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December 1, 2021 18 mins

Stevie Weisz and Marty Hart

 

We all started out as a collection of cells, and though we’ve since evolved into unique human beings, we’re all still held to the same arbitrary standards about what our bodies should and shouldn’t look like. We love this concept for the way it questions those standards and aims to deconstruct the social and political meanings of our bodies. Stevie and Marty’s dedication to body positivity, diversity, and mental health awareness, among other vastly under-discussed topics, is what makes this show both interesting and necessary.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Season two of The Next Great Podcast. My
Heart Radio and Tongle have once again teamed up to
bring you another round of amazing and unique voices. We're
excited to share these ten incredible podcasts with you and
need your help crowning the winner. Check out the pilots
and be sure to vote for your favorite at Next
Great podcast dot com. Today's entry's Life Salad by Stevie

(00:30):
Weiss and Marty Heart. We all started out as a
collection themselves, and though we've since evolved into unique human beings,
we're all still held to the same arbitrary standards about
what our bodies should and shouldn't look like. We love
this concept for the way it questions those standards and
aims to deconstruct the social and political meanings of our bodies.
Stevie and Marty's dedication to body positivity, diversity, and mental

(00:53):
health awareness, among other vastly underdiscussed topics, is what makes
this show both interesting and necessary. Ladies and gentlemen, boys
and girls, multi sacks, undecided and robots. You're listening to
Life Salad. I'm Marty, I'm Stevie, and you're listening to

(01:17):
the pilot of Life Salad, which is part of the
Next Great Podcast competition from I Heart Radio and Tongle Life.
Salad tosses together a variety of stories and experiences where
season one we're talking about the human body, and obviously
we couldn't call the show human salad. So from the
hair on your head or lack thereof, to the tips

(01:38):
of your toes, your guts, your skin, your tips in
your nose. Now, normally each episode will focus on just
one specific body part at a time, Like imagine an
entire hour dedicated to back hair. Maybe not that specific,
but since we are trying to win a contest here
for the pilot, we bring you a whole bunch of
body stories that really run the gambit. Today on the show,

(01:59):
we're talking to it Natalie, we just say we will
not whale Jessica. Cancer runs in my family until it
runs into me and to a mirror. Having scars, either
you like it's done something really stupid along the way,
or you've like lived or you've like like memorable experiences.

(02:20):
Now let's get right into it. My breast cancer story
starts when I was eighteen years old, and um, you
know that was back in two thousand three. I came
up smelling like food. Needed a shower before my second job,
and as I was bathing, I accidentally stumbled upon a

(02:44):
lump in my right breast and about the six o'clock position,
the bottom quadrant, and I thought, oh my god, I'm eighteen.
This this must be cancer. Um. I have so much
cancer in my family. This is got to be what
it is. I have, you know, two aunts on my
dad's side of the family who have had cancer. UM,

(03:06):
paternal grandmother, five paternal grand aunts, and my paternal great grandmother.
I am the fourth generation in my family to have
breast cancer and there's been no known gene mutation. So
at eighteen years old, when I find this lump, I'm thinking,
oh my god, I have cancer. I am a twin

(03:27):
and my twin and I were born ten weeks early,
so we were supposed to be born on Halloween, but
we were born in summer instead. Um. And the thing
about Sir Poolsy is it's not cause um in utul

(03:48):
sort of in the it's caused by the fact of
being born early, usually down to oxygen deprivation and things
like that. Sort of. It's not like genetic it can't
be prevented. It, so I had my biopsy. I was

(04:12):
officially diagnosed at thirty three years old with invasive ductal
carcinoma stage two BE. My lump was four point three
centimeters and I had two diseased lymph nodes. I went
through sixteen rounds of chemotherapy, twenty four rounds of radiation,

(04:32):
a double mestectomy, for which I lived without breasts for
two years. UM. I had a hysterectomy prophylactically, which means
it's preventative, and I had a two phase breast reconstruction
called deep flap, and it's where they take fat tissue
and blood vessels from my abdomen and they used that

(04:56):
to recreate breasts. I went from being essentially UM a
double amputee, to a double transplant recipient with my own
uh breasts, my own tissue, my own body, so like
my My government initial COVID strategy basically amounted to it's okay,

(05:19):
nobody needs to worry because it's only old and disabled
people that are going to be affected, so only they're
gonna die, so the rest of us are okay, which
a is not true at all, but also quite one
did feel a bit like a throgle, sacrificial lamb, just

(05:39):
being like thrown to the wall. I was driving to
meet friends who had ended up being friends who are
going to surprise me at a beach out in the
Salma area, and an animal ran across the street. Or
we think, we don't even know what the true story
is anymore. Swerving happened. And then in movies when you
see people like flipping in their cars and the woo
woo woo woo whoop, I experienced that as well. Full one.

