Our Cancer Journey Podcast
The Our Cancer Journey Podcast is a place for those impacted by Cancer, their caregivers, their loved ones and also those wishing to prevent illness. Our podcast is more than a program about cancer, it's a conversation about life and how we can make ours better. Together we explore ways we can optimize our lives through the experiences of diagnosis, treatments and beyond into the future of Survivorship. We discuss ways to help YOU feel better, live happier, expand your self-empowerment, and enhance your life experience. It is more than a podcast about medicine, or even Cancer. It is about you, the Whole Person, and tips, ideas and strategies to possibly improve your cancer journey and make your life better. Hosted by unique storyteller and unconventional creator Bruce Watkins, the Our Cancer Journey Podcast provides a unique voice to people in the cancer community that transcends the conventional medical and patient experience-based shows. Please share this podcast with anyone you feel may benefit from our content, our outlook, our attitude, and especially our passionate advocacy for self-empowerment! Learn More: https://www.ourcancerjourney.com/ Content Advisory Note: The content of the Our Cancer Journey Podcast with Bruce Watkins, our website, and of all other associated media forms is provided for informational, inspirational, and entertainment purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice. The information shared in our content and the views expressed by the hosts and guests of the program are their own. The Our Cancer Journey podcast with Bruce Watkins, its related media. and Fairlead Media do not suggest or intend that information or opinions shared in these media should or must replace the relationship you have with your chosen healthcare professional(s) and practitioner(s). The mention of any product, service, organization, activity or therapy on a podcast should not be construed as an endorsement. If paid or free promotional or awareness-building content is included during the podcast or within other media, such content will be separated into its own unique promotional spot or mention.
Episodes
About This Episode:
In the early fall of 2022, after many scans and multiple opinions from healthcare providers, Bruce's latest cancer diagnosis was confirmed, but with ambiguity that would not be resolved in the near future. When a definitive medical plan of action that included regularly scheduled rotating exams and scans was finally laid out by his doctors, Bruce announced his own definitive plan of action. He was leaving the...
About This Episode:
Cancer Patient Advocate Joe Bullock returns for the second installment of his interview with the Our Cancer Journey Podcast with Bruce Watkins. This episode picks up from where Part-1 of our interview with Joe left off ( #009 – From Caregiver, to Surviving Cancer, to Patient Support Advocate Part 1 – Joe Bullock ).
In this episode, Joe and Bruce discuss the challenges of being a caregiver for an estranged parent, ...
About This Episode:
After being diagnosed with a Stage-3 Head and Neck cancer and surviving the initial surgeries, the radiation regimen, and the grueling months of recovery that followed, after months of testing and retesting, Bruce finally received a NED assessment from his medical team. Bruce remained cancer free for more than 5 years, until just days ago.
Late on a summer’s day as midnight was fast approaching, for some inexplic...
About This Episode:
Over a recent several-week period, Our Cancer Journey Podcast Host Bruce Watkins underwent a handful of routine exams and a few additional tests for some small nominal health issues. The surprising results from one of those tests reported that cancer had returned to Bruce’s life.
The episode that immediately follows this podcast ( Episode #022 ), contains a live recording of the moments immediately after Bruce le...
Data Scientist and Researcher Prof. Levi Waldron returns for Part-2 of his conversation with Host Bruce Watkins.
Dr. Levi briefly touches on his experience being diagnosed with HPV+ oral oropharyngeal cancer and his current NED status, before covering the various contributors to the medical research process and describing the new way of viewing who is a “researcher.” Bruce explores with Prof. Levi how he, as a data scientist, appro...
About This Episode:
There are many contributors in the world of biological / medical research looking for more effective treatments and potential cures for disease. One important group of those contributors is virtually unknown in the public and often under-recognized in medicine and the media. In this first installment of a 2-Part interview, Host Bruce Watkins is joined by Data Scientist and Researcher Prof. Levi Waldron.
Their d...
About This Episode:
Noted expert in the world of Lymphology, Dr. Paula Stewart, returns to the Our Cancer Journey Podcast to continue our conversation about the disease called Lymphedema. In this Part-2 installment of our in-depth interview with Dr. Stewart, Host Bruce Watkins and our guest open the episode by discussing how the network of Lymphatic veins works with the circulatory system to move fluids. The Lymphatic system does a...
About This Episode:
If you've been diagnosed with a disease or had a major injury, you may have heard your Doctor talk about their focus on your “lymph nodes.” But do you know much about the lymphatic system, and how important the flow of lymphatic fluid is in your body?
