Life, Cancer, Etc.
Life, Cancer, Etc.
I'm a Guest on "The Strong Sunflowers" Podcast
Recently, I was a guest on "The Strong Sunflower" podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-strong-sunflowers/id1548796820). I had a great time talking with Zana and Gisselle. They're both strong, kind women who are working to improve themselves and the world at large. Thanks for the opportunity, Z & G!
NOTE: I am not a medical professional. Everyone on the "Life, Cancer, Etc." podcast is sharing their own experiences, not giving medical advice.
You can see this interview on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMX5Cdv3MYs&t=8s
PC: The Strong Sunflowers
Keywords: cancer diagnosis, building to bloom, dealing with cancer
You can also find some episodes on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/LifeCancerEtc
I'm Heidi Bragg. I'm a three-time cancer survivor who's also lost a lot of loved ones to this disease. My goal is to connect you with stories and resources that will improve your life so that you can feel happier, more resilient, and less stressed, especially when you're going through hard times. Join me as we discuss life, cancer, etc. I was recently asked to be a guest on the Strong Sunflowers podcast. I had a great time talking with Zanna and Giselle. Check it out.
SPEAKER_03:Hello, hello, Strong Sunflowers. Welcome back to another episode. We're so excited to have you here. As you guys know, right now we're having Building to Bloom, or Building to Bloom Infamous. It's not famous yet. It's infamous. Challenge. And November is all about physical well-being and nutrition and making sure that we're fueling and feeding our body and moving our body specifically. I have been slacking with moving my body, but I have been making some really good snacks. So before we begin this episode, you already know, like, share, subscribe to your mom, to your friends, to your cat, or you had the strong sunflowers, follow us, share, welcome to the field. But Santa, who do we have in the field today?
SPEAKER_02:Gigi, we have one of my favorite favorite people in the entire world. And I will preface this before I introduce her that I am under the weather. So for for the focus on physical health in November. I'm in my STEM. I'm not feeling great, but we're showing up. We're showing up. We're here. And I couldn't miss this opportunity to interview the one and only Heidi Bragg. I've known, oh my gosh, probably since 2015, we had the opportunity to serve together on a communications board for the church we were attending. And I have always just been in awe of her. Not only has she been... cancer once not twice but three times y'all and she has always been an advocate for me and willing to give me perspective whenever I need it and be a shoulder to cry on when I need it and have fun when I need it so I'm really thrilled that she is willing to be on the podcast and share her story with us so without further ado I'd love for Heidi to be able to introduce herself.
SPEAKER_00:Well, okay, first of all, we're right back at you because I just love Zanna. And as I'm getting to know Giselle, like she's awesome. It's so nice to meet strong, kind, funny, and let's be frank, sarcastic, ironic women. And I love that. We're also going to be filming this today because I started a podcast a few years ago about my, I guess two years now, about my experiences with cancer and interviewing experts in the field and talking to survivors about their stories, talking to families who have lost loved ones. So as Anna mentioned, I've had cancer, three different cancers, thank you very much, because it's hashtag overachiever, but I had colon cancer. In 2013, I had a cardiac sarcoma that had a minimal chance of survival in 2018. And then in end of 2019, beginning of 2020, I had a urethelial cancer. So that's at the base of your kidney and your urethra. And that's a slow growing lazy cancer. So that's not that big of a deal. It hasn't come back. It probably will at some point, but it's easily manageable. But I also... lost my sister to a brain tumor back in 1992. And I lost my father in 2016. He was diagnosed and died 10 days later. Like it was just super sudden. And so part of why I do the podcast is for me, getting cancer is really scary. I also lost a very, very dear friend of mine in, I think it was 2015, who also died of a brain tumor. She was someone who had come and helped take care of me after my colon cancer surgery. So cancer has touched our lives in lots of ways. And that's why I started the podcast is so that people don't, a diagnosis is this like visceral punch in the gut, kick in the teeth. And if you have somebody, and I had someone, my sister Tay, she's not biologically my sister, but she's my sister and our nephew Quinn, died after a seven year battle with neuroblastoma from when he was almost five to when he was about 12. And so having her perspective and her guidance through the process and watching Quinn fight and think if this little boy can scrap, I can do this made a huge difference for me. And so part of the podcast is to help people see other people's stories, to listen to experts on, um, things to look out for, things they wish people knew before they came into the clinic. We talk with therapists, we talk with nurses, we talk with radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, surgeons. I want it not to be such an overwhelming thing for people. You're going to feel like crap at the beginning. You're going to be afraid. The first thought's going to be, I'm going to die. And then the more you hear other people's stories, you realize, no, no, we can do this and I can be here longer and do good things. So that's me.