(06:03):
Uh So, there are quite a few injuries along the way,
but one of them was a piece of glass that
chose to stay in my arm for a very long time. Um.
Multiple attempts at surgery happened. The doctors are currently oh
for three with it. Um So now they have decided
after like a lot of like cutting and surprise surgeries,
which I got really excited because you get to like

(06:23):
look inside your own arm and like see the tissues
and the muscles being ripped apart and moved and me
like egging them on. There was a lot of blood everywhere.
It was quite glorious. Uh that the doctors have decided
that at this point, your two options are either having
like a gigantic star scar for them to cut through,
um to potentially be able to find it or accept

(06:43):
that this is a piece of glass. Le Wil forever
living you um So now I live with Sharpay forever.
When someone tries to relate to you, they will often start,
you know, oh, I'm you know, I'm sorry you have cancer.
My aunt died of cancer like three years ago or

(07:03):
something like that, and I'm just like, I'm really sorry
to hear that. And then I'm thinking like, well, what
kind of cancer did she have, what treatments did she have?
Did I do everything for myself? Did she still have
a reoccurrence? Like why did she die? You know, I'm
thinking about those things. Um So again, I know that

(07:24):
people are trying really hard to relate to you by
saying those things, but it does, um it's really not
the best way to empathize. I get it like five
or six times a Dane. People think it's been funny
and it gets really boring, which is um some variation

(07:45):
on oh, very impression to anyone with that What should
top speak that stuff? Because them I have a wheelchair
to get around, So I get it at least like
two or three times a day. I get some kind
of variational that and I don't mind it from like
you little kids, but when it's like adults and really

(08:08):
like and they always looked so pleased with themselves, like
they're the first person ever to come up with them,
Like I've literally heard this every day of my life
for about I don't know even what now, eighteen years
however long it was my first. And then um, I
was actually um at a hotel uh Bar one night.

(08:32):
I was there with a group of friends and um
I was at the end and a gentleman came up
next to me and sat down, and I really I
could tell he was already inebriated, and I just it
was a little annoying. I was just kind of like
keeping him at bay and just giving him really like
just short answers to kind of turn him off to
wanting to talk to me, just trying to be uninterested

(08:55):
as polite as possible. And then he's like, so what
do you do, and and instead of telling him, you know,
about my day job, I said, well, I'm a breast
cancer survivor. That's what I do. I survive and uh
he then he's like, looks at my chest, and says, well,
are they real or fake? And I look at him

(09:17):
and I'm like, I've gone through sixteen rounds of chemo,
twenty four rounds of radiation, a double mistectomy, a hysterectomy,
and um to phase multi flap breast reconstruction. Everything about
me is real, very real. And I just got up
and went to the bathroom. So, um, that's really been

(09:38):
the only time someone's asked something insensitive. But you know,
I think, you know, people are most of the time,
are are well intentioned with that stuff. Well, it started
when I was really quite young. In my family. I

(09:58):
was always I've got choose to stairs, and we were
always treated the exactly saying. So it wasn't until I
started school that I kind of realized, oh, this is
weird people pointing, whispering, saying things. A lot of the

(10:18):
time people would sort of point and whisper and then
and I would say to them stop whispering about me.
There would go, oh, we're not, even though I could
literally see it in front of me. One story to
sort of summing out, I would have been about ten,
would have been in what you guys would probably call

(10:40):
middle school, and my friend had painted a picture of
me um in art class. We've sort of done each other.
I came into school the next day to find that
her portrait had been pinned up in the hallway. Her

(11:00):
portrait that she drove me. Next to it was written,
it is our school ethos to help the needy and
that was less fortunate than us. So that was a
pretty um, pretty depressing day. I mean I kind of
I already knew that I wasn't really consider the them,

(11:23):
but to have it actually written out on a wall
for everyone to see that I was in fact on us,
that was I was interesting. I went to the headmaster
to complain about it, and he couldn't see what my
problem was. Yeah. So, when I was going through my
second round of chemotherapy and my body was changing, I

(11:43):
was losing my hair, I was losing my nails, my
I had my upcoming double mysterchtomy approaching, and I didn't
tell my friends and family at first because I was
really dealing with the emotions. But as my body was changing,
I thought, Okay, well, I'm not gonna hide under a rock.
You know, throughout the rest of my cancer diagnosis, people

(12:06):
are gonna see me, They're gonna ask questions they're gonna
want to know. So, as I came out to my
friends on social media and told them that I had
breast cancer. UM, my friends were like, well, how did
you even know to go get checked or even think
about it? I said, well, I do my monthly self
breast exams, don't you? And they were like, no, no, no,

