr Ogan again. He marked the right side of my abdominal area as the reconstruction ureters open site in case my bladder had to be completely removed. I prepared myself to live the rest of my life wearing a urine bag, imagining the smell and the redness of the skin with all kinds of possible infections. But he stated to me again that he would try his best; I saw the confidence in his gentle, blue eyes.

Quality of Life

Finally, Dr Ogan successfully completed a partial cystectomy. He told me if the difficulty of surgical level of removing the whole bladder was 10, my surgery was only at 2. I recovered completely without any issues. I had follow-ups with Dr Ogan periodically for cystoscopy over several years; the tumor never came back. Since then, I have been living a normal life (see Figure).

Figure. Mingfu Sun, December 19, 2022.

When it was announced that I was cured from the bladder cancer, a question arose, always waiting to be answered: What kind of doctor is a good doctor? Is there any formula to make a good doctor? The answer is not simple. In my eyes, Dr Kenneth Ogan is an angel who is sent from Heaven by God.