Jeffrey’s Story: A Father's Promise to Walk His Daughter Down the Aisle, Cancer-Free
Jeffrey Pulver felt like everything in his life was finally in place to slow down. At 64, the upstate New York dairy farmer had sold off most of his farm, holding onto just a few cows and chickens to keep him busy in retirement. He was savoring the extra time with family and looking ahead to a more peaceful pace. Most of all, he was counting down the days until his youngest daughter’s wedding, set to take place on the family farm, until one day when he saw blood in his urine.
“I went straight to my general practitioner, who referred me to a urologist near me. They couldn’t get me in for an appointment for a full month. When they did, they found the tumors in my bladder,” Jeffrey said. He was diagnosed with stage three bladder cancer.
With few specialists available in his hometown, Jeffrey was advised to seek care at a hospital with more experience treating advanced cases. “That’s how I ended up at Columbia with Dr. Lenis and Dr. Wei,” he says. “And it turns out, everything happens for a reason.”
At Columbia, Jeffrey’s urologist, Dr. Andrew Lenis, and oncologist, Dr. Alexander Wei, explained his options for treating his cancer. Rather than conventional chemotherapy alone, Jeffrey received an advanced combination therapy including chemotherapy and immunotherapy for 12 weeks, followed by surgery to remove his bladder due to the tumors.
Dr. Lenis then surgically installed a neobladder, an entirely new bladder created from a portion of Jeffrey’s small intestine. Jeffrey had been given a choice: a neobladder or a stoma, which would require wearing a permanent external collection bag. “I opted for the neobladder instead of a stoma,” he explains, “because I knew that on the other side of this, I still wanted my life to feel as close to normal as possible.”
Jeffrey’s neobladder surgery was successful, though it came with some complications. “With the chemotherapy and my surgery, I had lost about 40 pounds in total,” Jeffrey says. “One of my ureters was also blocked from the kidney to the bladder, so I ended up with a nephrostomy tube for a while.”
The nephrostomy tube, similar to a catheter, is a small tube that allows urine to drain from the kidney into a collection bag outside Jeffrey’s body. He then had a second, smaller surgery to reconnect his ureter to his new bladder and make sure his urine flow was working properly, so that the nephrostomy could eventually be removed.
Throughout chemotherapy and multiple surgeries, Jeffrey stayed focused on one goal: walking his daughter Jenny down the aisle, free of any visible or lingering signs of cancer. “I told my doctors, I’ll do whatever I have to do, but everything needs to be done by June 8 for this wedding,” he said. Recovery wasn’t easy, and he spent six months healing from surgery with both a nephrostomy tube and a catheter, managing two external collection bags at the same time.
“We snuck it in just under the wire,” Dr. Wei said, “But finally, a week before the big day, we felt it was safe to remove all his collection bags and tubing.”
On June 8, family and friends, including Drs. Wei and Lenis, attended the wedding on Jeffrey’s farm, overlooking 120 acres of Catskill Mountain views.
Since the wedding, Jeffrey has wasted no time jumping headfirst back into family and farm life. “It’s just management of the neobladder now,” he says, “it’s a little bit more challenging going to the bathroom, but I’ve gotten to the point again where I can manage this for the rest of my life.”
“Today I’m mowing lawns, tomorrow I’m tilling the garden, I’ve got an old barn I’m renovating, I get to help my daughter out with her house down the road. So, I’m back to life exactly where I wanted it.”
He was determined to make it through treatment with enough strength to pick up where he left off, and his doctors made sure every decision along the way honored that goal.
“There was only one day through all of this that I truly felt lost,” he said. “And that was the day I heard the word ‘cancer.’ Every day after that has been pretty good.”
Through every step, Jeffrey’s family remained his guiding light.
“There’s a story about a farmer who had an old horse,” Jeffrey shared. “The horse lost his sight, so the farmer bought a pony and tied a little bell around its neck. When the pony went out to pasture, the old horse followed the sound of the bell. Well, it turns out, my wife and my daughters all had a bell for me to follow.”