SPEAKER_02:That's incredible. It's seriously, I just, as you were talking, I was like, how would I react if somebody told me not once, not twice, but three times that I had to fight for my life. And I just think you're a true Testament of, of resilience and perseverance and you're just truly a motivation. So thank you for sharing your story and with us now.
SPEAKER_00:And I know you too. I have to say, if it were you, you do it because I, I know you and I watch you push through all kinds of things and you don't have any options. Your option, I guess you do, to curl up in the fetal position and just go, uh-uh. But I mean, you do it because, I try to preface it, you do it because you have to. You're strong because you have to be, because what's the alternative, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm here for it. Well, thank you for having that type of faith in me. So I hope that I would have that strength if that ever was the seed that was planted in my field that I had to kind of overcome. So speaking of the seed, I'd love to start with kind of the, you hinted on the fact that, you know, you were told that you had cancer. The first thought you had was that you were going to die. But can you take us to the time, the place, what initially did you do? How long did it take to kind of fight this cancer? Let's start there. Okay. With the first one, start with the first one. I guess all of them. You have a story. So it's like- Pick and choose. There's plenty. Is that you were diagnosed with three types of cancer and- We really want to see the evolution of you getting to this bloom and harvest moment, which is you starting this beautiful podcast community to help usher other people navigating this journey. So I'd love for you to kind of take us to the seed that was unwillingly planted in your field and let us know kind of how you got to a space where you knew that you were going to fight it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So first time. And we had little kids at home. Our kids were nine, 11, 15, and 19 with the first cancer. And so I had had, I had been in a, let's just say a difficult marriage for about nine years. And in that marriage I had, I developed ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, you know, whatever. And so I would go get screened every two years. And I'd been asymptomatic for like eight years, eight and a half. Yeah, because my tail was nine. And once I get out of that marriage and once Kevin and I got married, I only had problems around childbirth, which is common because hormonal fluctuations can throw it off. So I wake up from my standard screening and I see my doctor sitting at the end of my bed, just kind of like gobsmacked a little. And I said, what? I said, you found something? He said, well, I'll wait till you're a little more awake. And I'm like, no, no, I'm awake. And he goes, yeah. there was a good size tumor in there. And he said, people who present like you don't have that usually. And I said, okay, what do we do? And he said, you can do a tumor resection where you just take out part of the colon. But he said, it kind of pops up like mushrooms. It's gonna keep coming. And you'll have to do that over and over and over. The other alternatives, they completely take your colon out, kind of build you a new, I call it franken-colon, and put you back together. And then you have to have the bag, the ileostomy, for three months while it heals. And then they put your insides back on your insides. And that's how you do it. So Kev and I talked about it a lot. And we decided that we would do the all-in-one, just do the surgery, because I didn't want to have to keep going back and getting surgery over and over and over. So they did the surgery. That was miserable. It's not laparoscopic. It's a big open abdominal surgery. And you've got your ends, part of your insides on your outsides, and you're wearing this bag that's collecting this stuff that's coming out of your stomach. I mean, it's just, it was really, really hard. And, um, so that was for three months and then everything healed. They put my insides back on my insides and nothing is like it was before, but I can, you know, I go hiking and we go to Europe. I can do pretty normal things. So, which is great, you know, um, And then I was getting through to that. It was almost my five-year mark. And I had what I thought was either a problem from a migraine or a TIA. I had a point, we were at our son's graduation from college in Utah. And just for a moment, I wasn't able to articulate words. Like I could think the word, but I couldn't make my mouth make the sound properly. And it was like 10 seconds. And then it was done. And I called my neurologist like, well, if it happens again, go to the ER. I called him like the next day. Cause I was like, well, it's time for graduation. So that's done. We're going to go. And my mom said, that could have been a TIA. I'm like, yeah, but what are they going to do for it? Nothing. So my neurologist said, next time it happens, go to the ER. And so I went into his graduation. We were living in Florida at the time. I came out here to Oregon for work for a week, flew back through San Francisco on the red eye, had a long layover. And