It's got that reputation hasn't it?  Switzerland runs like clockwork. Gold standard everything that leaves the rest of us, well, runners-up.

I've spoken now to so many people in so many different countries who all say post cancer treatment is basically a shambles. Country after country - the support that was your cancer patient life, gone in an instant. Yep. Gone. End. You fall off a cliff.

So this time I spoke to Catherine Schopfer  and to quote her LinkedIn page "Cancer Coach | Advocate | Speaker | Helping individuals, caregivers & organisations navigate cancer with multilingual coaching, training & human-centred partnerships"

Not only has Catherine been a cancer coach for many years - that happened by chance - she did have breast cancer too.  So if anyone can tell us how amazing state post cancer treatment can be, in what must be the perfect system it'll be Catherine.

And as I discovered, and you're about to hear, it's both a yes and a really big, But...

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Search for Catherine here.

https://onlinecancercoach.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-schopfer-cancer-coach/

And remember to connect with Mike at LinkedIn.  He'll like that.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekinnaird/ 

Toby Freeman founded the Robin Cancer Trust at 22 after losing his brother Rob to testicular cancer. Rob was 24, fit, healthy, and had been to the doctors multiple times. Sadly no-one connected the dots until it was too late.

What followed was fourteen years of talking — loudly, honestly, sometimes in a giant testicle costume — about the things young people aren't told and the conversations that don't happen. Fertility. Financial toxicity. The leaflet handed over when there's no time for anything else. And how leaflets are almost a guaranteed failure if you're trying to message young people - unless you're creative. The postcode lottery that determines whether a young person gets the right support at the worst moment of their life.

Toby pushed back on me when I said awareness was a waste of time. And yes, he was absolutely right to. But what he said next - that's the thing worth hearing.

This is Episode 50 of #CancerCanDoOne.

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How to contact Toby and find out more about support for young people.

There's a side effect of cancer treatment that affects millions of people every year. It's permanent. It's devastating. And many patients, it seems, aren't told about it before treatment begins.

I had no idea this was happening. None. And I've been asking questions about cancer care for long enough that I should probably have known.

Anna Kirton is a Health Coach and Hearing Loss Advocate. She was born profoundly deaf in one ear. She knows what it means to navigate a world that wasn't designed with you in mind. But it was an oncologist's offhand question last year — do you realise some cancer patients lose their hearing due to chemotherapy — that stopped her cold.

More than 50% of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy experience hearing damage. Around 4 million people worldwide every year. Some caused by platinum-based drugs routinely used for ovarian, lung, bladder and head and neck cancers. Permanent. Often gradual enough that patients don't notice until it's already significant. And when treatment ends and they raise it — they're referred to an audiologist, fitted with a hearing aid, and told to get on with it.

"Survival or deafness? Pretty much", says Anna. That's the choice.

We talk about what that actually means for a real person going back to work, rebuilding relationships, working out who they are after cancer. Already carrying the weight of having been a patient. Now losing their hearing on top of it. Without warning. Without preparation. Without support.

Anna lost her first husband to cancer. She knows this world from more than one angle.  I suspect she wishes she didn't...

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The following is a full transcript of this episode for anyone who is deaf, hard of hearing, or who prefers to read.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1puY4Ilkjq_7s_cwfFE9LgUxTUoBBdDCUbh6F5UrzEQ0/edit?usp=sharing

Anna would really like to hear from anyone affected by deafness following cancer treatment to assist both her and her collegues greater understabding of the issue and support needed.

Contact her on  LinkedIn

Her website: Think Health Coaching

Dr Liz O'Riordan is a consultant breast surgeon who got breast cancer. Three times. She knows the system from both sides of the table — the clinician giving the diagnosis in a 10 minute appointment, and the patient navigating what comes after.

She's also not afraid to push back.

In this conversation Liz challenges some of the assumptions that run through everything I do. She defends the National Health Service in the UK. She questions whether the gap people describe after treatment is as simple as I sometimes make it sound. And she asks me directly — what gap are you actually trying to close?

I didn't have a clean answer. Which turned out to be the most interesting part of the conversation.

We also talk about why awareness campaigns raise money but don't always change behaviour. Why a 10 minute appointment to tell someone they have cancer is both necessary and completely inadequate.

Why digital signposting is a partial answer to a much bigger question. Why rural communities, ethnic minorities and people in deprivation face a completely different version of the cancer system to everyone else. And why the moment treatment ends and the appointments stop is — for many people — the moment the real fear begins.

