Kicking Cancer's Ass

Twenty-five years of friendship trained Jessica Rosenbaum for the call she didn't want. When Joelle was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer the day before her preventative mastectomy, Jessica didn't ask what Joelle needed. She'd already designed the role only she could fill. Jessica Rosenbaum, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and Joelle's best friend of 25 years. W...

The technology exists. The blood draw is simple. So why won't most oncologists order it? Amy Delson has been treated for cancer four times. She's currently in active treatment. She's also a longtime breast cancer patient advocate — she reviews research grants for the Department of Defense, sits on lab teams asking researchers to do fewer biopsies on patients, and edits the informed-consent forms p...

"You're the only person who truly cares about you." Jeffrey Eisenberg faced three cancer diagnoses during the pandemic: stage 1 colon cancer that turned into a four-month ileostomy after his intestines burst during surgery, large B-cell lymphoma, and then a 2cm lymphoma tumor behind his brain where his MD Anderson oncologists couldn't promise the chemo would cross the blood-brain barrier. He came...

"30 times more women die from breast cancer than need a liver transplant because of UPA. And yet the drug is paused." What if the drug that could prevent your breast cancer is already on pharmacy shelves — and regulators won't let your doctor prescribe it for that purpose? Dr. Sasha Howell, a medical oncologist from Manchester who runs one of the UK's leading breast cancer prevention programs, joi...

A drug that reduces pre-cancerous breast cells has been sitting in U.S. pharmacies for twenty years. OB/GYNs prescribe it every day. Most oncologists have never heard of it. Dr. Abigail Liberty, an OB/GYN at OHSU, attended a cancer prevention conference in Manchester where British researcher Dr. Sasha Howell (next week’s guest) presented findings on anti-progestins — drugs that block the progester...

"If someone would have told me there was a vacuum erection device — I wouldn't have even had to have it in my hand yet. But if I had just known that was there, it might have kept me from having those thoughts." Three men — a stage four prostate cancer survivor dating in his 60s, a gay man navigating anal cancer and an ostomy, and a married man who overheard nurses discussing his own...

"8% of female patients said they would forgo chemotherapy due to fear of hair loss. We actually had one of those patients that we worked with that became not a statistic anymore." Bethany Hornthal, co-founder and executive director of Hair to Stay — the only national nonprofit exclusively funding scalp cooling access for low-income chemo patients — built the infrastructure behind scalp cooling's F...

"The leading cause of non-cancer death in cancer survivors is heart disease. The treatments for cancer may be increasing your probability of getting heart disease.." Dr. Anju Nohria runs the Cardio-Oncology Program at Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women's Hospital. She's one of the few doctors whose entire job is protecting cancer patients' hearts while they fight for their liv...

"The majority of cancer drugs are registered at the dose which is intolerable for the majority of women. It causes a lot of clinical and financial toxicity." Dr. Andrea De Censi has spent his career asking one question: what's the lowest dose that still works? His answer to that question changed how tamoxifen is prescribed—and now he's testing whether a common diabetes drug combined with skipping...

"I found one anchor. It was unique to me." Matthew Zachary was 21, a piano prodigy, when a brain tumor diagnosis stripped him of nearly every bodily function and left him completely alone in a system that had no language for what he was. He went on to build the most successful AYA cancer ecosystem on the planet and now he's starting America's first cancer patient voter bloc. They dive into: Gettin...

"I normalize all my traumas according to my therapist. But seriously — how can you not normalize it? Because this is reality now. It's my normal now." Bill Thach was 33 when he was diagnosed with neuroendocrine carcinoma — a subtype occurring in roughly 1 in 100,000 cancer diagnoses — with a five-month-old daughter at home. He spent over five years managing it alone before finding Ma...

I told my oncologist that treatment's going to have to wait 'cause I'm booked up. And she just looked at me with eight eyes and said, “Valerie, if you don't treat this, this is fatal." Performer and playwright Valerie David has had cancer three times: stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, stage 2 breast cancer, and stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. During chemo and radiation, she journaled about her exp...

"I felt like I had been derailed. We had built our careers over several decades and we knew what the challenges were in building our careers as well. We had to overcome a lot of bias... and when something like this hits you, there's the fear that… Am I slipping in taking care of business?" Patricia Muir was at the peak of her consulting career, three decades of building her business, when breast c...

