Our MBC Life

Send us Fan Mail

This episode has been a long time in the making.  We knew that to cover our varied perspectives on grief, loss, and end-of-life, a discussion on faith traditions would be an important part. The world around us infers that talking about death is not the same as talking about the joy of birth or the happiest of life's milestones. Certainly this unspoken “sweeping under the rug” of what is actually happening to all people and all families can feel so isolating.  We wanted to hear some messages of love and hope from those at the front lines of faith and spirituality, whatever your faith or spirituality may be. We recognize that all of us approach life and death in general from the perspective of our faith traditions, our family cultures, and the traditions and culture we choose as adults.  All this shapes how we approach our end-of-life planning.   

Senior Hosts and Producers, Lisa Laudico and Natalia Green, along with Hosts Shonte Drakeford, Ashley Fernandez, Ellen Landsberger, and Lynda Weatherby interviewed 10 faith leaders.  We hear from Jaclyn Roessel, Navajo Nation culture leader; Minister Barbara Bigelow and Elder Chester N. Bigelow of the New Samaritan Baptist Church; Reverend Kendy Easley, of Bethany Community Church; Rabbi Mychal Springer, Chaplain & Manager of Clinical Pastoral Education at NY-Presbyterian Hospital; M.R. Ravi Vaidyanaat Sivachariar, Spiritual Leader of The Hindu Temple Society of North America; Brother Marcus Martin, Leader, Church of Jesus Christs of Latter-Day Saints; Chaplain  Rhonda Alderman and Tupten Tendhar, Professor of Buddhism, Non-violence & Peace Studies.

 Our last interview is with Dr. Kamal Abu-Shamsieh, director of the inter-religious chaplaincy program at the graduate theological union in Berkeley, CA.  He sums up how we feel perfectly: 

“We need to look at death from a more human way. And when I say we, I don't mean just Muslims. When I say we, I say before we were Muslims, before we were Catholics, before we were Jews, before we were Hindus in those, before we were secular humanists, we were humans." 

Thanks for listening.  

More info is available on our website:  www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share?  Feedback? 

Email: 

[email protected]

 Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife.  

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

Before our MBC diagnosis, many of us saw our doctors once or twice a year or even less often. And most visits were likely routine check-ups or focused on a particular issue with a relatively straightforward solution. But MBC changes all that. It throws each of us into an unfamiliar world--with its own language, new and complex information shared in high stakes appointments and a relationship with our oncologist that immediately becomes one of the most important relationships in our life. 

This episode of Our MBC Life, the first in our MBC 101 series, includes perspectives, insights and suggestions from both sides of the critical doctor-patient relationship. 

Our panel of patients share their own experiences—good and bad—and what they’ve learned about navigating the unique communication challenges of this intense and intimate partnership. Dr. Lidia Schapira, medical oncologist and professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine  talks with  our hosts Victoria Goldberg, Martha Carlson, and Kate Pfitzer] about what makes a good doctor-patient relationship. 

The Our MBC Life team is grateful to Dr. Lidia Schapira and to our fellow MBC patients for generously sharing their time, their experience and their wisdom in this episode.

 More info is available on our website:  www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share?  Feedback? 

Email:     [email protected]

 Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife.  

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

How does one do things right at the end of life?  There are many ways to answer this question, as varied as all of us.  In this episode, we continue with our Grief, Loss, and End-Of-Life series.  Co-hosts Shonte Drakeford, Ashley Fernandez, Natalia Green, and Lisa Laudico speak with Julie McFadden, aka Hospice Nurse Julie; Jennifer O’Brien, author of Hospice Doctor’s Widow; Cal Cates, Hospice Massage Therapist; and Sundari Malcolm, Birth, Death, and Grief Doula. 

 More info is available on our website:  www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share?  Feedback? 

Email:     [email protected]

 Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife.  

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

This is a new stop in our ongoing series Road to a Cure. From the start, our goal for this series was not only to educate and give hope to every listener  but also to ensure that  each of these special interviews feels like an intimate conversation with our smartest friend who also happens to be an oncologist researcher. 

Co-hosts Victoria Goldberg and Dr. Paula Jayne sit down with neuro-oncologist Dr. Priya Kumthekar to talk about leptomeningeal metastases: what they are, how are they treated, and what research is upcoming, including a discussion on ANGled, the new Phase 3 trial for MBC patients newly diagnosed with leptomeningeal metastases. 

 We end this episode on a hopeful note with  a little Dash of Joy  from our Creator and Senior Producer Lisa Laudico.

More info is available on our website:   www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share?  Feedback? 

