Cancer Fatigue Is Treatable

Cancer fatigue is treatable, but most people are never told how. In this episode, we’re talking about how to treat cancer fatigue and what actually helps you get your energy back.

If you are living with cancer or navigating life after treatment, you may be feeling a level of exhaustion that doesn’t make sense. This isn’t just being tired. It’s deeper. It’s persistent. And for many people, it doesn’t go away with rest.

In this powerful and validating conversation, I sit down with Dr. Scott Adams and Peter Laneas from Cancer Fatigue Services to unpack what cancer-related fatigue really is, why it happens, and most importantly, what you can do about it.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

• What cancer-related fatigue really is (and why it’s not “just being tired”)
 • Why rest alone doesn’t fix cancer fatigue
 • How physical, emotional, and mental fatigue are all connected
 • Why exercise and mindset both play a role in recovery
 • The biggest misconceptions about fatigue after cancer
 • What actually helps people start feeling better again

This Episode Is For You If:

• You are in treatment and feel constantly exhausted
 • You’ve finished treatment but still don’t feel like yourself
 • You’ve been told “this is normal” but it doesn’t feel right
 • You’re pushing through your days but feel drained underneath it all
 • You want to understand how to overcome cancer fatigue and reclaim your energy

Cancer fatigue is real but it is also treatable.

Be more stubborn than your fatigue. There is a version of you with more energy, more clarity, and more life and it’s still available to you.

Ready for Support?

Cancer Fatigue Services: https://cancerfatigueservices.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cancerfatigueservices/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cancerfatigueservices/

Ready for More Support?

💛 Join the Cancer Thriver Pathway
This is where we take conversations like this and turn them into action with personalized support, holistic strategies, and a compassionate community walking beside you.

📅 Schedule your free consult call

https://calendly.com/kathrynwhitewellness/coachingcall

Free Resource

🎁 “Mindfulness for Anxiety Workbook” – FREE
Download here: https://kathryn-white-cancer-coach.kit.com/anxietyworkbook

Love the Podcast?

If this episode encouraged you, please:

• Subscribe
• Share it with someone who needs to hear it
• Leave a 5-star review

My Book

Living to Thrive with Cancer: A Holistic Guide to Living with Cancer
Available on Amazon, Audible, iTunes, and more:
https://a.co/d/drFeapW

Let’s Connect

Website: https://www.kathrynwhite.coach
Instagram: @kathrynwhitecancercoach

I would love to hear from you. Send your message to hello@kathrynwhite.coach

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kathryn White: Welcome to The Living to Thrive with Cancer podcast. I'm Kathryn White, cancer coach and author of Living to Thrive, A Holistic Guide to Living with Cancer. This is the place where we trade fear for hope, confusion for clarity, and overwhelm for empowered action. Whether you are newly diagnosed, living with cancer, or navigating life beyond it, I'll share tools, insights, and real life inspiration to help you create a life that feels good to live 

[00:00:26] Dr Scott Adams: right now.

[00:00:27] Dr Scott Adams: In the middle of it all, let's thrive together. 

[00:00:32] Kathryn White: Welcome to The Living to Thrive with Cancer podcast. I'm Kathryn White, stage four colon cancer thriver, author of Living to Thrive, A Holistic Guide to Living with Cancer. You're a cancer coach and someone who has walked this path from shock and fear to strength and purpose.

[00:00:46] Kathryn White: If you are new here, welcome. This is a place for anyone who is living with cancer. Whether you are newly diagnosed, moving through treatment, or learning how to rebuild your life on the other side, it is also a space for caregivers who want to show up well for someone they love. The mission here is always the same, to help you move from survivor to thriver.

[00:01:05] Kathryn White: One intentional action at a time. In today's episode, I'm talking with Dr. Scott Adams, or Scott as he likes to be called, and Peter LANs from Cancer Fatigue Services. Scott is a physiologist and scientist with over 15 years of experience delivering and testing the effects of exercise based interventions for people living with and after cancer.

[00:01:29] Kathryn White: In addition to his scientific work, Scott has founded and led cancer rehabilitation and multifaceted bio-psychosocial support services in hospital and community-based settings. As a scientist, Scott is extremely fortunate to have worked with top research teams within hospital, university, and community settings across North America.

[00:01:48] Kathryn White: His research focused on understanding how to predict, identify, minimize, and treat some of the most common and debilitating side effects of cancer treatment, like fatigue and its major causes. For over the past 15 plus years, Scott, time and again has witnessed the power of exercise-based multidisciplinary interventions to transform lives and restore hope for people living with and after cancer.

[00:02:13] Kathryn White: And because we like to switch things up a little bit here at the podcast, I have a second guess joining us, Peter Lins, who you may remember from our talk about getting cancer as a young adult back in January, Peter is a passionate advocate, public speaker, and media professional, committed to amplifying the voices of those navigating life altering health and social challenges.

[00:02:36] Kathryn White: At cancer fatigue services. Peter leads advocacy and engagement, ensuring that those facing post-treatment fatigue have access to the support and resources they need. He is dedicated to breaking down barriers to care and reshaping the narrative around cancer recovery. Emphasizing that fatigue should not be an accepted norm, but a challenge that can be overcome.

[00:02:57] Kathryn White: In this episode, we are going to look at cancer fatigue, what it is and why it happens, how cancer related fatigue impacts your life, and the work that Dr. Scott or Scott and Peter are doing at Cancer Fatigue Services. Woo, that was a ton. Welcome both of you. 

[00:03:16] Peter Laneas: Thank you for having us. Thanks. I love, I love the fact you invited me back.

[00:03:20] Peter Laneas: Thank you. 

[00:03:21] Kathryn White: I'm so happy that you are here and I know you two are like a dynamic team along with all of the other people at Cancer Fatigue Services, so I think it's just a really nice compliment to have both of you here. So we, um, are going to get into some questions because the listeners are always very interested in learning more about themselves, learning more about how they can work through the things that cancer brings into their lives.

[00:03:46] Kathryn White: And so today is all about cancer fatigue. So I thought that I would start with Peter. As a cancer survivor, I'm wondering if you could speak to this concept of fatigue and how it has impacted your life. 

[00:04:02] Peter Laneas: So thank you for that. Uh, the way that cancer has, uh, cancer related fatigue has impacted my life.

[00:04:08] Peter Laneas: First and foremost is learning about cancer fatigue services, and then understanding a bit more about cancer related fatigue is not just some type of normalized write off post symptom that's either post-diagnosis, post-treatment, wherever it might be. It's, it's a series of potential posts. And in that whole thing, it's never, I might experience it, never got talked about.

[00:04:33] Peter Laneas: So I just kind of wrote things off and I thought to myself, well, first diagnosis is 26, second one was 29. Here I am not even 30, and I'm taking naps all the time. Like, uh, like, what's wrong with me? All right, so let's turn coffee into a food group. I'm gonna just truck through with a healthy dose of toxic masculinity to tell myself I need to do things and do my best to get through the course of the day, not understanding that there's something legitimately happening.

[00:05:00] Peter Laneas: Not, and not knowing that it was something that was diagnosable and treatable, but the resources unfortunately at that time weren't there. And, um, it's not something that's openly discussed. 