(12:28):
we we don't. And I'm like, wait, wait what I've
been doing this since I was eighteen. Why aren't you
doing them? And I found out there were three primary reasons.
Either women UM didn't know how to do a self
breast exam, they were afraid of finding something and not
sure what to do next, Or they weren't comfortable with

(12:50):
their bodies. So I wanted to do something about that UM.
I started a social media project called Feel for Your
Life on Facebook and Instagram, and I started sharing my
story there. I started sharing information about self breast exams
and screenings and how to advocate for yourself UM and
to stand up to medical gas lighting. And then actually

(13:13):
this year, well last year, after Breast Cancer Awareness Month,
I thought, I want to do something bigger with Feel
for your Life. I want to reach more women and
I want them to be empowered and equipped to uh
know about screenings, know about self exams, know about their
genetic history, know about uh DE dents breasts and what

(13:36):
to do about it. So I became the first breast
cancer patient to create an app to show you how
to do a self breast exam, how to advocate for yourself,
how to um how to set reminders, and how to
track and monitor your changes so that you can take
this information to your doctor. And then another one is
on the top of my foot on myself, my right foot,

(14:00):
because this reminds me of like when I was backpacking
in Peru. I can't surf to save my life. I
pretend I'm really good at it, but I'm not. And
there was an incident that I someone saw a fin,
but they're not too sure that they saw a fin,
so they yelled something and I got distracted because I
wasn't too confident, and I slipped off my surfboard who

(14:21):
went underwater, and as I was underwater, to surfboard hit
me in the back of the head and went back
further down and cut my foot at the on a
coral somewhere, And then I was that pathetic human who
swam back to shore dragged my surfboard, left a trail
of blood in the sand um and the poor Peruvians

(14:43):
are just like freaking out because there's like blood coming
understand from this complete stranger who barely understands anything they're saying.
I was talking with a friend of mine about this
the other day. You don't see, you know, people with disabilities,
physical disabilities in media, and you don't see a lot
of them full stop. But when you do, the characters

(15:05):
have usually acquired the disability somewhere. The one in my
stomach is the most embarrassing one. This would have been
at a summer camp about five six years ago maybe,
and we set up a slip and slide for the
campers and the kids to go on. Some of the
staff got a little bit too excited, myself included, and
it turned into a very aggressive form of slip and

(15:26):
sliding that at some point it turned into like a
burn slash. There could have been a rock on this
tire to that as I went down, it cut me
right above the belly button area, like on the stomach.
And then the slip and sliding had to be canceled
because it was a mixture of water and soap and
my blood again. Another one of my lovely Twitter friends.

(15:49):
She got challenged by someone once because they didn't believe
that the same parking spaces needed to be April after
ten pm because they didn't see why any quite disabled
would be out after that time. Not an amazing response
that we disabled, Daniel, We're not wear wolves. You know.

(16:12):
I am grateful and I'm happy, and I always say
that I hope this is my last surgery with cancer.
You just kind of always wait for the other shoe
to drop sometimes, um because it's like, oh wait, there's more,
you know, after the double mistacum me, it's like, oh wait,
there's more. You're gonna have to have radiation, and then

(16:33):
thinking I'm gonna have surgery. Oh wait, you know, the
hospitals canceling all surgeries, and so anytime you know, I
have blood work or I have to have a scan,
you know, and the cancer community we call it scanxiety
when we get nervous because we think something is going
to start lighting up like a Christmas tree and it's
gonna require, you know, further testing in a biopsy. So

(16:56):
I'm grateful to be what I think is that at
the end, and I hope to close the chapter on cancer,
and at the same time, it's just kind of I'm
cautiously optimistic, kind of tiptoeing and walking on eggshells, just
wondering if something else is around the corner, but you know,
I'm working through it. We want to say thanks the Natalie,

(17:19):
Jessica and Amana for sharing your stories with us. Sure well,
my name is Jessica and I'm a breast cancer survivor.
By everyone, my lane is naturally hipot. I am an
author of young adult fiction. I also happened to have

(17:40):
a theme call share. I'm a mare, I'm thirty one,
and I just gave you a brief synalypsis of what
my scars look like and where the stories came from.
The Lifestylead podcast covers diverse guests and stories from over
sharing grandma's to opinionated teens and everything in between. Stories

(18:00):
from all walks of life, any age, gender, race, ability,
and so on. So if you've got a story that
you want to share, let us know. And more importantly,
if you liked the Life Salad pilot episode, go vote
we can keep making more. I'm Marty, I'm Stevie, and
now over to Millie for her take. Milly, what's your
favorite body fund um um? What you call a home? Hi.

(18:32):
This is Sienna and Leanna from Tossed Popcorn, last year's
winner of the Next Great Podcast. Thank you so much
for listening to this episode, and be sure to go
vote for your favorite at Next Great podcast dot com.
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