there was one point where I felt like I couldn't tell if my leg was asleep. or something, but it felt weird when I walked. And now I'm wondering if that was more of the same issue. And then a few days later, I was getting lunch for my daughter and I, and I went to sign the receipt and I couldn't lift my right hand. Like I couldn't lift it. Like it wouldn't move. So I picked it up and put the pen in my hand and tried to write. And it was just like lightning on its side on the paper. Crap. I get in the car and it starts to get better. And so I went to pick our daughter up and I called Kevin and said, I need to go in because I need to go to the ER because that's what the neurologist had said to do. And my brother's an ER physician and he said, okay, don't leave until they've done these five tests. And it was like an echo, CT, an MRI, a bunch of different things. And they were able to do everything but the MRI and the echo at this little satellite ER for the major hospital that was like 30, 40 minutes away. But they couldn't do the last two tests. And so I talked to my brothers, like, yeah, don't leave till they've done those two. So they need to do the echo and the MRI. Drove me to Sarasota Memorial in an ambulance. We said it was the most expensive Uber ever. It was like$880. It was really expensive. And so we go to the hospital. They did the MRI that night. I was fine, but they checked me in. And in the morning, they did the echo. And... I still remember the tech who did it. She's sweet. She sent a few of mine there and you know, I'm looking at it too. And I couldn't really see anything. And then, but I was tired and I didn't watch the whole thing. And then my cardiologist comes up and they just happened to be one of the best cardiologists in, in that area. And they have a fabulous heart center at that hospital. And he said, you have a massive tumor in your left atrium. So the tumor was so big that when you looked at it on the echo, it looked like an artifact. It just looked like some weirdness in the ultrasound. But when you turn the flow on, you can see, yeah, when you have a baby, you see it's like red and blue and whatever. You can see it going around the tumor in my atrium, this tiny thin little line and then exploding out like a volcano. And it was like yellow and green and orange and purple, all kinds of colors I've never seen on a, on anything to do with blood flow. And so he says, we'd like to do surgery. You'd like to do surgery tomorrow morning. We'd like you not to get out of the bed unless the nurse is here. And what you thought was a TIA was probably pieces of the tumor flaking off and clogging arteries and blood vessels. So you could stroke out or have a massive heart attack. And that's why we want you to just lie still And if you need to get up and move, have someone with you, we'd like to do surgery in the morning. And they're like, were you tired? I'm like, I'm a working parent. Of course I was tired, but I was riding my bike four to five miles a day. I was walking a mile or two most days. Like I was active. I was just tired. And they were amazed that I hadn't had more loss of function. So they'd go in the next morning. I fall asleep in the calf lab and they're, um, you know, they do the, where they put the camera up and check all your veins and everything and make sure there aren't any blockages. That's where I fell asleep. And I woke up briefly after open heart surgery, when they were transferring me from the ICU to the cardiac care unit. And a friend of ours was a nurse at that hospital and he was there. He's like, you're okay. It's going to be all right. You know? And then I fell back asleep for another like day or two, because I was heavily sedated. Cause I mean, they've sawed your chest open and, Everything's they're wired back together with titanium wire and these clips it's, you know, zero stars do not recommend. It's very uncomfortable. And you've got tubes here. I had two tubes here and two tubes. I still have scars on my neck that were helping to drain all the fluid that was coming off after the surgery. So they come in and tell me that it wasn't the benign tumor. They thought it was once I'm awake, but that it was malignant. And it's like, I'm like, I didn't even know you could get a malignant tumor in your heart. And apparently not many people do. So again, hashtag overachiever is ridiculous. So they sent me to the local cancer, the regional cancer center, which is Moffitt in Tampa. And that place, man, if people are looking for a place to give money, that is a fabulous place to give money to. They do amazing work. And so I went in and they said, the first person I talked to was a resident, or I talked to my regular oncologist that had been following me from the first cancer. And she said, this will, this will be what you die from. Cause I'm like, what's the deal? And we're close. And you know, she goes, this is it. And she said, it may not be now, but it's likely not going to be, your life is going to be probably significantly shortened. And then I went to come off it. And the first resident I saw said, this is basically a hundred percent fatal. And then my oncologist, Andrew Brohl came in and said, he was talking about chemo