After being told by several doctors in Goa that his condition was inoperable and he had to live with the tumour and the tubes, it was natural that this man would be depressed. Fortunately, he came to Mumbai with the hope of leading a better life and here he was successfully operated upon by Dr. Amit Gandhi, consultant cancer surgeon along with his team comprising anaesthetist Dr. Arvind Bhatambre and General surgeon Dr. Vijay Ogle at Vertex Hospital, Mulund and was discharged yesterday.

The case:

Explaining the case, Dr. Gandhi said, “This patient had a tumour weighing three kilograms and was passing urine through two tubes which were attached to both the sides of his abdomen. He used to carry two bags where the urine used to get collected. He was leading a difficult life. The doctors at Goa deemed this case as ‘inoperable’ and to be honest, I also felt the same way because the tumour was immobile and the urinary bladder was stone hard. Fortunately, the pelvic bone wasn’t totally involved and the tumour was just touching the lateral pelvic wall. Nonetheless, this was a challenging case.”

What made the ‘inoperable’, operable…?
Dr. Gandhi said that keeping in mind the young age of the patient, he and his team decided to go ahead with the surgery using a different approach.

“Normally, the cut on the prostatic urethra is made at the fag end of the surgery but here we did it right in the beginning of the surgery. As a result, the bladder started moving, making the tumour mobile. We removed the tumour in an eight hour long surgery with no blood transfusion,” said Dr. Gandhi.

Because with the tumour, Domnic lost his bladder, the doctors had to make a bladder for him to place the ureters. And this they did by using his intestine.
“We took 40 cms of his intestine with blood supply, formed a bladder in the right side of the abdomen and implanted the ureters there. The urine will pass through these ureters and will get collected in a bag in the right side of the abdomen which can be emptied every six hours. We have placed the bag in such a way that cosmetically, it doesn’t look bad. This is the only life long diversion from normalcy for him. Otherwise, he can lead a completely normal life,” said Dr. Gandhi.

Domnic’s history:
Seven years ago, Domnic was diagnosed with stone in the bladder and he underwent a surgery for the same. Four years after the operation, as he started experiencing similar problems as before, he consulted a urologist in Goa and was diagnosed with some infection for which he took treatment. But again, in January 2013 when the problem started again, he was diagnosed with cancer which was declared inoperable by the doctors in Goa.