Liz doesn't sugarcoat things. She doesn't agree with everything I think. And that's exactly why this conversation matters. No easy answers...

We've known smoking causes cancer for 70 years. People still smoke. We are "cancer aware."  So when did it all just become a noise? We know what cancer patients need after treatment ends. We don't fund it.

So what's the point of awareness?

Dr. Hugo De La Pena is a consultant medical oncologist in Southampton who's made unusual choices. He works full-time NHS in the UK with no private practice - refusing to participate in the two-tier system even though it costs him personally. He just believes it's the right thing to do.

He sees patients who've smoked for years despite knowing the risks. Young people with melanoma who were aware, but were sure it couldn't happen to them. In this conversation, we talk about awareness at every level. A System that's aware but refuses to fund what it can't photograph.

Personal awareness: Why people smoke despite knowing it kills them. Why awareness alone doesn't change behavior. Whether awareness without power to act becomes its own kind of harm.

Policy awareness: The UK national cancer plans acknowledges psychological support is "devastating and long-lasting" in its absence. Then funds it at £0. What does it mean to be aware of what's needed but not resource it?

Global awareness: We know 38% of cancers are preventable. We're aware climate change increases cancer rates. We're knowingly creating future cancer patients. What does that say about us? This isn't comfortable listening. 

We ask: If awareness doesn't lead to change, what does? Is awareness its own industry now - something we produce and consume without expecting it to go anywhere? Does awareness let comfortable people feel like they're helping while never experiencing consequences of nothing changing?

And the question we can't escape: Can you mandate a mindset shift?

New regulations say clinical trials should be "participant-centered." The new UK cancer plan says people should be "living well with cancer." We've known for decades what needs to change. So why doesn't it?

24 minutes. One oncologist. A lot of uncomfortable questions.  And no easy answers.

If you know someone who needs to hear this, then please share now and keep the cancer conversation moving in the right way.

Tessa Parry-Wingfield is a journalist and global communications expert—skilled at finding information, building communities, creating content.

Then she was diagnosed with ocular melanoma. Eye cancer. Most people have never heard of it. It affects 5 per million adults and roughly 600 cases annually in the UK - Tessa lives in London. And in her case, everything changed in less than three weeks.

She's the CEO of The Power of Words, a global communications consultancy. She has 25 years’ experience in journalism, communications and PR – across Europe and the MENA region. She loved every minute of being a journalist for ten years – as a reporter, producer and writer for TV news outlets such as Al Jazeera, ITN, and Channel TV. And the commercial arms of Reuters and Press Association.

For years she wrote the headlines but in recent times, she became one. She couldn't find adequate conversation about her cancer—not because she didn't know where to look, but because she was advised by her healthcare team that information online can be skewed or out of date.  The truth is there is still so much to learn about this and other rare cancers that don't attract the funding and the trials because the numbers are so small in comparison.

Tessa lost her left eye—the standard treatment for ocular melanoma. Surgical removal. And so begins the processing: physical loss, visible permanent difference, identity change, grief for her "real eye," navigating the world looking different, and acquaintances who would really rather not engage anymore. 

Basically, she had zero preparation time. But in an extraordinary twist, she found another ocular melanoma patient, Jo, through chance connection via a mutual friend. And Jo lives less than a mile away. Pure chance. 

In this episode, Tessa discusses:

This matters because, unlike Tessa, thousands of people are navigating life-altering diagnoses of rare cancers essentially alone.

The solution surely, is creating a comprehensive infrastructure serving ALL rare cancers, recognising commonalities rather than fragmenting by specific diagnosis.

Here's Tessa's story.  If if you know someone with ocular melanoma or any rare cancer, please share this and tell them we are listening and they're not alone.

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Tessa's website 

https://tessaparry-wingfield.com/

Read Tessa's story in her own words in The Times newspaper (UK)

https://www.thetimes.com/article/b344cb32-9bcb-44f9-a670-11fad5bfde9a?shareToken=a3d6005ab14c7c7b01b1dea141cdf873

Ocular Melanoma UK 

https://omuk.org/ 

When treatment ended, Sanna Tiensuu-Piirainen was told: "You're cancer-free. Good luck."

Then she was lost. And of course we know that's not a unique situation. By some distance.