and options. I said, why would I do chemo and radiation if it's a hundred percent fatal? And he goes, Well, the odds aren't great, but there's this tiny window. And if you hit it, the results can be fantastic. He's like, but that window's really small. I'm like, give me numbers. He's like, I don't even know numbers. And I found out later, they don't have a big enough sample size to even tell you numbers. So I said, well, just give me some. He goes, maybe 5%. And he told me later, I was just making BS up because you were asking for a number. We don't know. It was such a small number. But he said, maybe 5%, maybe. I said, fine. Okay, so we'll try it. So they gave me intense radiation straight to the heart for, you know, five days a week for six weeks. And then I had chemo after that. And then, um, I've had a lot of weirdness and inflammation, but knock wood, I've been cancer free from that for four and a half, almost going, it'll be five years in May. And then I found the other one like a year and a half later. And they're like, it's an easy, it's a slow growing cancer. I'm like, fine, no worries.
SPEAKER_03:They're like, we're going to give you a break. Okay. You're getting a B plus on this one. Yeah, no, a D. I'll take a D.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, I mean, and it was hard, hard,
SPEAKER_03:hard. So when the doctors were telling you this, because, I mean, it sounds, I know they weren't trying to sugarcoat it, you know, but it sounds really harsh, you know. You have 0% chance, basically, of surviving. And right now I'm reading The Happiness Advantage with Santa Recommended, and they talked about Hopeless, learned hopelessness. Yeah. And like you already had this one cancer. You're like, yeah, I beat this. I can do it. You talk to your husband. You have a partner that's supporting you. Oh, yeah. And then you get the second cancer. And it's not so much positive feedback that you're getting from these people. So my question to you, how did you not fall into that hopelessness? that learned hopelessness that they were trying to teach you because the first cancer, you're like, I got this. The second one, they were like, no, you don't have this.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think I was even scared or of, there was something I'll tell you this. I'm a person of faith. And I believe that we have heavenly parents who love us. And there was this sense of, I didn't know what it meant, but there was this sense of it's going to be okay. It's going to suck for a while, but however this works out, it's going to be okay. And I'm like, Okay. You know, I, I, I, I can't explain it. The Bible talks about that peace that passes understanding. There was a lot of that. Now there were also nights where I sobbed the day. So we asked him in that meeting, we said, okay, so what do we tell our kids? And he has kids. So he gets it. And he said, I would tell them this was July, June. He said, I would tell them we're pretty sure mom's going to be around for Thanksgiving, but we don't know after that. And Kevin and I came home and that was probably the hardest part of any of these cancers is to have to tell your kids, okay, I'm probably going to be here at Thanksgiving, but I don't know after that. And I think part of why I didn't fall into that is because whether I died or not, I didn't want those months with them to be spent in that negative, hopeless, whatever, because whatever this meant, if that was all the time I had left was June to Christmas, then that was going to be the best time we could possibly make it, right? Because the idea of leaving, I mean, Kev is my partner, like in every way, he is my soulmate. And the idea of leaving him was devastating. The idea of leaving behind children, I wouldn't get to see grow up was awful, but I wasn't, but because I love all of them so much, I was not going to allow that to make the time I had anything, but the best we could make it. And I mean, we had a book, we had a book that said good things and we would write down like so-and-so brought us a meal. Somebody gave me a gift certificate for a massage. Somebody took the kids. to go, you know, do something fun. Because I was, mind you, I couldn't even cough. Like I had a pillow I would hold against my chest when I would cough because those bones aren't together. They're just kind of scraping against each other. So anytime you move, it hurts. So I couldn't do a whole lot, but people were there for us. People were there for us. And I just felt like the, I had people all over the world, whatever their tradition, saying a prayer, doing guided meditation, whatever, I had this groundswell of support from people who loved me and loved my family. And that lifted us in a way. I don't know if I will ever be able to repay or quantify. I
SPEAKER_02:love that you, um, Thank you so much. I have no doubt that your kids see you as the warrior that you are. I'd love to hear, you know, because cancer just seems like the whole thing's a stem. Stem meaning one step forward, two steps back. You feel that pull of hopelessness, but then there's like moments of light and you see the good in people, kind of like what Mr. Rogers said, like when there's a tragedy or a hard thing.