[00:05:11] Kathryn White: I agree completely. I, I, when I was visiting you in Toronto, we were talking about fatigue. 'cause we were at cancer fatigue services and I was talking about always having this like in my chest tired feeling just chronically, even after a great sleep.

[00:05:25] Kathryn White: It's, I wake up and I'm like, rested, but I still feel tired. So it's nice to speak with other people who are normalizing this because I really feel like you said like, we don't talk about this and, and people feel like I'm supposed to be better, so why am I so tired all of the time? 

[00:05:42] Peter Laneas: Dare I even go so far as to suggest that there's sometimes this, uh, this scope of gratitude missing.

[00:05:50] Peter Laneas: Like, you got through your diagnosis, you got through your treatment, you came out the other side, you know, so, so what is, so what? Is it just being a little tired? Mm-hmm. You're, you're still alive. You should be grateful. It's like, well, I mean, that's kind of a loaded statement where I. You need to be in somebody's shoes, be them stylish or otherwise, to really understand what they're going through in the moment.

[00:06:11] Peter Laneas: And if it doesn't feel like there's open forum, there's not space to dialogue about what's going on, then who's there to pick up on those cues to say, well, wait a second. Maybe there's something really going on there. What can we do about it as besides using conventional responses like get more sleep, take a nap.

[00:06:29] Peter Laneas: Here's the way that it's going. Batteries are simple, not how it works. 

[00:06:34] Kathryn White: No, 

[00:06:34] Dr Scott Adams: that gratitude is an awfully low bar too. Like I, I dare say, as a society, we can dream a little bigger than to say, Hey, just because you're alive and you just need to be grateful for that fact and not aspire for more. Uh, it's too easy to sweep things that are more difficult to control and address under the rug saying, Hey, we did as we did as best we could by you.

[00:07:00] Dr Scott Adams: And now. Just be happy with where you're at. It's, I love that. It's, it's tough. 

[00:07:07] Kathryn White: Yeah. I love that you're saying that, and thank you for, for recognizing that because it really is, it's like, well, shouldn't you just be happy you're still here? Like you're still alive. Like things are, you're, you seem to be, okay.

[00:07:17] Kathryn White: So this whole fatigue piece, and this is where you jump in Scott for sure, is, is like, how did you even start to recognize that fatigue was something that needed to be addressed other than maybe anecdotally people saying, you know, I just have this chronic tired, and then, and then how did you, um, decide to make this into something bigger?

[00:07:38] Dr Scott Adams: Yeah, so done a lot of facilitating or different like non non-profits over the years, young adult Cancer Canada being one of them. And when we're in these spaces around people at different stages of along survivorship continuum, you get questions pretty regularly about, Hey, I've got this problem. We got that problem.

[00:08:00] Dr Scott Adams: What do I do with this? What do I do with that? I knew where to refer people for problems a, during F, but that next problem when people were presenting with fatigue, I could talk about what the solutions are, but there was never a space where I could say, you know what you mean? I need to get in you in touch with this person.

[00:08:23] Dr Scott Adams: And I am very fortunate to not be, uh, have my own sort of survivorship experience, uh, to this point. Uh, but the challenge hit home for me when I was at West, um, when I was doing my PhD, I had come back facilitating an event and there was someone who approached me at that event and was asking for help with how to address her fatigue.

[00:08:51] Dr Scott Adams: And I tried for like six months trying to find a source of support for this person. Hit dead end after dead end. And to this, to that end, I even got frustrated with the lack of resources that were available. Um, fast forward to when we were, we had pivoted, we had opened and we were, this is one summer of 2004.

[00:09:24] Dr Scott Adams: We had just moved into this space and I was reaching out to a bunch of young adults that I had connected with back in 2008, 2009, thinking mostly these would be lighthearted catch-ups, where like, Hey, I'm doing something cool right now, or, I think it's cool. Um, if you happen to know anybody who's tired of being tired, tell them about us.

[00:09:51] Dr Scott Adams: Help us sort of spread the word here, and five or six of those first 10 phone calls. People were still living with fatigue. 

[00:10:00] Peter Laneas: Hmm. 

[00:10:01] Dr Scott Adams: This was 2000, this is 2024, and I met them in 2008, 2009. And that sort of ripped me out of the ivory tower, out of the textbooks to say, this is wholly un to re to remind me, this is wholly unaddressed on a societal level.

[00:10:19] Dr Scott Adams: And not that there wasn't one already, but talk about a way to stoke a fire. 

[00:10:24] Peter Laneas: Mm mm-hmm. 

[00:10:25] Dr Scott Adams: It was really disheartening on a personal level and really empowering on a professional level, if that makes sense. 

[00:10:35] Kathryn White: It does. And it's interesting to reflect on my own fatigue and the, like, that timeline even that you gave, like, I'm now 11 years into my, my walk with cancer and still feel tired.

[00:10:48] Kathryn White: And when I would say to people initially like, oh yeah, I'm really tired. And they're like, well, you know, you are getting older. I was like, okay, well I was 43 at the time. Like, that's not really old. And well, you are, you know, approaching that menopause age. Well yes, I understand that. Well, you are a mom and a teacher.

[00:11:02] Kathryn White: And there was all of the excuses. But I knew, like, I used to run marathons, so I knew what tired felt like. Like I know what, like deep in your core, like I just did something big, felt like, and this was just even a completely different level of fatigue. Hard to explain. 

[00:11:19] Dr Scott Adams: Yeah. And it's, I had one, one woman who would come into Northern Ontario.

[00:11:26] Dr Scott Adams: She had just finished her first treatment block with us dietician by training. Was living with advanced disease and or is living with advanced disease. And she was in for a first her to redo her cardiopulmonary exercise test. We'd just finished administering the fatigue questionnaire, the questionnaire side and said, so and so kinda what that, how are you actually doing?

[00:11:52] Dr Scott Adams: And she deadpan looks at like, Scotty, I'm actually so tired. And I had a deer in a headlight moment going, hold like, this isn't working. What? What's, what do you mean you're so tired? And her response was, no, I can, my fatigue is so much better. I can actually fill my days with things that normally tire me out so that by the time I'm going to bed at night, I'm normally tired.

[00:12:21] Dr Scott Adams: Not this like listless anxiety riddled sort of fatigue state where felt like I didn't do anything during the day and. Now I'm just sort of staring at the ceiling going, what's tomorrow gonna be like? Mm-hmm. Um, it's so different. And even, even hearing it characterized like that to me was, was again, similarly reassuring that we're on the right track here, but it's not, it's not discussed enough and it's not well understood.

[00:12:55] Dr Scott Adams: Um, so anything we can do, like opportunities like this to sort of shine a light into some of these darker corners of the conversation it brings more Appreciate it. 

[00:13:05] Kathryn White: I'm so glad you're here. This I could, this is just such a great conversation because of what she said, like, now I can do things that I normally wouldn't have been able to do.

[00:13:16] Kathryn White: So what I think I'm hearing is that this was after she had received some of the services at Cancer Fatigue Services 

[00:13:25] Dr Scott Adams: and, and it was a combination, right? So when we. When people attend the clinic, we look at the whole person and we try and identify the constellation of factors. On average is about five driving, driving causes, um, that we've, we've seen so far and the people that have come through.

