Episode 45: Your Blood Shows Cancer Is Back 8 Months Before a Scan Does.

She Pulled Up My Breast MRI. I Wasn't Even Dressed.

Why does the second cancer hit harder than the first? Even when it’s smaller? Even when you’re a psychotherapist? Dr. Erin Gray, two-time cancer survivor (BRCA2 breast cancer in her early 40s, then thyroid cancer eight years later), had her own answer when it happened to her. The thing that separates the diagnoses you survive well from the ones that wreck you isn’t preparation. It isn’t knowing what comes next. It’s a guide. In this conversation, Erin walks through both of her diagnoses, what changed between cancer #1 and cancer #2, the question that comes before every other one when you’re newly diagnosed (or carrying a known mutation, or facing a recurrence), and what patient navigation (a clinical intervention with thirty-five years of outcomes data) does, plus why most patients never get to experience it. Also in this episode: the breast MRI moment where the radiologist pulled Erin aside before she could even get dressed; why her oncologist told her not to Google “triple negative” and what proved him right in the chemo room; the 28% lower recurrence risk from 150 minutes of cardio a week; and what no one tells you about the second time around. Dr. Erin Gray is a psychotherapist specializing in patients with chronic illness, co-host of Wicked Psychotherapists, and author of Crushing the Cancer Curveball. Erin’s counseling website: www.bewellwithincounseling.com [www.bewellwithincounseling.com]Erin’s podcast website: www.wickedpsychotherapists.com [www.wickedpsychotherapists.com] Kicking Cancer's Ass. We never chose the pitch, but we always choose the swing.   Listen to more episodes:  Apple  [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kicking-cancers-ass/id1823273873] Spotify  [https://open.spotify.com/show/02RPxWUmUpgOjMo38cCOL6?si=51aab9d8a45b49ac&nd=1&dlsi=e32a6038823945e2] YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@KickingCancersAssPodcast] Website [https://joellekaufman.com/]

The Most Common Cancer Post on Reddit Has Three Words

Everyone said Joelle was done with cancer. She wasn't. Three years past her pathologically complete response, she has a urologist, a cardiologist, and an annual abdominal CT scan she'll get for the rest of her life. The word done was on the chart. It was not on the calendar. And she's one of the easier cases. The most common cancer post on Reddit is some version of three words. Done. Now what? One thread pulled 143 upvotes and 115 comments under the title "In a weird in-between. What do I say to people now?" Not a single physician answered. The thread is just survivors trading the answers their care teams never wrote down. In this solo episode: what the research actually says about post-treatment depression and anxiety five years out, why fewer than half of patients receive the survivorship care plan the Institute of Medicine recommended in 2005, the cardiovascular risk nobody warned her about, and the three moves she made to live inside the in-between instead of bracing through it. Plus the Fuck Cancer World Tour, the recast of the annual CT scan, and the grandmother who danced with her grandfather at their 50th anniversary three weeks before she died. You're not done. That's not a failure. The calendar is yours. Full subscriber deep dive at cancercurveballslugger.substack.com.

Episode 46: She Didn't Ask What I Needed. She Already Knew.

Twenty-five years of friendship trained Jessica Rosenbaum for the call she didn't want. When Joelle was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer the day before her preventative mastectomy, Jessica didn't ask what Joelle needed. She'd already designed the role only she could fill. Jessica Rosenbaum, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and Joelle's best friend of 25 years. When the BRCA-related diagnosis came, Jessica became the coordinator of an entire support architecture. She set up the meal train and the chemo driver schedule, but didn't take those roles for herself. She kept the workout slot. Three mornings a week in Joelle's home gym, lifting heavy weights together. Her reason: she'd been Joelle's training partner for almost two decades and was the only person who could read what was actually happening to her under a heavy bar. The conversation covers the day Jessica had to cancel a party without saying why, the original Bye-Bye Boobies sendoff that got pushed four months, the moment they realized chemo wasn't taking Joelle's strength, the surgeon (Dr. Merisa Piper at UCSF) who approached DIEP flap reconstruction like an artist with a canvas, the kintsugi reframe that let Joelle see her scars as beautiful, and the research on why exercise during chemo measurably improves treatment outcomes and reduces recurrence. In this episode: how to design a support role instead of asking what's needed, why "how are they doing?" is a kindness that costs the patient something, what 25 years of paid attention earns you when the call comes, and Jessica's own answer to the question Joelle asks every guest. Jessica Rosenbaum, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist who works with parents and children on how children learn. Full subscriber deep dive, with research on social support and cancer outcomes, on www.kcapodcast.com.

