The Things I Thought About When My Body Was Trying to Kill Me

There’s already plenty of good medical journalism where you can find out about diagnosis, treatment, the latest research…the science of fighting cancer. But if you’re one of the millions diagnosed, or helping somebody live with cancer, or come to terms with dying of the disease, you already know: There’s not always good information, not always good advice, about how to think through the fact that you might be dying, or how to think about how your life has been changed, if you live. So I wrote one. Sufferers, survivors, care-givers may all hear the stories I tell in slightly different ways. It’s a cancer memoir. I called it, “The Things I Thought About When My Body Was Trying to Kill Me.” Listen. Subscribe. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done in more than 40 years as a journalist. I hope you’ll listen.

Episodes

Coming Soon: The Things I Thought About When My Body Was Trying To Kill Me with Ray Suarez

May 5, 2022 • 2 mins

Every year in America, close to two million people are diagnosed with cancer of one kind or another. And every year, some six hundred thousand of us die of the disease. So cancer is very much with us… all around us… part of the lives we live together, and a big part of the billions Americans spend each year on health care. Every sufferer, every survivor, has a story that’s broadly shared, and at the same time as individual as your ...

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Finding Out, or No News Is Bad News

June 2, 2022 • 12 mins

In this episode, I'll tell you about the rough and life changing road I was on, feeling worse and worse as my career also unraveled. It took awhile to sink in, I was a sick man, but I needed to get some help to figure out just how sick.

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What's the Worst That Can Happen?

June 9, 2022 • 14 mins

In this episode, I'll tell you about giving into the idea that I was really sick guy, and hearing those 3 momentus words, "you have cancer." Your life has just changed, and the end of your life may be a lot sooner than you had been counting on.

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A Calm and Furious Patient

June 16, 2022 • 15 mins

In this episode, you've got cancer. Where is it? What is it? What am I gonna do now? Am I dying?

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Getting Alterations

June 23, 2022 • 17 mins

In this episode, after a lifetime of staying out of hospitals as a patient, my streak ends. I've got a tag around my wrist, it's finally my turn. I'm getting alterations. And everybody knows what they have to do. The patient is in trouble, and at least for now, we have to tiptoe around that.

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The Fragile Family Man

June 30, 2022 • 18 mins

In this episode, I've been opened up and my tumors are out but there is still so much that we do not know. I'm in the hospital and in no shape to leave. I'm a fragile family man.

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The Tumors Die Before You Do

July 7, 2022 • 21 mins

In this episode, what did they find? How bad was it? And once you know the answers to those questions, you have part of the answer to the big one. Am I going to need chemo?

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I Gotta Have Faith

July 14, 2022 • 19 mins

If you're a guy who spent every Sunday morning of his life in Church for 6 decades, what does it mean to have all of it put to the test? Did it help? Did it change anything? I was really really sick. Did I have a prayer?

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A Whole New World

July 21, 2022 • 22 mins

In this episode, I'm coming out the other end. Chemo is over. Each day I feel a little more normal, but what is normal now? My life is marked for good by what I've been through. What will continue to be with me and what recedes in the rear view mirror? It's a whole new world.

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