SPEAKER_00:Look for the helpers.
SPEAKER_02:Look for the helpers. They're there. They're going to be there. I'd love to hear maybe a list of three things or people that helped you outside of the gratitude journal that you already started to get you through the stemming of, of your life at this moment.
SPEAKER_00:Well, besides the faith in God stuff that I already told you, because I felt like that very present love of God, like all the time, but Kev was amazing and it was hard on him. It was physically hard because he was doing all the things and running people everywhere. He was doing all the dad stuff and taking care of a sick person stuff and all of the other things, but he was amazing. So there was that. I think just the love we felt from everybody. was amazing and then having a really really collaborative consultative sort of relationship with my providers like and they're all great they're all like literally brilliant experts in their field but they also just talk to me as a person and I'm like okay here's what I'm looking at blah blah blah blah blah because well and a therapist we had a good there really good therapist um Because therapy is just tools for your toolbox, right? So we hadn't been through this particular thing in this way before. And we needed tools for our toolbox. And that was Kev's suggestion. He said, we need to establish with a therapist like right now. And sometimes he and I would go or I would just go or the kids would go and they would visit with Sharon. But it gave us all tools for our toolbox. Because I'll tell you, I mean, I'm saying like we had hope and I was just going to fight and whatever. But there were those days where you're just sobbing into your pillow quietly because you don't want your kids to hear. And you're like, holy crap. Am I even going to be around to see this? Like our daughter got married about a year and a half ago. And I sat there that day and I just said to Kev, a couple of years ago, I didn't know if I'd be here for this. And that was a pretty amazing moment. But you get a really harsh dose of reality and it is painful and it hurts and there are highs and there are lows. So I don't mean to minimize the experience. But I think I knew for certain that these were the people. This was the family I was meant to be in. And I love my husband. I love my children. And I wanted to make that process, whether I made it through it or not, as positive as it could be for all of us and make it the least painful it could be for them.