[00:13:44] Dr Scott Adams: And once we identify those factors, then we work with the person to say, okay, what are the right, what is the right combination of therapy and what is the right sequence of therapy? Because if you do things out of order, it may undermine success as well, right? So some of the things we offer in-house, other, other types of services like psychotherapy and nutrition, equally as important as some of the more physical rehab that we provide here, because they're so present, they can be so burdensome and major drivers of the team.

[00:14:18] Dr Scott Adams: But we try and help people connect with local resources they already have. Therapist relationships at their local hospital, in their community, wherever they can access services at low or no cost, uh, is the priority, especially if they already have that sort of trusting relationship with someone. 

[00:14:37] Kathryn White: So can you, um, walk us through the process?

[00:14:40] Kathryn White: One or both of you, like I, again, I was at your facility, it's amazing. I was just blown away by the tools that you have. But can you walk us through what it would look like for someone who is, is seeking that kind of support, um, whether that's an in-house person or a virtual person? 

[00:15:00] Peter Laneas: Sure. Well, it, uh, it starts off with, uh, of course anyone who takes a look on our website@cancerfatigueservices.com, they're able to find, there's a button that says, uh, free consultation.

[00:15:11] Peter Laneas: So you find an appointment that's on the Calendly, uh, or the platform, whatever platform is that we use. And you go in there and you book a time and you get in touch with, uh, one of our team members where what they'll do is it's a combination of them filling out a form before they actually get through.

[00:15:26] Peter Laneas: So they're able to self-report a little bit more about what their life experience is working with scales, a couple of different, um, descriptors and by scales I mean choose, you know, one to 10, like where are you for this particular question, et cetera. And then over the course of approximately 45 minutes during the intake, our team member will confirm everything, making sure that we understand from our side what it is that you're self-reporting, and then really help get a better snapshot of what's going on, where are you at right now, and then look at next, next steps in process.

[00:15:59] Dr Scott Adams: From that point, uh, people who are willing, interested in moving forward. We've sent some clarifying questionnaires around the 10 treatable causes because the. The idea behind it is this is such a complex condition with at least 10 different treatable causes potentially contributing to it. We need to learn a lot more about you before you come in the first time, because otherwise your first meeting with the physician would just be spent in data collection.

[00:16:28] Peter Laneas: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:28] Dr Scott Adams: Rather than reviewing the abundance of data that we already have on end, so then you can get more nuance in the conversation and tease out important details so we can really have a more concrete, again, nuanced understanding of your lived experience, the likely causes and contributing factors, and so on.

[00:16:49] Dr Scott Adams: From that point, we meet as a multidisciplinary team. We review the case, we identify when we think the primary and secondary contributing factors are put together, complete results back. We meet people either in person or virtually the the first. Meeting with the decision has to be in person. In order to be eligible for OHIP coverage, we have to establish the patient clinician relationship in person.

[00:17:20] Dr Scott Adams: But from that point on, things can be either in person or virtual. And for a lot of people when you're, I say this all the time, you're too tired to get up off the couch. You've gotta be too tired to get into a brick and mortar institute to get all the rest of your 

[00:17:33] Peter Laneas: mm-hmm. 

[00:17:33] Dr Scott Adams: So being flexible in our approach that way, I think is closing, helping close the care gap for, for some folks.

[00:17:41] Dr Scott Adams: Uh, but yeah, they come back, they come back in either physically or virtually provide the results. We review with and make sure they understand everything. And then we send them away with some thinking exercises, thinking about, okay, these are some of the therapies that we're gonna discuss next time. And we have to acknowledge that the therapies that are most effective at addressing fatigue, like there's no drug that consistently improves.

[00:18:08] Dr Scott Adams: Even the stimulant medications that have been tested by pioneers in the field like Dr. Escalante down to then Anderson. Even the stimulant trials are a mixed bag. They are not nearly as consistent as exercise and cognitive behavioral, the, as the two behavioral type therapies that really stand out as having the largest and most consistent direction of effect.

[00:18:34] Dr Scott Adams: But what do we know about the average, call it Canadian at this point. We know that not everyone's necessarily comfortable engaging in a psychotherapy self-help syndromes addressing some of your emotional challenges, uh, capacity. Uh, we also know that a lot of people have a love hate relationship with exercise.

[00:18:55] Kathryn White: Hmm. 

[00:18:56] Dr Scott Adams: And if these are things that are likely to help and you don't have a good relationship with it, you actually have a lot more behavioral support work to do. To identify incremental ways to build these protective behavioral interventions to build your capacity and your self confidence so you can engage successfully in them and then reap the the rewards of them.

[00:19:22] Dr Scott Adams: So between the results delivery and the care, the shared care planning, people are sent home with some little think time. And then we come back together and they'll leave position again and they'll map out what the most actionable, lowest hanging fruit sort of priorities are in the context of their larger fatigue story.

[00:19:44] Dr Scott Adams: And then we plan the route. Everyone's route's gonna look a little different based on what's driving their fatigue, what resources they have available to them, what their personal priorities are. Um, and I think the complexity of that exam helps reinforce. Why? Why I believe it's not better dealt with in society or helps me, helps explain why it's not better dealt with in society.

[00:20:12] Peter Laneas: Mm. 

[00:20:13] Dr Scott Adams: Complex. It takes a lot of time and a little trial and error sometimes to look through an otherwise pretty complex health series of health conditions that

[00:20:28] Dr Scott Adams: a lot of people working on the front line who are incredible. Mm-hmm. They don't necessarily have the time or the tools available to them to really dig into this problem the way that it needs to be dug into in order to change, change someone's team to Jack. 

[00:20:50] Kathryn White: Yeah. You mentioned cognitive behavioral therapy, and I was like, Ooh.

[00:20:55] Kathryn White: Like there's a whole mindset piece to navigating this fatigue. And so to what you just said, like our, our clinicians, our oncologists, our doctors, they don't have all of those pieces as it seems you do to, to offer, to put together. But it never, I guess it never really occurred to me that if I work on my mindset piece in conjunction with having other tools and strategies to help me move my body, then that might actually move me farther away from my mat fatigue and more to towards feeling more empowered, more energized, more energetic.

[00:21:31] Kathryn White: Does that make sense? 

[00:21:33] Dr Scott Adams: Yeah. And, and to be, but one thing up front, a big caveat. I'm not an expert in all of those things either. I, I have my specific skills in training and expertise in exercise, in theology, and that type of rehab work. Uh, that's where. The team is strongest when we have many big, beautiful brains around the table working on the same problem.

[00:21:56] Kathryn White: You do have quite a few team members at Cancer Fatigue Services 

[00:22:00] Dr Scott Adams: Yeah. And amazing colleagues in the community that we need 

[00:22:03] Peter Laneas: gonna, I was gonna, uh, echo that where, uh, one of the things that we offer is, uh, we offer a peer support that's, uh, complimentary to either patients who have been through or currently going through cancer fatigue services as a program or folks who haven't even, but they just wanna learn a little bit more about cancer related fatigue.