Lymphedema is the disease that could affect cancer patients or anybody that has sustained an injury that could disrupt our bodies lymphatic system. Because this...
About This Episode:
Picking up where our Part-1 episode with Dr. Arash Asher left off, Host Bruce Watkins and Dr. Asher dive deeper into factors that cause and/or enhance the common experience of chemo brain, or cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI).
In this episode, we learn how the experience of chronic loneliness can “up-regulate” our genes to produce more inflammatory agents called Cytokines. In the previous Part-1 episode...
About This Episode:
What is “Chemo Brain?” The term started several decades ago when cancer patients tried to describe a number of symptoms they experienced during and after cancer treatments. These symptoms seemed to affect their mind’s clarity of thought and effective information recall. Also referred to as "Chemo–Fog” back in the day, the phrase was initially popularized by patients getting chemotherapy. It's spread quic...
About This Episode:
The improbably positive and up-beat podcast that explores ways to help YOU feel better, live happier, expand your self-empowerment, and enhance your life experience IS BACK for its 2nd Season!
We are so excited about the engaging guests, insightful topics, and fun banter in our upcoming line-up that we had to share just a few of the memorable moments with you in advance!! And we are still recording new episodes ...
This PART 2 installment of a two-episode show continues our retrospective started in Episode #012 – Season 1 Retrospective and New Insights – PART 1. Host Bruce Watkins takes a look back at just a few meaningful moments from Episodes #006 through #011 from Season One of the Our Cancer Journey Podcast with Bruce Watkins.
Besides providing new reflections and some great takeaways, after playing selected clips from these episodes, Bru...
About This Episode:
This PART 1 installment of a two-episode series takes a look back at just a few meaningful moments from the 1st season of the Our Cancer Journey Podcast. Host Bruce Watkins provides new reflections on some great takeaways provided in OCJ’s Episodes 2 through 5 from Season One, and after playing selected clips from the shows, Bruce also shares some additional insights and off-microphone moments that occurred while...
About This Episode:
Guest Terri Ann DiJulio discusses great insights, lung cancer patient support and advocacy for research, and shares her compelling story about how she “Lives the Hell Out of Life”, because she does not want to waste “The Gift of Her Beautiful Life.” Compelling inspiration and great takeaways abound.
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CLICK HERE to View Full Show Notes, and to Hear a BONUS AUDIO CLIP of Terri Ann DiJulio sharing a stor...
The OCJ Podcast returns from a several-week break, with this personal solo episode from the Host Bruce Watkins.
Bruce took a few weeks away from the podcast to take advantage of two opportunities that arose. He was honored to be asked by a group of medical professionals to guide the production of a series of cancer patient support videos. Bruce also had the opportunity to travel, something that brings great meaning to Bruce’s life.
In this first of a 2-Part episode, traditional Southern (U.S.) guy Joe Bullock walks us through his unexpected cancer journey where he moved through multiple roles. Our raw and authentic conversation with Joe provides us great insights on how to support caregivers, being an adult-child caregiver for a difficult aging parent, the importance of communication with your life-partner during diagnosis and treatments, how to navigate a pe...
Australian Cancer Survivor and lead of the AusLitTeal awareness and advocacy campaign to “Lite Australia TEAL” joins us to discuss survivorship, and moving through an unexpected Ovarian Cancer diagnosis to find meaning in lighting up her whole country Teal. Her remarkable story takes us through her personal transformation from Mother, trained engineer and someone pursuing her conventional life to being driven to raise awareness, em...
In this "Part 2” of a multi-episode “mini-series” of podcast shows, program host Bruce Watkins continues his introduction of Mindsets with two illustrative stories about how a Mindset can help us to create paradigms, and how we may eventually realize that these paradigms can be “terribly wrong.”
Future episodes of the Our Cancer Journey Podcast Mindset Series will explore how our Mindset engages associations and expectations t...
In this "Part 1” of a multi-episode “mini-series” of podcast shows, program host Bruce Watkins walks us through a very simple introduction to the concept of a “Mindset,” the powerful device we use to orient ourselves to the world. Bruce discusses how the framework of a frame of Mindset is different and separate from … the actual YOU. This point is critically important for people wishing to overcome barriers to their own self-em...
In this "Part 1” episode of a two Episode series, Licensed Oriental Medicine Practitioner Angela Lai (see bio below) joins us on the program to discuss the multiple-millennia practice and healing art form of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Angela and I briefly discuss the origins of TCM, a few of its common applications, how TCM differers in practice and approach from traditional Western medicine, and how people in Western...
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