SPEAKER_03:Recently, I have listened to this podcast and it talked about a new mom that just had her second baby. And she talked about how hard it is, not only for her, by her spouse. But one thing that really made me think was that she said, while she was talking to him in the interview, she said that she felt guilty. She felt guilty, even though they both wanted this family, these kids. She, as the mom, felt guilty that he had to struggle in that space as well. Even though these kids are loved, wanted, She just felt that guilt as a mother. I'm wondering if you ever felt through your stem, through that hard part, even if when you have that spouse that you love and loves you, you know that they love you. Did you ever feel like that guilt of like,
SPEAKER_00:man? Yeah, that they wouldn't be going through all this if it wasn't for me. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we found out with the colon cancer, the heart cancer is not related that we know of, but that I had a genetic problem that's called Lynch syndrome. And it's something where you can't repair it's a deletion in your genetic code that you don't repair cells that get damaged in certain cases. And so it leads you to, it predisposes you to certain kinds of cancer. So the first one and the third one, third, I can't count, but my first one and my third one were related to that. And I did feel guilty. And our two youngest haven't done the test yet. Our two oldest have, and they don't have it. which is great because just because you have it doesn't mean you're going to get cancer, but you have to start screening earlier and do all these things. And so, yeah, they would not have gone through this if it wasn't for my body and the things that, you know, I wish it didn't have, but it does. And so there is that guilt. There is that watching people do for you. And I mean, Kev had to help me. I couldn't, we had this little thing around the toilet and the bathroom. It's like a little frame that I had to get help pushing up from because I couldn't, all these muscles and all this bone had been cut through. So I got no muscle tone and no strength and he had to help me with everything. And so I'm, I did feel like that because I'm six years older, but I'm not 60 years older. Like I didn't, I didn't, I, I had times of just feeling like a burden and I wish that they didn't have this on their plate. I wish my kids, there was one night when, um, uh, first cancer, I had just come home from the hospital. I got home on Thanksgiving night before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving day. I had to go right back because I had a bowel obstruction. So the EMTs had to come get me. from upstairs in our house and Taya came out because she heard the noise and she saw me and I was super pale. And she told me recently, I thought you were dead. She was 11. You know, like who wants their kid to have to go through that? Like it put them through a lot of things that have made them incredible, incredible, empathetic people, all four of them, but it has not been easy on many of them. It certainly hasn't been easy on Kevin. So yeah, there are those pieces of that guilt for putting them through it, you know? Even though it's not my fault, I know that intellectually, but it feels different, right?
SPEAKER_02:Have you seen that video that's floating around Instagram and TikTok and it's a little girl, her name's Lulu, and she is crying because the leaves are changing colors and falling off. And I don't know if you've seen it. It has millions of views and I cry every time I see it because at one point at the end of the video, she's like, it's my fault. It's my fault that these leaves are falling. And I cry laugh because I'm like, oh, little girl, like you can't control this situation. Right. Like all you can do is just run the race in front of you. So yeah, just ride it out. Yeah. It's like even the fact that this little tiny two or three year old girl sensed that she was to blame for the situation she was in. And it's like, oh, heavy stuff right there. I'm glad you pushed through it. And, you know, one one thing at the Strong Sunflowers that we believe is through every stem is a bloom moment. And so we'd love to hear when you knew when you knew that you had fought cancer and you knew Again, we're cancer free. And then second part, I love two part questions is, were there any moments throughout that journey where, I don't know, you just felt on top of the world or proud of
SPEAKER_01:yourself?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Okay. So now that I've had cancer three times, there are odds clearly that I could get it again, but I look at it as maintenance mode. So I've had to, there's been a mindset shift. There has to be. Because for a long time, I was just, even after the first cancer, just waiting for the other shoe to drop and under a lot of stress. And I had like this mantra that I would say to myself when I do my walks. I am healthy, strong, and cancer-free. God has given me the spirit of power, of peace, of love, and of a sound mind or something like that. And I would say that over and over when I'd start to feel that anxiety, right? Because if you tend towards anxiety, which I do, It's like, dang, Gina, this is going to bring anxiety. This is going to do it. And it's done it repeatedly. But so I've had to come up with coping strategies for things like that. And one thing I do is when I go for checkups to Florida, I also go swim with manatees because that brings me joy. It makes it something fun to be excited about. And it makes it so that I'm not dreading that. trip