[00:22:21] Peter Laneas: Mm-hmm. I get the privilege to co-facilitate, uh, with a fantastic psychotherapist. And what we do is over the course of six weeks for once a week and 90 minutes a pop, we usually cap it around 10 folks. And we talk about different types of techniques, learning a little bit more about cancer related fatigue.

[00:22:37] Peter Laneas: But first and foremost, it's designed as a safe space where anyone who participates in there is able to both verbalize maybe some of the things they didn't know that they were able to talk about as it connects to their fatigue, but then being mirrors for one another where we're able to see ourselves.

[00:22:54] Peter Laneas: It's like, Hey, I've been through that. I know what that feels like. You feel it too. That's fantastic. And providing that as a structure is something that really helps open up the dialogue and normalizes the conversation where, although it's been quote unquote normalized as a side effect after cancer diagnosis, no, it's common and it's treatable.

[00:23:16] Peter Laneas: There's a, there are ways to deal with it. 

[00:23:18] Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:18] Peter Laneas: And it's in that whole spectrum. Like to, to speak to what you were speaking earlier about, uh, cognitive behavioral therapy and mindset and perspective, it's a different type of approach as well where we as patients, when we're going through the entire cancer experience, we do something more.

[00:23:36] Peter Laneas: Uh, we take more of a passive role. We are told, this is where you show up and you have things that are done to you. You don't have much to do or say other than show up on time, get through the process, say whatever you need to, and then come back the next time we have to see you because we've got however many other patients behind you.

[00:23:55] Peter Laneas: And then hopefully by the end of it, you're able to ring the bell, which is a totally separate conversation. However, I know that's a shameless free plug for the wonderful work that you're doing, Kathryn, thank you. And it's, I'm a super fan. What can I say? And it's, you do good stuff. Thank you. And once, once we're done, um, having opportunity to reflect on it, I now look back at the bell as I got to go and ring to signal that my treatment is done and I'm now on my own.

[00:24:29] Kathryn White: Yes. 

[00:24:29] Peter Laneas: But no one told me that I'm on my own. 

[00:24:31] Kathryn White: Yes. 

[00:24:33] Peter Laneas: When you're coming into a space like cancer fatigue services, there's a different degree of engagement and conversation and collaboration where the patients now get to express like what they want to see outta their outcomes. They're self-reporting in a way that doesn't feel like, like you're just a number.

[00:24:50] Peter Laneas: And I'm not saying that to speak negatively of any of the caretakers. They're fantastic people in the oncology sector. And I love and cherish them for everything that they did for me and my siblings through survivorship. However, there was never this dimension of, okay, well you're not just showing up and things are gonna gonna get done to you.

[00:25:08] Peter Laneas: You are now a part of the process. You take an active role, you have agency, and that is a total mind shift. 

[00:25:15] Kathryn White: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:16] Peter Laneas: And it's something where it's kind of difficult at the first point when I first did it, to understand how powerful that is. There's this different sense of control of, wait a second, I'm putting in.

[00:25:30] Peter Laneas: I'm engaged, I'm invested in my health in a different way. And it's just so mind blowing to look at it with hindsight, 2020, uh, a year out since, since becoming a part of this, that it's, uh, it's, it's really shattering and I hope anyone listening really takes a beat to soak that in. 'cause it's, it's powerful stuff.

[00:25:50] Kathryn White: Mm. 

[00:25:51] Dr Scott Adams: I was just gonna maybe do your job. You go right ahead. I'm sure a way worse way. But I had a question for Peter, if I may. 

[00:25:58] Kathryn White: Absolutely. 

[00:26:00] Dr Scott Adams: Peter, we've talked a lot about the, when that locus of control changes as you're, as you're describing, I'm wondering if you could speak to any of the Bureau of Failure that may creep in.

[00:26:20] Dr Scott Adams: And we've obviously, we've chatted about this a lot on the team, but it. It strikes me as I think a lot of people may shy away from it as you, well, especially let's say they don't have a good relationship with one of the therapies that a physician is, is suggesting,

[00:26:46] Dr Scott Adams: is it at least possible that there's this subconscious fear of like, I, I actually don't even want to dip my toe into that 'cause I tried that once before and it's not gonna work and therefore maybe I just need to resign myself from living with this for the rest of my life. Like, I'm scared, I'm scared.

[00:27:03] Dr Scott Adams: That's where some people may get if they've come through, seen, learned about what's causing their fatigue and then confronted what their future, one path their future could take and then been had some insecurity about what that looks like and their ability to engage. 

[00:27:28] Peter Laneas: Well, uh, I can say, uh, although Scott, though, we just met, um, 

[00:27:34] Kathryn White: you guys are 

[00:27:34] Peter Laneas: so funny.

[00:27:35] Peter Laneas: I probably, yeah, I'm, I'm, I, I'm, I'm a standup comedian, so there's my shame free plug. But at least given a caveat to why my brain functions the way that it does, uh, that is an incredibly layered and, and beefy question. I will try to tackle that as best as I can. Um, 

[00:27:52] Dr Scott Adams: again, it's just shining light into the dark corners, right?

[00:27:54] Dr Scott Adams: Like, these are things that we wrestle with. 

[00:27:57] Kathryn White: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:57] Dr Scott Adams: So even if we don't have succinct answers, put it out there and get people thinking about their own stuff, and I'm sort of the intention there. 

[00:28:06] Kathryn White: Metacognition. 

[00:28:08] Peter Laneas: Yep. Uh, I, again, only speaking from my own experience, uh, and also having the privilege of being able to connect with, as I like to say, our tribe, when we're able to balance off of each other, what we've been through, the cancer treatment in the experience.

[00:28:25] Peter Laneas: Ends up landing, feeling very pass or fail. And the pass is, you make it, you get through to the other side. However, this is something where, because it's guided by an outside source, it's, you know, being the care team, you are that one step back. So if there's someone or something to blame, you're not, you're less likely to blame yourself because I didn't do any of this.

[00:28:50] Peter Laneas: I didn't have a part in it, I just showed up. And either they flipped on the machine, they got the iv, whatever it might be. However the combination works out. And this is just, you know, totally straight talk. So to have the approach where you now have active engagement, you're now a part of that healing process because you're not getting something plugged into you, you're not getting, uh, an, a machine flipped on that's going to treat what's happening inside of you, similar to what you go through in the oncology world, depending on what kind of treatment you got.

[00:29:23] Peter Laneas: You now have something that you can blame about you. Did I fail? If it's not getting better, is it on me? Did I do enough? And because there is such a conditioned experience with the healthcare system when it comes to oncology, this is foreign territory. So to have that sort of setup that we're able to provide, where we can talk the, you know, talk the patient through and saying, Hey, just so you understand, here's kind of what's in store.

[00:29:53] Peter Laneas: Let's sit down, how do you feel about it? Is there anything that we need to discuss? What are your approaches? What, um, really what gravitates towards you? And similar to the conversation that Kathryn and I got to have, and we posted recently about the importance of language and knowing how to identify when someone has been through the cancer experience, we're looking at words like cancer, survivor, cancer fighter, cancer, thriver.

[00:30:17] Peter Laneas: How does the individual identify with that? How do they identify themselves? Do they feel that the people in their lives have assigned that to them and they feel like they need to live up to it? Like I can speak very transparently. My first experience with, uh, going through the process with cancer fatigue services.