“I talk about my sparkle and I just felt like… hormone blockers took my sparkle. That cognitive side of it, the lack of desire, feeling just fatigued... during cancer treatment, it was like the last thing that I wanted to do." In this essential conversation, clinical sexologist Richelle Menzies, USA Today bestselling romance author Cara Lockwood, and pharmacologist Dr. Erika Reith (all breast canc...

"Why can't we build a contraceptive that reduces breast cancer risk? That's the way to get rid of breast cancer. I don't want to just keep treating it. I want to prevent it altogether." In this groundbreaking episode, Dr. Laura Esserman, Director of the UCSF Breast Cancer Center, joins Joelle Kaufman to reveal how her 47,000-patient WISDOM study just proved we can eliminate late-stage breast cance...

"Call us. Get into the program and allow us to help you. You need someone there to help you. Cancer is a journey—you've got to have a support system."  In this eye-opening episode, Steve Cain, CEO of UnitedHealthcare California, joins Joelle Kaufman to reveal how insurance companies are transforming from claims processors into active care partners during the most vulnerable moments of a patient's...

“I love the idea of kicking cancer’s ass. It’s what I get up every day to do.” In this powerful and eye-opening episode, Dr. Karen E. Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, joins Joelle Kaufman to reveal how we’re finally turning the body’s own immune system into cancer’s worst enemy. They dive deep into: The three types of immunotherapy reshaping cancer treatment Why 98% o...

Brad Buchanan survived an incurable lymphoma, but the treatment—a stem cell transplant from his brother—almost killed him. His new immune system attacked his body so violently that doctors gave him a 10% survival chance. He went blind for 18 months. His esophagus stopped working. And the paradox? That same immune system is why he’s cancer-free today. As a former English professor, Brad uses writin...

What happens when a blood test shows circulating cancer DNA—but no doctor can find the tumor? Or when a child spends five years being tested, hospitalized, and medicated for a condition that could have been diagnosed in days? Pete Martinez has spent 12 years building AI systems that help geneticists and doctors find answers faster. His platform has already helped 162,000 patients get more accurate...

You never choose the pitch, but you always choose the swing. After 6 months of interviewing top oncologists, resilient survivors, and even my own family, I’ve aggregated the absolute best strategies to help you stop fighting and start winning . In this roundup episode of Kicking Cancer’s Ass , we aren’t just looking back; we are building your game plan. From Dr. Mindy Goldman’s advice on navigatin...

In Part 1, we talked about why the current tools fail many women. Why mammograms miss tumors and why we rely on the “smush test.” It was frustrating, but it was validating. Now, in Part 2 , we turn the page from the problem to the solution. Dr. Peter Kuhn isn’t just analyzing why we miss cancer; he is building the tool to catch it before it even forms a tumor. It’s called The Pink Test...

In this emotional and mind-expanding episode, Dr. Peter Kuhn—a physicist turned cancer researcher—joins Joelle Kaufman to talk about his mission: eliminating the surprise of cancer. They dive deep into: Why current science fails patients (and how to fix it) What AI + physics can teach us about cancer detection The overlooked signals hiding in our blood What you can do right now to help advance res...

What if your worst days didn’t have to be bad? What if you could manufacture a good day, even in the middle of a crisis? In this episode, host Joelle Kaufman shares the “Happiness Tripwire” methodology—the specific strategy she used to turn 12 rounds of chemotherapy into what she calls her “Cancer Obliteration Days”. Joelle explains that while we cannot control the tr...

 When English teacher Lesley Kaminski got the notification “invasive breast cancer” on her Apple Watch mid-class, her world stopped. But what happened next was more than treatment — it was transformation. In this episode, Lesley shares how she went from collapse to control : reframing chemo from something she had to do into something she got to do. You’ll hear how a compassionate nurse naviga...

If your insurance denies your cancer treatment, it can feel terrifying — but a “no” is not the end. Most people don’t know that 75% of insurance appeals win . You have more power than you think. In this episode of Kicking Cancer’s Ass , health advocate and bestselling author Rebecca Bloom explains, in clear and simple steps, how to reverse an insurance denial and get the care you need. Rebecca sha...