as much because you just never know. I've also had to accept. It's so funny because Kev says now it's going to be fine, but they're going to tell you they found something weird that they wanted to keep an eye on because that's what it's been every time. And it's not the cancer regrowing necessarily. Sometimes they thought it was. I had a miraculous thing where they thought I was going to have to have open heart surgery again. And they've done multiple tests that showed something there. And the final test they did, which is an echo they do down your throat called the transesophageal echo. They put you out. The thing wasn't there anymore. And I'm like, okay. Because the prospect of that again, after knowing what it means to have that surgery and how long the recovery was, man, that was devastating. That's only a couple of years ago. I think it was 2020. And so I think the bloom moment comes from trying to be at peace with what is. Like trying to live in peace. Now, one of the big ones was in 2019, you know, like six months before COVID, we did a trip to Italy, which we had wanted to do for years. And we hadn't been back. Taya was 17, I think, when we went. And the first time we went, she was like 15 months. So we hadn't been back in years. My husband served a mission for our church there for two years. We have friends there. We'd love it there. We want to eventually buy an apartment there. It's, it was wonderful, but it was like the Heidi's not dead world tour type thing. And we took the kids and all the kids eventually at various points in the two week journey were there. And that was kind of a, you're still alive moment. And then this summer we went to Scotland for our son's senior trip and I climbed Arthur's seat in Edinburgh, which is, it's only like 867 feet or something, but it's almost like this. the whole way. And for me, and it's hard for me to breathe, my lungs are damaged from the radiation. So it's really hard to breathe. Um, that was really hard, but I had trained for a year hiking every week to be able to do that hike. And so I got on the top of that and I actually wrote about in the blog on our website, but I also sent a picture to all of my people at Moffitt and said, thank you for keeping me alive. Thanks for the good work you're doing. I just like to show you the fun things I get to do. And here's what I did. And I trained for it for a year and sent them pictures of us on top. And, and the view of Edinburgh was lovely. And so that was another moment where it's like, okay, life isn't the same, but it's good. There are a lot of really good things and really good people in my life.
SPEAKER_03:That's amazing. because even with Santa doing this race and running this marathon, I'm like, I don't know. I don't even know how I would do that. I don't think I would want to do that.
SPEAKER_00:But that's okay. It doesn't have to be your thing, Gia. It's fine.
SPEAKER_03:No, correct. Yesterday I was at work and I was sweeping. And I was like, I'm sweeping. Sometimes it's those small little things. because of my car accident, my neck muscles haven't been the same. And I was sweeping. I was able to hold my neck and sweep and everybody else hates sweeping, including myself, but it's so small little wins. You're like, damn, like this is my blue moment. I've made it. You got to climb this mountain that in a couple of years before you didn't even know if you were going to be alive or not. Yeah. It's totally true. Yeah. And right now, again, thank you, Zanna, for this book, The Happiness Advantage. Right now, I'm in this part that they're talking about positive psychology, obviously, but they talk about post-traumatic stress disorder. And in some way, I know... Getting screened all the time and saying, oh, maybe there's something, maybe there's not definitely causing some post-traumatic stress. Knowing that you're a cancer survivor and knowing that you have this genetic condition, again, a little bit of stress, post-traumatic stress after that. But the most important thing that they talk about in the book is post-traumatic growth. Oh, I like that. I know. It's so good. And like taking that traumatic experience and finding that up. How can I grow from this? What can I learn from this? What can I share? And that leads us to our harvest because you have found that post-traumatic growth. And you started this podcast helping other people go through this not, I don't want to say horrible thing because it's a part of your story. Well, it's definitely traumatic. I think we could say traumatic, right? I feel traumatic is a more worthy word because it has made you the person that you are today. And you're doing this podcast to help these individuals kind of navigate that because, like you said, like your therapist was giving you these tools for this toolbox, you're giving these people this tool for their box as well because... I've never been through cancer. Santa has like, we don't know. This is a new thing. And you're helping these people get these tools to do that. So tell us a little bit more about your harvest, about how you're doing this work.