I sent Sarah a voice memo prompt to ask if she wanted to share some experiences being in the middle of a pandemic and needing to self-isolate during this time, particularly because she is living with cancer. We discussed a few topics including how the pandemic has created an experience that allows Sarah (and maybe others with chronic health conditions) to feel less alone and that she can properly take care of herself during this time.

Sarah just got news that one of her tumours (a liver tumour) shrunk! Yay! It appears to be from the radiation she had back in March, which is welcomed news after being a bit confused as to what the initial report meant. She shares this with us today in context with the past 5 days of the perpetual roller coaster she is on. We end with a little life coachey-rest officer discussion about how she is planning to manage her energy for an upcoming trip to Australia.

Sarah provides a spring update on where she's at with cancer. It's been a year since her metastatic cancer diagnosis. More scans, treatment protocols, surgeries, emotions, and science.

In this episode, originally sent as a voice memo to Mandy and Mike, Sarah recounts the immediate aftermath of being kept up overnight by side effects of one of her treatments. This was back in September 2018, before recording the first podcast we published with Sarah on Mandyland. But she wants to share this note as it captures feelings of vulnerability, frustration, confusion, and exasperation that arise in dealing with cancer treatment. It's happened a few times now that a new symptom pops up and spurs a chain of medical appointments, scans, and tests. Figuring out what is going both in her own experience in her body, and from the perspective of multiple doctors, has proven to be one of the most challenging types of cancer experience. At present, Sarah's happy to report the small probably benign lesion for which this episode is named has not grown or caused any significant problems since it showed up, and her brain remains entirely healthy and tumor-free. 

Sarah and I are in San Diego, at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, a place we have been together many times. We had many slow(er than normal) days and quiet nights in our hotel room. And then we got a chance to really dive into what her new normal is. The conference was a perfect place to compare what use to be, with what is now.

In this monologue, Sarah recounts her feelings over the past 3 years of dealing with cancer both how it looked from the outside and how it felt from the inside. At the beginning, she wondered "how am I going to come out the other side?” It felt like she was walking through a doorway in Alice in Wonderland and then suddenly stumbled upon the strange universe. She realized that the way that you look at the world shifts. And a big theme for her, is that cancer is slow. 

Sarah and I have been talking for a long time about her cancer but this conversation was planned as a way of starting her series of episodes for Mandyland. We had a bunch of ideas planned but realized early that it was hard to figure out where to start. So we started with why she has been hesitant to share this, despite her desire to. That got us talking about her career and the impact cancer has had on her career. From there we talk about where she is now and a brief introduction to her cancer. We end with how valuable it is to talk about stuff.

At the end of Season One, I put out a call to listeners to send in voice-memo reactions to anything from Season One. Sarah replied and is now a regular guest on Mandyland for Season two! This is her reply.