The Bridges Between Us

Paolo Narciso has spent four decades building companies - call centers, healthcare startups, AI ventures - and currently serves on the CaringBridge board, bringing a technologist's eye to social connection and care coordination. He knows data. He tracks everything: blood panels, visceral fat, lactate thresholds, sleep, recovery scores. So when his Apple Watch gave him a readiness score of fif...

Tina Jackson was told her daughter Tionna - Miss T - most likely wouldn't survive. Born in 1995 with trisomy 8 mosaicism, a rare genetic condition, Miss T was labeled failure to thrive. She's now thirty years old, living independently, completing a hospital internship, and co-presenting keynote speeches with her mom. In this episode, Tina shares three decades of rare disease caregiving -...

Mason was seventeen, a junior in high school, and a record-holding runner when he hit a ski jump going a little too fast and broke his T12 vertebra. He became paralyzed. The next morning, he woke up and said: we need to make a plan. In this episode, Mason and his mom Stacy talk about what paralysis really looks like - the losses that reveal themselves slowly, the community that showed up through C...

Paurvi Bhatt has spent her career responding to crises, from the HIV pandemic to global health financing, and has worked alongside former First Lady Rosalynn Carter on caregiving advocacy. But it wasn't until she became a caregiver herself that she understood what was missing. Paurvi grew up watching her father navigate the unimaginable: a wife in her twenties with cervical cancer, a mother d...

⚠️ Content note: This episode includes descriptions of a serious accident and traumatic injury. On a Sunday afternoon outside Minneapolis, Jeff Winston was in a life-altering motorcycle accident that he somehow survived - pulling himself safely to the side of the highway and calling for help. Just behind him, Jackie Klinkner, a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA), noticed something wasn’...

Cris Ross spent more than a decade serving as Chief Information Officer at Mayo Clinic, helping lead one of the most respected healthcare organizations in the world through periods of enormous change and complexity. Then, in 2018, he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Used to solving problems and carrying responsibility for others, Cris approached treatment the same way he approached work: stay...

When Sally Zibrowski’s dad, Andy, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia in 2021 at age 71, her family began to quietly reorient around a new and uncertain reality. Over time, earlier signs - subtle behavioral changes, growing confusion, and moments of paranoia - began to make sense in a way that was both clarifying and heartbreaking. In this episode of The Bridges...

Hosted by Andy Thieman, The Bridges Between Us is a podcast from CaringBridge featuring honest conversations about caregiving, resilience, connection, and the ways people show up for one another during health journeys. Through real stories from patients, caregivers, family members, and supporters, each episode explores what it means to navigate uncertainty, find hope, and feel less alone when life...