Breast Cancer Conversations

Love the podcast? Send us a text! Your scans came back. The portal posted results before anyone called. There are four appointments on the calendar and a vocabulary nobody taught you — and underneath it all, the feeling that you're already behind. Dr. Tiffany Troso-Sandoval spent 25 years treating women's breast and gynecologic cancers, much of it at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Her first piece of advice is the one nobody expects: slow down. Breast cancer treatment is urgent, she says, but it is...

Love the podcast? Send us a text! When Vic Clevenger's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, he and his brother had a thought that many men probably share: At least we're not women. We don't have to worry about breast cancer. Years later, Vic learned firsthand just how wrong that assumption can be. It started with what looked like a stain on his shirt. When Vic realized fluid was coming from his nipple, he initially assumed it was probably a cyst, pimple, or something minor. His fiancée en...

Love the podcast? Send us a text! What happens emotionally after you've spent months—or years—focused on simply surviving cancer? Treatment may end. Scans may look good. Life may begin moving forward again. But that doesn't necessarily mean you've processed what happened to you. In this episode of Breast Cancer Conversations, Laura Carfang sits down with visual artist, therapeutic arts practitioner, author, and cancer survivor Nerissa Balland for an honest conversation about the emotional aft...

Love the podcast? Send us a text! Listen to hear three very different perspectives on what radiation for metastatic breast cancer can really look like and what these women want others to know before starting treatment. Radiation can play a very different role in metastatic breast cancer than it does in early-stage disease. It may be used to treat a specific metastatic site, help control cancer in the brain, liver or bones, relieve pain, or—as you'll hear in this episode—become part of a much ...

Love the podcast? Send us a text! What if a blood test could detect signs of breast cancer at the molecular level? Circulating tumor DNA, or ctDNA, is generating growing interest among people diagnosed with breast cancer, particularly those wondering about recurrence, treatment response, and what may be happening in the body before something appears on conventional imaging. One test you may have heard about is Signatera. In this episode of Breast Cancer Conversations, Laura Carfang talks with...