Episode 45: Your Blood Shows Cancer Is Back 8 Months Before a Scan Does.

The technology exists. The blood draw is simple. So why won't most oncologists order it? Amy Delson has been treated for cancer four times. She's currently in active treatment. She's also a longtime breast cancer patient advocate — she reviews research grants for the Department of Defense, sits on lab teams asking researchers to do fewer biopsies on patients, and edits the informed-consent forms patients sign before clinical trials. She can't have mammograms anymore. So she fought to get a circulating tumor DNA test — ctDNA — through a researcher she works with, because her own community oncologist wouldn't order one. She talks about that fight in this episode, and about the bigger argument behind it: most oncologists are deciding for patients whether patients can handle the test results. Amy thinks that decision belongs to the patient. The science is moving fast. In 2025, the SERENA-6 trial — published in the New England Journal of Medicine — showed that switching therapy based on a ctDNA signal, before any scan showed progression, nearly doubled progression-free survival in HR-positive HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. The "we don't have clinical utility yet" objection just got harder to hold. The test isn't perfect. It can detect DNA from cancer your immune system has already cleared. Amy is direct about that. The argument isn't that ctDNA is a crystal ball. The argument is that patients deserve to know what's available, what it can show, what it can't, and to decide for themselves. About Amy Delson Four-time cancer survivor. Breast cancer patient advocate. Reviews research grants for the Department of Defense. Works with I-SPY, the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium, and Komen. Recorded at RiseUp 2026. Subscribe for stories, science, and strategies from people kicking cancer's ass. New episodes weekly. Learn more about scalp cooling from episode sponsor - www.coldcap.com [http://www.coldcap.com] Learn more about UCSF RiseUp at https://riseup.ucsf.edu/ [https://riseup.ucsf.edu/]  Listen to more episodes:  Apple  [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kicking-cancers-ass/id1823273873] Spotify  [https://open.spotify.com/show/02RPxWUmUpgOjMo38cCOL6?si=51aab9d8a45b49ac&nd=1&dlsi=e32a6038823945e2] YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@KickingCancersAssPodcast] Website [https://joellekaufman.com/]

Episode 44: 3 Cancers. A Brain Tumor. His Doctors Wouldn't Give Him a Prognosis.

"You're the only person who truly cares about you." Jeffrey Eisenberg faced three cancer diagnoses during the pandemic: stage 1 colon cancer that turned into a four-month ileostomy after his intestines burst during surgery, large B-cell lymphoma, and then a 2cm lymphoma tumor behind his brain where his MD Anderson oncologists couldn't promise the chemo would cross the blood-brain barrier. He came out cancer-free after an autologous stem cell transplant at Houston Methodist on December 28, 2023 — and in this conversation he tells Joelle why most "survivor talk" is too shallow to help anyone, and what actually got him through. They dive deep into: * Why the question is never "what are my odds?" — population studies lump 97-year-old grandmothers and 20-year-old athletes together. The phrasing that actually gets an oncologist to answer: "Do I have a fighting chance?" * The sequencing logic for picking autologous stem cell transplant over CAR-T first — and what three months living within five minutes of Houston Methodist, with zero ports and a non-functional immune system, actually requires. * Mia's three-poster-board strategy for humanizing a patient in a transplant unit — and how it shifted the care Jeffrey received on a floor where staff are trained to disengage. * Why Jeffrey and Mia got legally married mid-treatment despite decades together in Texas, a common-law state — and exactly what their estate attorney flagged about insurance, power of attorney, and the paperwork limbo unmarried partners hit. * EMDR as a treatment for cancer-specific trauma — the non-talk modality Jeffrey and Mia both used, and why it's often harder to find a practitioner in New York or California than in Texas. * The one-line question Jeffrey used to replace a pharmaceutical cardiac stress test with a treadmill: "If I can't make it on the treadmill, you still have the option of doing the shot, right?" * What actually breaks through professional detachment on a transplant floor — the Patch Adams book inscribed to a covering doctor, and the nurses who quietly started bringing him coffee from their own break room. * The 26:40-per-mile walk with his aging labradoodle that Jeffrey now ranks alongside Rome, Zurich, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and the New York Times bestseller list — plus what his father, who outlived a six-month mantle cell lymphoma prognosis by six and a half years, taught him about regret. Kicking Cancer's Ass. We never chose the pitch, but we always choose the swing.