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Simplify Cancer

By: Joe Bakhmoutski
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  • Summary

  • How to lead a happier, more fulfilled life after cancer
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Episodes
  • Simplify Cancer Podcast Episode 087: Patient to Patient Movement with Trevor Maxwell

    Simplify Cancer Podcast Episode 087: Patient to Patient Movement with Trevor Maxwell
    Nov 20 2022
    Hello, my friend, and welcome to Cancer Can Give! in this special series of the Simplify Cancer Podcast, we share inspirational stories of people who went on a grueling journey through cancer and yet, they found their own way to live, grow and give in a way that helps others. Today, it is my absolute pleasure to speak to Trevor Maxwell, a proud man, men's health champion founder of the incredible Man Up To Cancer. Links MAN UP TO CANCER Man Up to Cancer Podcast Man Up to Cancer - The Howling Place - Facebook Man Up To Cancer (@cancerwolves) • Instagram Video   Full Transcript Glad you can be here. Let's talk to Trevor. Great seeing you. Thank you. again, thanks for your patience and willingness to speak with me. The cancer journey is full of bumps and crazy turns. Then when you become an advocate, things kind of like the map to cancer movement has kind of been taken off. Just kept me super busy. I appreciate it.   I was so thrilled to have you so thrilled to talk about you and your story. I really want to I first of all, I want to go back in time. I want to go back in time, what was life like? What was life like before cancer? Life was great. I was 41 years old. My wife and I live here in Maine, on the on the Atlantic Ocean, basically, about a couple hours north of Boston, and been here most of my life. We have two daughters. sage, and Elsie, they were 12 and 10, at the time of my diagnosis, and everything was just trucking along. Before cancer, I was a pretty healthy guy very active. just enjoyed all the outdoors. Living here in Maine is a great place for the outdoors. I was a journalist for many years. Then, at the time of my diagnosis, I was doing my own public relations, consulting, just like a one-man company. My wife was a teacher, and the girls were just going through school, and it was like prime of life. It was good.   You're on a kind of trajectory through life. Things are going your way. Then it just hits you, so tell me the moment. How did you find out? You're right, you're just kind of going along, and you have all these like illusions in your head, you tell these stories yourself. I'm going to live till I'm 80. I'm going to see my grandkids you just have this imagination of what the steps are. Then cancer comes along. I say, sometimes I use the phrase life asteroid, because it's an asteroid has hit you and your family. It’s like my God, I went from a 41-year-old mid middle of life, dad and husband and worker to “a cancer patient” facing metastatic colorectal cancer at age 41. With young children, and boom, life asteroid.   That's a beautiful way of putting it because exactly. It is like an asteroid that just blows up into your world. What was what was the biggest change for you, Trevor? I mean, I think at first it was just real physiological shock. People don't talk about that enough. The shock to your system. It’s like you're in the matrix. Then one day you realize oh my gosh, this might kill me like and soon so there's the shock. I went into a period, a period of deep mental health struggle so I think the biggest change was like I'd always been a pretty positive person, outward person I struggled before cancer a little bit with typical depression, anxiety so many others do. When cancer hit, and the idea of possibly dying at a young age and leaving my kids behind, and my wife behind, it just crushed me emotionally. I went into a pit of despair man, clinical anxiety, depression, the whole works like I was on the floor. There was a lot of days when I would just be even functioning. It was that bad. I thought I was going to have to go into the hospital for my mental health, not even my cancer. Right. For the first thinking like six to eight months of my journey. It was it was like a pit, and it was crushing. It was just emotional turmoil.   I'm so glad that you brought this up, man, because it's something that does not get talked about.
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    55 mins
  • Simplify Cancer Podcast Episode 086: Popping the Bubble of Cancer with Olivia Clarke

