Episode 055: The Life You Want Despite Cancer
Feb 28, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
Hey, this is Joe Bakhmoutski and welcome to Simplify Cancer Podcast! Today you meet with Lee Silverstein who had cancer twice in his life, once as a child and once as an adult. He has such an incredible attitude and he’s using it to live the life the best way that he can and to help other people through his podcast called We Have Cancer. Through this podcast, Lee shares information, inspiration, and hope for living the best life you can despite cancer. Here are some things that we cover today:
Lee's inspirational A-G-E approach to dealing with cancer
One powerful mindset that can help you during treatment
How relationships and friendships can change after cancer
and much, much more!
Links
We Have Cancer podcast
Full Transcript
Joe: Lee, I love your photos on Facebook and on your website and with you and your Batman gear. Can you talk about that?
Lee: I’ve been dealing with colon cancer for eight years. The largest colon cancer support organisation in the U.S. is the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. They do a run, a 5k run, and a walk at different cities all over the country. Each weekend a different city. The first one is always in Tampa, Florida, which was last weekend. Instead of giving out, like most of these events, they give out t-shirts, but because it’s the other part of the body, they give out boxer shorts. That’s where the undi-name comes from. People dress in funny costumes. I was always a batman fan when I was a kid, so we called my team: Lee’s Superheroes, and we all dressed up with batman shirts and shorts and boxers and all of that.
Joe: Yes, that’s fantastic, Lee. I love that because I think both you and me, and I guess actually many of us, have really uncomfortable cancers in the most uncomfortable parts of the body. Like, I had testicular cancer, you had colon cancer. It feels weird to start to talk about it because it’s private and sensitive, right?
Lee: True, but I tell people when it comes to my disease, everybody uses the bathroom, everybody uses the toilet, and because we all do it, it shouldn’t be something embarrassing. I know it is, but I tell people: Don’t let embarrassment kill you. I interview so many people on my podcast who either they themselves waited and waited too long because they were embarrassed to say anything, to talk to their doctor. Then the disease was more advanced than it should have been. What’s worse? Being a little bit embarrassed or having to go through chemotherapy?
Joe: Yes, exactly. I think that’s why it’s even more important, like you say, to talk about it and to be honest and upfront. Just so people feel more comfortable to show up at the doctors and say, “Can you have a look at this? Can you check it out?”
Lee: Absolutely. You’re absolutely right.
Joe: Lee, I was really shocked to hear your story that you really first had cancer as a child. What was that experience like?
Lee: Well, from what I remember, when I was four or five years old, I’m surprised how much I do remember, the story behind that is when I was growing up, I had one sister at the time, another sister came along a few years later. We were always getting sick, especially in the winter time, strep throat, throat infections. When I was a kid, the popular surgery was to have your tonsils out if you kept getting throat infections. They said, “We think we should take his tonsils out.”
My parents took me to the hospital the day before the surgery just to do all the testing and bloodwork and all of that. Something showed up very unusual in my blood test. They said, wait a minute, this is not good, something’s going on here. They did some tests and found a spot on my kidney. It turned out to be a rare form of paediatric kidney cancer called a Wilms Tumour. Now, a Wilms Tumour if caught early,