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's, it's been interesting because I thought about the things that like, what's like one of the ones, the first one we did was with my friend, Sarah, and she was phenomenal. She, she took me to chemo. I only had a few people I was, Let's take me to chemo because you got to sit there for two hours with me. And, you know, you want people who are upbeat, but not going to be in your face the whole time. It's like, it's it, but Sarah took me to chemo a lot. And, um, she's just, so the one with hers, I think we titled it like how to be a fricking awesome support person or something like that, because people need to know what to do. Like, here's a, for example, um, people like, oh, if there's anything I can do, it's like, don't do that. I've got too much going on in my head. If you've got, you know, if you're willing to bring me a meal or take my kids to school, tell me, I can bring you a meal or take your kids to school. Would either of those be helpful? Give me a couple of options to choose from. I can make that decision because right now I've got decision fatigue. I'm thinking about which treatment I'm going to do and how I'm going to get things lined out to get a ride up to Moffitt and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you give me two things, two discrete choices, I can choose one of those. So that's just a tip that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't been through it or we do like, again, we talk with a lot of experts about, about, you know, what is radiation and how does it affect the body? My radiation oncologist, Arash Nagavi is great. We talk about like, what's a PET scan like, so that, you know, when you go in, you're going to do this, you're going to do so that when you get in there, you're not coming in cold. Cause it's already scary. Right. Why make the little steps you have to go through scarier? So we just try to, we try to line things out. We try to show survivor stories from a lot of different kinds of cancer because cancer, when I got it, my mom said this too. My sister had died, let's see, how has it been? So like more than 20 years before my sister died of a brain tumor. And frankly, everybody I knew that had cancer who was close to me had died. I didn't know a lot of survivors and certainly not anybody in my closest immediate circle. And mom said, Hyde, it's not 20 whatever years ago. And this is not brain cancer. Like that brain cancer is a different animal, first of all. And it was definitely a different animal 20 something years ago. So like you can't equate those experiences. And I think that's true for most kinds of cancer. You just can't equate. And they're coming up with new treatments every day. And I think letting people know, all you've got to do is, Kevin, he says, look at it like diabetes. If you have diabetes, you have to get certain screenings. You may have to use insulin. You may have to do all these things, but it's manageable, right? So right now I'm in the management phase of being a cancer survivor. Will things come up again? Yeah, probably. But all I have to do is get the screening, stay alive until the next treatment, right? Until they develop the next treatment. And then we figure it out from there. And it's hard for me because I'm a planner and this is such a moving target. that drives me nuts. But sitting in that uncertainty is while hard has taught me a lot and I'm learning to be more like, okay, all right. I'm not going to know everything. Kev's like, just look at his maintenance mode. You're going to go in, you're going to get your scans. Something may come up, something not. We'll take care of it when it comes and move forward. And so that's, it's changed my attitude and I'm hoping it will help other people and not feel so overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_02:I can only imagine how overwhelming that feeling is. And I'm glad that people who are fighting this fight have a place to turn to in your podcast. So before we get into the mic drop moment, I'd love for you to tell our field where they can find you. What's the name of your podcast? Do you have a website? Where are you on social?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, it's called Life, Cancer, Etc. And this video will be on our YouTube channel. And I think it's like just at Life Cancer, et cetera, at YouTube. On YouTube, you can search for it that way. We also have a website that has all our podcasts on it. And you can find it at Apple and Google and Spotify. And most places, I think you can find a podcast. So and it's very underproduced. It's highly underproduced. I tell people because I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm learning on the fly. So The information is important. People's stories are important. They've been super generous to share them with me. So it's just kind of a matter of like getting over myself and just doing it and figuring it out.
SPEAKER_03:And if you could tell one point of advice to someone that has just recently been diagnosed, what would it be?
SPEAKER_00:It would probably be a diagnosis does not necessarily mean you're going to die. So feel those feelings. Ideally, talk it out with people and then assemble a team that makes you feel comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable with your oncologist or your surgeon, find somebody else. Keep going till you find people you can trust because you're building a team of experts to help counsel you. You have to make all the decisions. And if you've got somebody you don't feel right about, Trust your gut. Find somebody else. It's all going to suck. Okay. It's all going to be hard. You're still going to have cancer, but find people you trust. I love being around strong, kind women who are trying to make themselves a little better and make the world a little brighter. My thanks to Zanna and Giselle for allowing me to be on the strong sunflowers. As you go around the world, please do something nice for somebody else and make their day a little bit easier. Thanks for watching and listening.
UNKNOWN:Music