    Simplify Cancer Podcast Episode 086: Popping the Bubble of Cancer with Olivia Clarke
    Nov 6 2022
    Hello, my friend, and welcome to Cancer Can Give! in this special series of the Simplify Cancer Podcast, we share inspirational stories of people who went on a grueling journey through cancer and yet, they found their own way to live, grow and give in a way that helps others. Today, it's my absolute pleasure to introduce Olivia Clarke and we talk about being young adult with cancer and finding the humour where you least expect it. Olivia's got this incredible message of making sense of your experience, through cancer, through humor, and stories and connect and she started Humor Beats Cancer, and she's just this magnificent ray of light out in the world. Links Humor Beats Cancer | Chicago | Young Adult Cancer Humor Beats Cancer | Chicago IL - Facebook Humor Beats Cancer (@humorbeatscancer) • Instagram Humor Beats Cancer (@Humorbeatcancer) / Twitter Video     Full Transcript Olivia. Well, so good to have you.   Thank you. It's always been so good working with you on different things and stuff. You talked that at our last event about a year ago. Really, your story was funny, but also very moving to and so people really walked away from it feeling so many emotions and stuff. I heard it was especially with yours too, your just your story that you shared about cancer and about just it just made people laugh, but also made them cry too. You hit all of the emotions. It's really nice to be able to be on your podcast.   Thank you so much. I really appreciate your kind words. I remember you opening that fundraiser for humor beats cancer. I think it's been during COVID because we were all online, but it’s just been such a beautiful thing to be there and to see all these amazing people there for this great cause. You put so much care, love into everything that you do like you really you really pour your heart into all of this. It really comes across. It obviously makes a difference for your incredible because, but I want to ask you how does it feel for you? I think it's a big part of it is how does it also make you feel on the inside?   A little bit about me, I had cancer first, breast cancer stage two in 2015. Then in 2017, created Humor Beats Cancer, which is a nonprofit, that encourages using humor and writing as coping tools to deal with cancer. We have to do funny care packages for people going through cancer, we have a grant program, and we do open mics, where people read their funny stories, either virtually or in person. Then we also tried to think of interesting ways on social media to get people's attention and to get them to share funny stories and to connect, so they feel less alone. For me, when I had cancer the first time and so then I was diagnosed again in last fall, in 2021. This time, it's stage four, and it's metastasized to different organs and such. It has different meanings depending on where I'm at in my cancer journey. When I was in remission, it really was about how can I take my experience and try to find ways to make people feel less alone and to feel and to get them to laugh when that's the last thing they could possibly think about doing? Usually that's through crude humor and just like having a good time is showing the real point of it is to show two things to show people feeling that they can feel alive while having cancer that they're not gone and they're still you're living and to just to connect people who feel alone. For me, that's what it's done for me is it really has reminded me, I'm going through the beginning stages of stage four. It's interesting to learn about people who've been going through it for years, and it gives me hope. If someone would have told me stage four cancer, I would have been freaking out and thinking. You can live with it. It can be like something that you live with. Sometimes it's not, sometimes it hits you; you find out you have stage four, and you have a few months to live.
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    44 mins
  • Simplify Cancer Podcast Episode 085: Doing What Matters Most with Rod Ritchie

    Simplify Cancer Podcast Episode 085: Doing What Matters Most with Rod Ritchie
    Oct 15 2022
    Hello, my friend, and welcome to Cancer Can Give! in this special series of the Simplify Cancer Podcast, we share inspirational stories of people who went on a grueling journey through cancer and yet, they found their own way to live, grow and give in a way that helps others. Today, it is my absolute pleasure to be talking to Rod Ritchie who is a health activist and a beautiful soul who brings a unique voice in the world of cancer as health activist speaking for male breast cancer. Links Male Breast Cancer (malebc.org) Male Breast Cancer - awareness and beyond Video   Full Transcript Rod, I stumbled upon your manifesto on your website and the work that you're doing. What really struck me is your dying for change, we’re dying for change and the urgency that you have in this manifesto, tell me, how did it come about?   When I was diagnosed in 2014, obviously, that's a shock. You are pretty much concentrating on getting treatment, as you know very well for cancer. Then I suddenly started realizing when I am looking around websites, that it's a sort of pretty pink disease, and how does it cater for men.  Obviously, I got to the conclusion that it wasn't catering very well for men. I have to say, in the last eight years, there's been a lot of changes. That manifesto, which, by the way, was written by me and the late Rob Fincher, who was stage four breast cancer patients from Wollongong.   That manifesto has made a difference. When I look at the list of quite a few points, probably half of them we've made progress on and things like the de-gendering websites, adding a bit of blue for the pink and sort of making it more inclusive, making the text more inclusive. If a guy gets over there on the site starting to hear stuff that doesn't really apply to blokes, I don't think that's good. The stigma attached to this disease, for a man, I mean, you, you could probably talk about stigma as well with your particular cancer, testicular cancer, but for a man to have breast cancer, it seems gee, what's wrong? Are you a bit effeminate or what's the problem?   Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more that the stigma, these cancers, they go to the root of who we are as men. I think that's the root of all cancers, they affect us at the at such a deep level that affects our body, it affects how we think about ourselves, it affects how we are around people. I'm just inspired by the bold vision that that you guys had around this manifesto, and to see that progress is being made around it. Let's get back to your steroid because I really want to talk about that and your story with breast cancer. I mean, because we all kind of have this moment when we when you kind of find out that you have cancer. What was it like for you?   Pretty surreal but not unexpected. I had a lump behind my left nipple for a little while. I presented to the general practitioner, and we both agreed, maybe it was nothing. A month later was still not nothing. I came back and anyway, long story short, the third time I turned up, I said, I need a scan or some sort of and she said, but none of those times that you do a clinical examination and I just sort of wondered if I presented with breast problems as a woman, I think I probably would have been seen a bit earlier. That made the diagnosis at a little bit of a later stage than I would have liked. I had excellent treatment, just locally up here, and I couldn't really complain about anything. I have to say, as a guy, there's a lot of women out there as breast surgeons, oncologists, radiation oncologist, and we're lucky in a way, as guy having this disease, we're lucky that we can just slip into a system that's really geared up maybe for women, but a lot of the treatments really are just as effective on guys.   That's fantastic. Rod, I love how you talk about that you were even at those were very early stages you were the advocate for let's get it checked out,
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    43 mins
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