[00:30:34] Peter Laneas: I'm a guy who goes to the gym four to five times a week, and I have this mentality of, okay, sense of accomplishment, here's what I do. And I know, and it, it manifests physically in the way that my body changes based on the output that I do and how I move all those parts. But then to have access to something that is now attached to my cancer journey and it's a physical output.

[00:30:57] Peter Laneas: The expectations I have on myself were massive and it didn't even register that they were happening in the moment. It was just put my head down, barrel through, get to the end of it, and feel my feels after the fact. But I was also one of the people at the forefront, so I know enough to know that I can now communicate that as part of my role and help other folks to make sure that they feel that there is that agency, but there's not an expectation.

[00:31:26] Kathryn White: Mm-hmm. 

[00:31:27] Peter Laneas: You're able that you are going to do what you are going to do. And the importance is, is that the data comes back. We help manage, but we set it in the, we set things up and say it to you in the font and dialect that you need, so you're most responsive, and that intimidation and fear melts away. 

[00:31:44] Kathryn White: And there is.

[00:31:45] Kathryn White: Thank you for that. There, there's so much fear. Like my brain is going in about 20 different directions. One, fear of failure, two, fear of doing it wrong. Three fear of, oh, balloons. Look at that. Well, that's fun. I mean, we're having, it's just a 

[00:32:01] Dr Scott Adams: heavy tropic to start celebrating. Like 

[00:32:03] Kathryn White: that's just, okay, we're just like lightning things up over here.

[00:32:07] Peter Laneas: Um, even Zoom knows it's important. 

[00:32:09] Kathryn White: Zoom is like, we need to talk about this. Um, fear of, of upsetting your medical team that you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing. You know, the shoulds that we put on our shoulders and so. And also the, and I hear this so much in my coaching, like I don't have anybody to talk to who gets it.

[00:32:29] Kathryn White: People don't understand. So, um, you know, Scott, I appreciate your transparency that you have never been through a walk with cancer. However, you have done a great deal of work in that field and have an understanding of it. But for people who have like no understanding of cancer, to sit in a room with someone and try to navigate, like I saw the bike, like getting on the bike and, and the, the exercise equipment and not being able to say how you're actually feeling or feeling like you are just, it's just so much and the people that are there aren't going to get it.

[00:33:02] Kathryn White: They don't get me because they don't know what this looks like, is, that's a huge, um, barrier, I think, to people stepping into saying, first of all, I'm tired. 'cause everyone's like, yeah, yeah, we're all tired. And then asking for the help or knowing to ask for the help on, on how to resolve or, or move through that fatigue.

[00:33:25] Dr Scott Adams: Yeah. I mentioned earlier there's an element for some people it may seem more straightforward if it's a, I'll call it a, a simpler case and like to generalize like that, but, um, but for many people there can be an element, a genuine element of trial and error. The point is, is that we're going to fail forward with you and we've all put, we'll use the best available evidence we have, what, what we think are the right combination of steps in front of you, and we'll help you take, you can only do so much.

[00:34:00] Dr Scott Adams: I can't physically pump Peter's legs onto a cycle, but I can sit behind it and cheerleader the second of that session. The we support you through that process and we don't go anywhere. So when something comes up and something changes, whether it's a life circumstance or a health status or what have you, we are there to help reconfigure, okay, here's the new reality.

[00:34:25] Dr Scott Adams: We've tried a little of this, this seemed to work, this element didn't. How do we rejig things so that it fits into your life, addresses your needs, and are we're able to sort of move forward in a, a hopeful direction. I think a lot of people are quick to say, give different medications a chance, or adjust doses of medications when the first dose isn't working or the first type of med isn't working to, to switch.

[00:34:54] Dr Scott Adams: Switch approaches. We're a lot less. I think as a society we may be a lot less inclined to give these other treatment approaches the same sort of grace to say, Hey, you know what, that first therapist I spoke to, I really didn't connect with him or her. And maybe it's not, it's a therapeutic approach that wasn't, that isn't appropriate.

[00:35:21] Dr Scott Adams: Maybe it was just that specific person Yeah. That I, I didn't jive with. So, um, there is some resilience required to find the path forward. And, and we, I say to people all the time that like, we just need to help people be more stubborn. Problem. There is a life of energy at the other end of this thing, and most people can get there.

[00:35:44] Dr Scott Adams: We've seen it time and again, and sometimes it just takes being a stubborn so whatever to, to get there, you know? 

[00:35:55] Kathryn White: Yeah. 

[00:35:56] Dr Scott Adams: That's where, that's where having a team that genuinely has seen hundreds of people come through and have similar challenges, we're in a position to help you navigate that. And why the, the lived experience that Peter is talking about, sharing around the table with Luann and the psychotherapist from women's College special shout out to her 'cause she's amazing in every kinda way.

[00:36:21] Dr Scott Adams: Having people like Peter on the team, having access to your peers voices and experience. We're not trying to normalize things in a hey, you just need to normalize fatigue sort of way. But it's super common and they're very similar lived experiences, uh, that repeat themselves across different people's stories.

[00:36:44] Dr Scott Adams: And it, you can take comfort in knowing that someone else is able to navigate that same life circumstance and make it through and overcome that. Challenge. 

[00:36:56] Peter Laneas: Mm-hmm. 

[00:36:57] Dr Scott Adams: Yeah. What we can do to destigmatize and empower people to push through. 'cause there is a life, there is a life within g. 

[00:37:08] Kathryn White: Yeah. Do you have, I might be putting you on the spot here.

[00:37:13] Kathryn White: Do you have, um, any specific examples? Not necessarily like the specific things that people did, but specific examples of, of, um, clients, see, do you call them clients that have come to you? People, people, the people that have come to you that sort of, the, the, um, progress that they have made, the things that they're now able to do that they couldn't do before.

[00:37:39] Kathryn White: People like tangible results. Right? Like, I never used to be able to carry my laundry up the stairs. Now I can carry my laundry and fold it. Anne put it away. Like, is that sort of the kinds of things we're talking about? 

[00:37:52] Dr Scott Adams: Absolutely. And there was, I, I'm always reminded by this one conversation I had with a gentleman last summer.

[00:38:03] Dr Scott Adams: He was teaching me things, which was amazing. He, we know there are fatigue measurement tools that are he multifocal. So understanding like physical, emotional causing of fatigue, understanding the different types of fatigue. But I've never had someone present and explain these different types, their experience with these different types of fatigue so clearly.

[00:38:29] Dr Scott Adams: And it was interesting to see the timeline for when some of these specific types of fatigue started to resolve this particular person's physical fatigue started to resolve first, and he was able to tackle construction projects around the house that he hadn't even been postponing for two or three years.

[00:38:47] Dr Scott Adams: He was able to get back to maintaining focus long enough. And, and had the, the sort of mental fortitude or stamina to engage in work that he wanted to be doing professionally. I mean, 

[00:39:02] Kathryn White: right. 

[00:39:04] Dr Scott Adams: So, uh, projects. But the thing that took the longest was, the way he first described it, is I used to be a real social butterfly, real extrovert, always, always the life of, of the party.

