how long is bladder cancer present??

  my father was diagnosed with grade III bladder cancer and had a radical cystectomy and a neobladder was constructed using the lining of his bowel which now functions like a normal bladder with reasonable retention and only a little incontinence. Can someone please tell me how long bladder cancer takes to get to the lowest grade to the worst grade?
  thanks

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Dear Sue,
All cancers that are diagnosed undergo staging and grading by a physician.  The stage of a tumor/cancer relates to how far it has spread (localized to one or more layers in the involved organ? spread beyond the affected organ? spread to the regional lymph nodes? metastasis to a distant organ such as the lung, brain, liver, etc. ?).  The grade of a tumor/cancer relates to the cells of the cancer itself.  It is a pathological diagnosis/finding, and essentially indicates how abnormal the cancer cells are in comparison to normal cells of the same organ type (Grade I through IV with lower grade being closer to normal and higher grade being more abnormal).  Therefore, in the case of transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder, the grade relates to how abnormal the cells appear in the tumor after the bladder cancer is removed.
In your father