MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast

MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. For a free consultation, visit Dandell.com.

Googling “what to eat after a cancer diagnosis” can send you into a panic spiral fast. One page says cut all sugar, another says buy a shelf of supplements, and somehow you’re supposed to do that while managing appointments, side effects, and real life. We wanted a clear, evidence-based voice, so we sat down with Nicole Andrews, a registered dietitian who specializes in oncology nutrition, to talk...

A mesothelioma diagnosis doesn’t just change a treatment plan, it rearranges an entire family’s life. We talk with seasoned members of a mesothelioma care team about the moments that hit hardest right after diagnosis and the quiet, practical choices that help patients and caregivers keep going when everything feels urgent. We dig into the real-world stressors families face beyond medical care: tra...

Filing for VA benefits after a mesothelioma diagnosis feels like the obvious first move but it can be the wrong move if you don’t understand how asbestos exposure is argued across systems. We sit down together and walk through the real-world “should I file?” decision, especially for veterans who served for a few years and then spent decades in high-risk civilian jobs like shipyards, refineries, bo...

You can do everything “right” and still get a life-changing diagnosis. Linda Chitwood is a retired RN, longtime nurse educator, and the author of Fear To Faith and she joins us to share how her husband Lenny was diagnosed with mesothelioma despite an outdoors career, no smoking, and no obvious single-source exposure. What started as an unusual cough turned into a moment that stopped her cold: she...

A single, quiet moment can change everything: a nurse listens to her husband’s lungs and hears nothing on one side. From there, life moves fast. We’re joined by Linda Chitwood, an RN, longtime nurse educator, and author of Fear To Faith, to share how her family faced a mesothelioma diagnosis that didn’t “make sense” on paper and what they did next. We talk about asbestos exposure that isn’t obviou...

Mesothelioma commercials make it sound like there’s one easy path to compensation, but the real work happens in the details most people never see. We sit down with Leslie Cooper, a mesothelioma investigator with 23 years of experience and roughly 1,000 client interviews, to explain how a strong case actually gets built from the first in-home meeting forward. We talk through why mesothelioma is rar...

One missed deadline can wipe out a mesothelioma claim, even when the exposure happened 30 or 40 years ago. We talk about the statute of limitations in mesothelioma cases and why the clock is so unforgiving once a diagnosis arrives. Depending on the state, you may have as little as one year to file and if you pass that limit by even a second, the opportunity can be gone. We also get personal. Larry...

A mesothelioma diagnosis can make everything feel urgent and unreal at the same time, and the hardest part is often not knowing what to do first. We sit down with Kathleen Bono and Sarah Bono, a mother-daughter team who have spent more than a decade meeting hundreds of mesothelioma families face to face, often days after diagnosis or loss. They share what actually helps when a stranger walks into...

A cough. A pain along the ribs. Getting winded on the walk to the mailbox. Those small changes can be the first hints of something much bigger for people with a past asbestos exposure, and they’re the moments that still stick with us after talking with Larry Gates. We sit down with Larry to hear the story of his father, a World War II veteran who worked for decades at a Shell refinery in Pasadena,...

Mesothelioma caregivers provide an average of 4+ years of full-time support — and 70% report that the emotional toll remains raw decades later. In this episode of MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast, host Dave Foster — Executive Director of Patient Advocacy at Danziger & De Llano with 18 years of experience — and Anna Jackson , Director of Patient Support, talk with Marilyn Fake, a mesothelioma vic...

Over 80% of mesothelioma patients are initially misdiagnosed. For those who reach a specialist center, the work that happens after surgery often decides the outcome. In this episode of MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast, host Dave Foster — Executive Director of Patient Advocacy at Danziger & De Llano with 18 years of experience — sits down with Lisa and Ellie Erickson, registered nurses with 30+ y...

Episode Title From Grief to Advocacy: How One Caregiver's Photo Album Changed a Senator's Mind Episode Description A mesothelioma caregiver's photo album—with no written words—moved a U.S. Senator to tears and earned her a spot at a national press conference. Marilyn Fake's journey from Capitol Hill advocate to hospital emergency department technician reveals how caregiving tra...

Episode Description: Mesothelioma patients given 6-12 months to live sometimes survive years longer — but what does that journey actually look like for the families who walk it with them? In this episode of MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast, Anna Jackson — Director of Patient Support at Danziger & De Llano with 15+ years of experience helping mesothelioma families — sits down with Marilyn Fake, a...

Texas Asbestos Exposure: Refineries, Legal History & One Family's Story Episode Description Six of the top oil refineries in the United States are located in Texas—and refinery workers, construction crews, and even their families have paid the price with mesothelioma diagnoses decades later. In this episode of MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast, host Dave Foster—Executive Director of patient...

What does life look like when one lung has to do the work of two? We sit with Katherine Keyes for a candid, hopeful, and deeply practical conversation about rebuilding a life after mesothelioma—physically, mentally, and socially. No platitudes, just real tools: how to pace exercise without crashing, taper pain meds and oxygen safely, and design a “new normal” that protects energy while making room...

Episode 6: Katherine Keyes — Life After Lung Removal Surgery The median survival for pleural mesothelioma with treatment is 18-31 months—yet Katherine Keyes was diagnosed in 2007 and is still thriving 17 years later. In this episode of MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast, host Dave Foster—Executive Director of patient advocacy at Danziger & De Llano with 18 years of experience helping mesothelioma...

Katherine Keys Part 4: Episode Description MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast Mesothelioma patients who undergo lung-sparing surgery face an average hospital stay of 3-4 weeks—and the recovery journey requires both exceptional medical care and fierce self-advocacy. In Part 4 of her survivor story on MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast, host Dave Foster—Executive Director of patient advocacy at Danziger &am...

"They Called Her Family to Say Goodbye: Katherine Keys' Mesothelioma Surgery and 18-Year Survival (Part 3)" Katherine Keys was given 12-18 months to live after her pleural mesothelioma diagnosis. More than 18 years later, she's the longest documented pleural mesothelioma survivor in the world. In this final episode of her three-part interview, Katherine describes her extrapleur...

Katherine Keys was given one year to live. Eighteen years later, she's the longest-surviving mesothelioma patient to undergo extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP)—a surgery so aggressive that European studies concluded it wasn't worth performing. In Part 2 of this two-part episode of MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast , host Dave Foster —Executive Director of patient advocacy at Danziger & De...

The median survival for pleural mesothelioma is 18-31 months with treatment—yet Katherine Keys has survived for 18 years, making her the longest-known survivor of this aggressive asbestos-related cancer. In this first episode of a two-part series on MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast, host Dave Foster —Executive Director of patient advocacy at Danziger & De Llano with 18 years of experience helpin...

Only about 3,000 Americans are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year—and the average patient sees three doctors before receiving an accurate diagnosis. Knowing what to do in those critical first weeks can change everything. In the very first episode of MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast , host Matthew Bertram sits down with Paul Danziger —founding partner of Danziger & De Llano with over 30 years...