But the real question that came out of this cancer conversation was: has discrimination ended her career because she's open about her cancer when talking to employers?

Sanna was diagnosed with breast cancer at 43 in Finland—a country with universal healthcare considered among the best globally. She received treatment: chemotherapy, radiation, mastectomy, hormone therapy. Then treatment ended. And healthcare provided zero framework for what came next.

Sanna is a Master of Science in Economics—analytical, logical, trained to solve complex problems. But logic wasn't enough to navigate the physical, emotional, psychological, and practical reality of life after cancer treatment.

So over the following years, she trained herself: certified business coach, master coach, positive psychology practitioner, mindfulness-based cancer recovery trainer, NLP practitioner, solution-focused brief therapist.

Years of training. Multiple disciplines. That's thousands of hours and no doubt euros too. And all to create what the healthcare system should have provided.

She and her nurse friend Tiina wrote a book—a 13-step recovery program for women healing after breast cancer treatment. They wrote it because the book they needed didn't exist. Then she tried to re-enter the workforce with all this vast range of expertise in post-treatment recovery—expertise addressing a massive healthcare gap. And she's been rewarded with unemployment since March 2024, partly no doubt to the fragile economy in Finland at time of writing.

But you could easily argue that the system that failed to support her doesn't value her attempt to fix the gap.

In this episode, Sanna discusses:

This matters because healthcare treating cancer as diagnosis → treatment → done ignores everything that comes after. And people are either left to build their own solutions (if they have resources) or fall through the gap entirely. How can that be acceptable economically, socially or morally?

This is #CancerCanDoOne—making sense of cancer when awareness isn't enough.

Sanna's book is in Finnish only at the moment.

https://www.tuumakustannus.fi/Tiina-Huhtanen/Hyvinvointikirja-rintasy%C3%B6v%C3%A4st%C3%A4-toipuvalle.html

#MakingSenseOfCancer

The diary is empty. No more scans. No more treatment. That's it. You're good. So why do so many cancer patients feel depressed, abandoned and lost when surely it's time to celebrate? 

In a first for #CancerCanDoOne, we eavesdrop on a brutally revealing conversation. This is the real and honest view of what breast cancer days are like and crucially what happens when the treatment ends. Because treatment is only one chapter in the story.

Rebecca Perkins and Charmian D'Aubosson are friends. And they both know breast cancer. They got online for #CancerCanDoOne, spoke to each other and unpicked their revealing experiences so we could appreciate just a little more...

#BreastCancer #CancerTreatment #CancerAwareness #LifeAfterCancer 

"I sat in the car for half an hour and cried."  His first thought; how will his new wife cope with this news? He was 30 years old with a life built on fitness and nutrition. He felt very alone.

There weren’t many role models for young men facing cancer.

Now, others reach out to him for advice — not about lifting weights, but about carrying the weight of a diagnosis.

In this episode:

How he went from patient to peer guide.

The questions young men ask that no doctor prepares them for.

What he’s learned about strength that has nothing to do with muscle.

A story of unexpected leadership born from a brutal surprise.

#BreakTheCancerSilence #Testicularcancer #CancerAwareness #CancerCanDoOne

What happens when cancer doesn’t just hit one person, but an entire family?

In this episode I speak with Anthony McLoughlin, one of five siblings who were all diagnosed with cancer before the age of 60 — a staggering and highly unusual family experience.

Anthony shares how his family uses humour to cope, rarely talking about cancer unless it’s truly needed. He opens up about the loneliness and insecurity that can follow when treatment ends and healthcare professionals step back — the dreaded “Now what?” moment too many people face alone.

We explore how cancer can pull families closer together, the small ways laughter helps survive fear, and the challenges of navigating life when the system goes quiet. This conversation is raw, honest, and occasionally darkly funny — a real insight into a family living with cancer in a way most of us can barely imagine.

⏱️ Timestamps:

[00:58] Intro – Why this family’s story is so rare

[03:41] Anthony’s family journey – how cancer brought the five siblings closer. Humour as survival.

[05:58] Need to talk – when even they NEED to talk it through together.

[13:08] When the system goes quiet – the loneliness after treatment ends. How for Anthony it lead to deep depression.

About the guest:

Trigger warning:

👉  If this episode resonates, share it with a friend who thinks cancer is never going to affect them. Who cares? Follow the show for more off-grid, human takes on life with cancer.

#BreakTheCancerSilence #CancerCanDoOne