Email:   [email protected]

Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website.  Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

All of us have experienced a wide range of loss and grief from the last 2 years of life under a pandemic.  In this second installment of our focus on grief and Loss, host Lisa Laudico speaks with leading social scientist, family therapist, professor, and writer Dr. Pauline Boss about all of her research and her latest book, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic & Change.  Dr. Boss has extended the lens of her groundbreaking research to the world we live in today.  This is another episode that has something for everyone – not just those of us living with MBC or a terminal diagnosis.  It is a privilege to listen to Dr. Boss speak and teach.  

 This type of interview will now be part of our new, “Our MBC Bookshelf” series that will highlight the authors and books who make a difference in our lives.  If you have an author whom you would like us to interview – drop us a line.  

 Finally, we have launched a new version of our very popular Dash of Joy – this season we want to hear your little dashes of joy and we will play them in future episodes.  Moments of joy do not have to be (maybe shouldn’t be?) big splashy insta moments but the big and small real moments of joy that help us each day to have some lightness in our heart even when life feels so hard.  Listen here for Dar Finkelstein’s introduction of this new mini segment this season. 

More info is available on our website:   www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share?  Feedback? 

Email:   [email protected]

Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website.  Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

The future of personalized care for those living with MBC is already here, and it is happening in Kansas City, Missouri. Dr. Timothy  Pluard,  Medical Director of  the Kansas City's  Saint Luke's  Koontz Center for Advanced Breast Cancer  is with us today.  We'll ask him how he and his team create an individualized, completely comprehensive plan for each woman.

More info is available on our website 

www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share? Feedback? 

Email: [email protected]

Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website.  

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

Welcome to our premiere episode of Season 4!  We wanted to bring you something very special and our guest, Lara MacGregor certainly delivers on that and more. Host Lisa Laudico spoke with Lara in November of last year.  In 2012, Lara MacGregor founded Hope Scarves which to date has sent over 20K scarves to people facing cancer in every state in the US and 29 countries around the world.  In 2014 when Lara was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer the focus of Hope Scarves broadened to include support for metastatic breast cancer research.  Lara died in January 2022  of MBC and in her last year of life, Lara turned the camera on herself to share the unvarnished truth of declining well with hope.  Always hope as she would say.  This is an interview that doesn’t shy away from the hard conversations that we have when diagnosed with a terminal disease and gives Lara the opportunity to tell us what it has all felt like for her.  We are also joined by April Stearns, founder and editor of Wildfire Magazine and The Burn Podcast.  April had been working with Lara on her soon-to-be-published book, A Hopeful Life, and we hear all about that too.  This episode felt like a gift to be part of, to edit, and to produce.  It's the perfect way to kick off a very ambitious season.  

More info is available on our website 

www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share? Feedback? 

Email: [email protected]

Send us a voice recroding via email or through speakpipe on our website.  

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

Join Co-host Sheila Johnson for a very special panel in honor of Black History Month.  Sheila speaks with Rev. Dr. Tawana Davis, Ricki Fairley, Kelle Southern, and Stephanie Walker.  This wide-ranging conversation is one not to miss as we dig into what it is like to be a Black woman seeking medical treatment for breast cancer or metastatic breast cancer and what these incredible women are doing to improve health equity for black women and men.    We believe that Black History Month should always be celebrated but let's agree that it should not be just for one month but every month and every day.  These women show us how to do that.  

More info is available on our website www.ourmbclife.org

Be sure to rate, review us, and sign up for our newsblast.  

Got something to share>? Feedback? Email:
[email protected]

Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website.  Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbcliffe

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Send us Fan Mail

Learn about the most recent information released at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium regarding metastatic breast cancer research with Dr. Peter Schmid, Professor of Cancer Medicine at Barts Cancer Institute in London, England. Dr. Schmid will provide a comprehensive update and answer your questions about these new developments.

More info is available on our website www.ourmbclife.org
Be sure to rate, review us, and sign up for our newsblast.
Got something to share? Feedback? Email:  [email protected]
Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website.
Follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife

We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please share it with someone who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe here to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes, resources and ways to get involved on our website Our MBC Life. Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow us on our socials @ourmbclife. 

Remember you are not alone.

Learn about the most recent information released at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium regarding metastatic breast cancer research with Dr. Peter Schmid, Professor of Cancer Medicine at Barts Cancer Institute in London, England. Dr. Schmid will provide a comprehensive update and answer your questions about these new developments.

More info is available on our website www.ourmbclife.org

Got something to share? Feedback?
Email:  [email protected] 
Send us a voice recording via email or through speakpipe on our website.
Follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ourmbclife