[00:39:21] Dr Scott Adams: And found himself that he had like a five minute window, 10 minute window, where he could be in a row with more than five or six people and not be totally overstimulated and need to like shut down and remove himself. From that circumstance, that took longer to resolve. 

[00:39:44] Peter Laneas: Mm-hmm. 

[00:39:44] Dr Scott Adams: So there was certain aspects of his fatigue and, and other people will be different, but for him there were certain aspects of his fatigue.

[00:39:53] Dr Scott Adams: That resolved meaningfully in the course of three months. I think we were probably talking in about the six month mark, where by that point he had already, it had already been better, long enough that he had already had some achievements that he was able to humble brag about, which heck yes, but he, he said there were some other aspects of his fatigue experience that were persistent getting better, but more persistent.

[00:40:22] Dr Scott Adams: So then you need to, you need to again, be more stubborn than the problem. Okay, well what are the resources? What are the supports? Can we help connect you with or put in place to make sure we cross those thresholds to the fullest extent that we can? 

[00:40:38] Kathryn White: Mm-hmm. So it's a very holistic approach. Very like wrapped around Absolutely.

[00:40:44] Kathryn White: Holistic approach. Absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:40:45] Dr Scott Adams: And these things don't exist in isolation. When you dig into the literature, you see, uh. Fatigue, insomnia and pain. Cold presenting very often in people. Then you see, uh, fatigue more often, depression than anxiety, but fatigue, depression and pain coexisting. When we look at the different causes of fatigue, there are very clear mechanistic ties between a lot of the treatable causes, almost all.

[00:41:17] Dr Scott Adams: Mm. So when one thing happens, and this is where the chicken and the egg comes into a little bit, if you have emotional challenges, is the fatigue causing the emotional challenges or the emotional challenges causing the fatigue? And then is there a relationship to hormone imbalance or is there a relationship to sleep disturbances?

[00:41:37] Dr Scott Adams: Is the relationship to the chronic pain that you, the answer is almost always yes, because if these things are present in your lack of pain, they're likely reinforcing each other. So if you're only acting to address one of the treatable causes, you're likely missing another bunch of factors that are reinforcing that first thing that you're trying to address.

[00:42:00] Dr Scott Adams: So you have to, you have to work with the human level. 

[00:42:03] Kathryn White: Yeah. It's like our bodies, all of our body systems function in conjunction with each other. And when, when you talk about hormones, people are like, what do you mean that part of my body is actually driven by hormones? Well, no, these things, we don't work in isolation.

[00:42:17] Kathryn White: So it makes sense that if someone's having multiple, um, concerns in their life, fatigue, anxiety, um, even, you know, social withdrawal, that it would, it's all connected to a root cause. Maybe the root, the root cause is cancer. But then it's the, the systemic results of all of that that we need to, what I'm hearing is that we need to be addressing.

[00:42:45] Peter Laneas: And I, uh, I really love Scott that you used the example, uh, from the one patient where they were able to present in the three different dimensions where some folks may automatically presume when you talk about cancer related fatigue, they think just physical. 

[00:42:57] Dr Scott Adams: Mm-hmm. 

[00:42:57] Peter Laneas: No, fatigue is mental, fatigue is emotional, and these are quantifiable experiences that can sometimes be the driving force or maybe the leading foot.

[00:43:07] Peter Laneas: But more often than not, exactly like what both of you said, things don't function in isolation and each individual is going to present things in. Although sometimes, um, more, uh, more typical or sometimes common combinations, everybody's unique and whatever's kind happening within our life circumstances as we're being presented, we're have an opportunity to detangle them and look at them for their unique parts and then figure out, all right, well, A plus B equals C.

[00:43:35] Peter Laneas: What about de and f? Are they just on the periphery or are we even talking about letters at this point? Should we look at numbers like there's mm-hmm. So many 

[00:43:43] Kathryn White: mm-hmm. 

[00:43:44] Peter Laneas: Levels and being able to be a part of something that helps provide answers and gives people back that energy where it's the ability to physically function.

[00:43:55] Peter Laneas: It's having that mental energy come back, it's having that emotional battery recharged and the suddenly the boundaries are bigger than they were before. It's, it's life changing and it's a, it's a privilege to watch it happen. 

[00:44:09] Kathryn White: Beautiful. I think that, um, healing post cancer, social, emotional, physical, all of it is just not talked about enough and people really are left to figure it out on their own and, and there's no, um.

[00:44:27] Kathryn White: Tangible recognition of the efforts that you put in when you're just, you know, I think maybe I'll just start walking around the block. 'cause they say exercise is going to help me, but how do you know if it's helping you? Maybe I'll change how I'm eating. May, but there's no, you know, there's no scale of what is working and what isn't.

[00:44:46] Kathryn White: And so it becomes very um, um, defeatist almost like, well, I'm trying things and it's not working. And, and validation. We live in a very, we require a lot of validation society, but when everything has been the rug has been pulled out from underneath you with cancer, it. I find speaking for myself that having someone to validate as you are actually doing for me today about my own fatigue, that I still carry.

[00:45:12] Kathryn White: That, that there are things, and it's not just me and it's not in my head, and there are ways that things can be done and you're not crazy, and no, it's not because you're getting older or you have three kids or whatever. That that really, um, I feel that really like elevates the conversation, but it also validates and, and probably for the listeners validates like, this is bigger than me.

[00:45:35] Kathryn White: And, and I can try things and I can go forwards and backwards on them, but with support, and I say that all the time with support, that having a a, a plan, a program, a system as someone to talk to just will make the, um, make the efforts maybe feel a little bit less like an effort. 

[00:46:00] Dr Scott Adams: I think there's a lot to be said.

[00:46:04] Dr Scott Adams: I frame this going back to the, the resilience piece and the trying something and it maybe, or maybe not working for you and then having kinds of, okay, am I just, she this for me, does this not work for me or can I wish the right support persist and be successful in addressing the problem? As you were talking in sort of two, two stories and that kind of relates to your previous example of about how people have experienced some success after, after trying and been able to do things.

[00:46:42] Dr Scott Adams: The two stories and, and sure. Peter, familiar with both. Two stories that come to mind are there was a young woman diagnosed in her pediatric years who is now in her mid thirties working in that the oncology space, tremendous human being. Also a tremendous skeptic. And that's really important to this particular story because when I had, first, I, I've known her for a while, I had first spoken to her about what we do.

[00:47:15] Dr Scott Adams: She's like, Scott, I, I walk all the time. I walk my dogs 45 minutes once or twice a day. There's no way that changing my physical activity is going to really make a difference. And sure enough, the added precision that we can apply to an exercise prescription through the advanced testing and stuff that we do here, she was back within eight weeks and her fatigue it and it wasn't, she had been walking three years.

[00:47:48] Dr Scott Adams: She had been physically for years, and it wasn't, that exercise didn't work for. Is that you needed a more precise approach to remodel the tissue in a way that it actually unlocked the benefits of exercise for that particular and the other. The other example is another young woman, I think she was diagnosed two diagnoses in her late forties, early fifties, and high tech job lives about four hours from here at intake.

[00:48:27] Dr Scott Adams: She was already walking 30 minutes a day and doing like yogic deep breathing, routinely, still fatigued enough that she was unable to return to work and she, she's now returning to work, which is, she was a couple years post, I post second diagnosis before she made it to us and. Again, she was already probably meeting physical activity guidelines when she first came to us through this More medicalized, albeit more medicalized approach, more precision medicine based approach than we adopt.

[00:49:13] Dr Scott Adams: That can be the difference between a frustrating experience and a surprising experience where something that you thought wasn't going to work for you, you actually can realize some of the benefits of some of these approaches. And I, I guess if there was a take home from it, it would be just don't give up.

[00:49:38] Dr Scott Adams: Like if you, even if you had tried some of the things that we talk about when you Google treatments for cancer fatigue and you say, oh, I've already gone through this checklist. I don't give up. Be more stubborn than the problem. Approach it from a new direction. There's likely a way that some of these things can actually help.

[00:49:57] Kathryn White: Hmm hmm. So if people wanted to find you, I know where you are 'cause I've been to your amazing space. 

[00:50:06] Dr Scott Adams: I'm right here. 

[00:50:07] Kathryn White: You're right here on, on the podcast. But if people wanted to find Cancer Fatigue services, um, online, um, in the socials, uh, I don't expect people, can people just physically walk into your office better?

[00:50:20] Kathryn White: They have an appointment before they go in? 

[00:50:23] Dr Scott Adams: Oh, great question. So, uh, we're located, our physical clinic is located in North York, young and Shepherd right off the 4 0 1, right at the intersection of a couple subway lines here in Truong. But because we are a specialist clinic, people do need a referral from their oncologist, physician, nurse, practitioner in order to access it, issues in order to be eligible for oh, covered care.

[00:50:48] Dr Scott Adams: Having said that, we don't want to put, we don't wanna discourage people if they can't get a referral letter to us first. We go both ways. So people find us first and say, I need what you're selling. Sign me up for this. We can help them go get the referral letter 

[00:51:06] Kathryn White: from the Yorker and 

[00:51:08] Dr Scott Adams: we can be the squeaky wheel.

[00:51:10] Dr Scott Adams: Again, if you're too tired to get up on the couch, you're probably too tired to be chasing people for answers. So we try and take some of that administrative, that healthcare administrative burden loss in people's plates. So if you find us Firsted and you don't have the referral letter yet, don't slow down, run headlong at the problem, walk briskly.

[00:51:32] Dr Scott Adams: If we're not running at the problem, we can help you with those administrative pieces. Getting the the letters. We can be the squeaking. We can take that, take on that part of the burden. Or if you're. A physician or Brian, uh, someone to us, then that cuts down the time to first visit and some potential relief dramatically.

[00:51:56] Kathryn White: Amazing. I love that you can reverse that to help people. 

[00:52:01] Dr Scott Adams: They, there's too much, right. Imagine. So if there's 10 treatable causes in order to get all of those assessed, are we expecting people bounce around to 10 different specialists? Yeah. In the community, people are living with chronic fatigue. Here, they don't have, most people don't have the capacity or the support.

[00:52:26] Peter Laneas: Mm-hmm. 

[00:52:27] Dr Scott Adams: They lead to get around, to make all of those appointments, manage the rescheduling, manage the complex schedules, and so on. The, so it's almost like it's almost difficult to initiate the process unless there's a centralized place. To, to look at the whole person and the breadth of need rather than treating someone like a specific HO system.

[00:52:52] Kathryn White: Right. So I will put, um, your information in the show notes about your website. Um, Peter, can you maybe speak to the socials of where people can find you guys? 

[00:53:04] Peter Laneas: Sure, yeah. Uh, so we're accessible on all social channels. Generally it's the same, uh, at Cancer Fatigue Services for both Instagram. You're looking at TikTok, uh, what we have available through LinkedIn as well as on Facebook.

[00:53:18] Peter Laneas: So we're available on all those different platforms accordingly. Plus, if you're feeling even just a little bit curious to learn a bit about cancer related fatigue, you can visit our website@cancerfatigueservices.com. And we have an option there. It's called the, uh, cancer Fatigue Analyzer. And it's a self-reporting tool that is designed to help educate people where you're able to put in your information and get a little bit of a snapshot based on what you provide.

[00:53:41] Peter Laneas: As to where things might be at, and hopefully demystify a couple of things and it's less intimidating, more approachable, and get into that headlong charge forward, be it at a, uh, you know, a quick run or a brisk walk or, you know, like a, a healthy stride, whatever that stride looks like. 

[00:53:59] Kathryn White: Wonderful. I will put all of that in there also.

[00:54:01] Kathryn White: And shout out to our friend Leo at Cancer Fatigue Services, who does really great reels. He really, really does. Um, and so if you are, as Peter mentioned, like Instagram and TikTok, Leo has lots of educational videos on there that people can look at. And, um, you may get a, a cameo by myself or by Peter, uh, in there.

[00:54:23] Kathryn White: That's true. Scott, I'm assuming you've been in some of the videos at some point in time, but Leo's he's the best. 

[00:54:31] Dr Scott Adams: I literally, I, I am one of those archaic folks that doesn't. Engaged to watch her social media. So when I hear about these great things, I have to physically run down the hall to Leo's office and say, show me this thing that people are talking about.

[00:54:46] Kathryn White: Yeah. Well, and so the whole thing in this podcast is let's get people talking about cancer fatigue and about how they can find some resolution. Um, now, Peter, I know you go out into the community as an advocate and you reach out and speak to various hospitals or doctors, like how, if there are professionals who are interested in connecting with cancer fatigue services, what does that look like?

[00:55:11] Peter Laneas: Absolutely. Uh, if of course you can reach out, uh, by email, that's the, the greatest way to reach out. Uh, it's my name, so Peter dot eu@cancerfatigueservices.com. Or you could just email to advocacy@cancerfatigueservices.com. Both of those come directly to me so we can stra, uh, strategize and, uh, just as a self.

[00:55:31] Peter Laneas: Fulfilling selfish plug slash shout out at the time of recording for this podcast. Uh, just yesterday, we were lucky enough to have a segment aired on CTV Health, and if folks wanna get a chance to take a look and see a little bit of a walkthrough of the office space as reported by Pauline Chan, which is absolutely wonderful, you get, uh, you get an opportunity to see what we're all about and get a sort of a sense of specs in real time and what things look like.

[00:55:57] Peter Laneas: And you'll get to see these two faces as well and what, uh, what it is that we're all about. And it's, uh, it's available on YouTube, so it's easy. Just look on, uh, CTV 

[00:56:04] Dr Scott Adams: Leo, just Leo, just the wonderful Leo. Just push it to the website. Our homepage this morning. 

[00:56:10] Kathryn White: Oh, amazing. Yeah, 

[00:56:12] Dr Scott Adams: I there too. 

[00:56:13] Kathryn White: And there's that too.

[00:56:14] Kathryn White: I will link that also. I have already, um, watched it. It's an absolutely fantastic interview and um, a great place for people to go. And I will say, you know, I did physically go to Toronto and meet Peter and walk through the facility through the space and um, it's very calm, it's very quiet. It's not overwhelming.

[00:56:33] Kathryn White: There's not, you know, bright colors everywhere that for some people are just too much. It's just very, uh, I found it very grounding and, and um, I was able to be there and not feel overwhelmed. So I think that's important. That's a whole other conversation that we had with Leo when I was visiting. But, um, do take a look at, I have a video also somewhere in my socials of my time at Cancer Fatigue Services.

[00:56:57] Kathryn White: And it's just, it's just for the listeners, it's just something different. It's a different way to look at. What you're feeling and how you're feeling, and an opportunity to open up a dialogue with your, your primary practitioner, your oncologist, about this service that is actually available to people.

[00:57:16] Kathryn White: I've spoken to my own oncologist about it. Um, and hopefully, uh, Peter, you'll be able to get into that hospital and, and spread the word because as we opened with fatigue is not talked about enough and it's not acknowledged as a real, genuine piece of the, the post-cancer treatment process. And it really does need to be talked about so that people can feel that it's normalized and, and not feel like they're living in this space of nobody understands what they're feeling.

[00:57:51] Dr Scott Adams: I have to, I have to similarly blunt the multitude of professionals and teams across GTA that we've met with so far. From the different psychosocial oncology programs and opportunities and invitations to speak at grand rounds, events, lunch and learn type formats. The need is the reception reinforces the importance.

[00:58:20] Peter Laneas: Mm-hmm. 

[00:58:21] Dr Scott Adams: So when you, when we first engage with people, I, they're like, yeah, of course this makes sense. Of course we need support. Forget about cancer fatigue services. Of course we need support because there is no other support. There is no support. Full cancer related fatigue. So those sort of aha moments, very consistent when we're first meeting with these amazing professionals across the region.

[00:58:54] Kathryn White: And 

[00:58:54] Dr Scott Adams: sometimes expecting change is slower than we'd like, but the needle is moving and we have. Had early wins from some incredible teams that we are actively cultivating to bring care, this specific kind of care closer to where people are. 

[00:59:12] Kathryn White: Amazing. 

[00:59:12] Dr Scott Adams: So there, there's, there is in space and, and it's largely because of how receptive the oncology community is realizing that, okay, we've known a lot this for a long time.

[00:59:25] Dr Scott Adams: We haven't actually done much about it. 

[00:59:27] Kathryn White: Yeah, maybe 

[00:59:27] Dr Scott Adams: that's the time. 

[00:59:29] Kathryn White: And so someone who's listening, maybe they'll just take that message to their doctor themself and say, I know of this thing. I know of this place and I, I think that it would be good for you to know about it also. And that's how we spend the magic.

[00:59:42] Kathryn White: I really, 

[00:59:42] Dr Scott Adams: I love it. I love it. Um, to cycle back to the question you asked Peter about if you're a clinician and are interested in more information, uh, we would love to do, whether it's you and your office neighbor, or you and your team. Anything that you need in terms of information from us. We are very happy to meet in one-on-one small groups, larger group settings to tell you about what might be possible for the people you're serving and how we can unburn your, your caseload in a way that actually makes your life easier by handling this specific aspect of care and not replacing, referring back to you for all the things that you aren't in charge of.

[01:00:40] Kathryn White: So no more, I don't actually have an answer for that. And now it can be, I actually know where I can send you for that. Exactly. 

[01:00:46] Dr Scott Adams: Perfect. 

[01:00:47] Peter Laneas: And if there's opportunity for any of the folks that are listening and it's, uh, within the clinician realm, come for a tour. If you're capable of doing it, by all means, love to host you we're, as Scott had mentioned, we're highly accessible, uh, in the, in the North York, Northern Toronto area.

[01:01:02] Peter Laneas: And, um, as I've found really great success with and just being very direct, send us your tired, that's what we're doing. Send us your tired. 

[01:01:13] Kathryn White: Perfect. Perfect. Now Peter, you've already answered this question on a previous podcast, so I'm going to defer the question to Scott. Um, this is the always the last question I like to ask people when they're on the podcast, and that is, what does living to thrive mean to you?

[01:01:31] Dr Scott Adams: I would say living with the intention of achieving greater.

[01:01:41] Dr Scott Adams: We may not always all be there all the time, but it's living with the intention of getting there, whether you're at the bottom of a lull. Or you're at a, a peak and everything's looking sunshiny and sparkly. Rainbow adorned, always looking forward, never accepting status quo as how things just have to be, and living with the intention of achieving as best you can for yourself.

[01:02:16] Kathryn White: Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much for answering that question. I, it's sometimes it puts people on the spot and, um, but I love that I 

[01:02:24] Dr Scott Adams: was, I was deer in the headlight for a minute there. 

[01:02:26] Kathryn White: Yeah. I love, I that's a whole other conversation about how people go into their left brain to try to find answers.

[01:02:32] Kathryn White: But thank you for that. And thank you Scott and Peter for being here today. It's, um, truly been. A very enlightening conversation. I think that the listeners are definitely going to take some information away with them, and hopefully they will reach out to you. And if not, they will at least have the conversation with their, their primary care practitioner about you and what you are offering to people who are living with cancer.

[01:03:01] Kathryn White: So again, a very big thank you for being here today. Any final words from either of you? 

[01:03:09] Dr Scott Adams: Uh, just appreciation, my friend. Thanks for giving us the space. Thanks for giving and making time for this, giving attention to this. We appreciate you. 

[01:03:20] Peter Laneas: Welcome. There's a, you're very welcome. There was a, there was a quote that I came across today that now feels very appropriate when asking the question about what does thriving look like to you?

[01:03:29] Peter Laneas: And uh, the quote that I read was, we start with a start date. We finish with a finish date, and we have a dash in between. Make the most of the dash. 

[01:03:42] Kathryn White: Beautiful. Love it. Make the most of the dash. I love that. 

[01:03:45] Peter Laneas: Make the most of the dash. 

[01:03:46] Kathryn White: I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And again, thank you both for being here, for taking the time and, um, I look forward to the, uh, opportunity to come back to Cancer Fatigue Services and, and hang out with my new best friends and, um, and to spread the word about what you are doing here in, in, in Canada.

[01:04:07] Kathryn White: But I know there are people that outside of Canada that are listening to this and um, perhaps this will motivate them also to find some support for their fatigue. 

[01:04:18] Dr Scott Adams: Absolutely. 

[01:04:19] Kathryn White: Wonderful. Thank you so much. And to the listeners, if you found what you learned here to be helpful, um, please share it with other people that you know who could benefit from this episode.

[01:04:30] Kathryn White: Sharing helps Scott and Peter and myself to support more people who are living with cancer and to help them move from survivor to Thriver and in this case to perhaps mitigate their fatigue. And you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. Follow me on YouTube so you can see the video version of the podcast.

[01:04:49] Kathryn White: And I would love for you to head to the show notes and get your name on my email list so that you can stay up to date on everything Living to Thrive with Cancer Future Podcast episodes and other resources that are available to you. Thank you again, Peter and Scott for being here today. And thank you listeners for being here.

[01:05:08] Kathryn White: Have a wonderful day. 

[01:05:09] Dr Scott Adams: Thank you so much for being here today. I hope you have a beautiful rest of the day and may you live your life to your fullest. 

[01:05:15] Peter Laneas: Follow your heart and thrive in all you do.