Our MBC Life

Send us Fan Mail On August 6, Lisa Laudico, the creator and driving force behind the podcast series, died peacefully at the age of 56, surrounded by her family. It was an enormous loss for the MBC community, felt nowhere more keenly than among the Our MBC Life team and Share staff and volunteers. In this episode of our podcast, Lisa’s friends, family, and colleagues remember her amazing life—and c...

Send us Fan Mail Introducing Season 5 of the Our MBC Life Podcast.  The podcast's  senior producers and co-hosts Victoria Goldberg and Natalia Green join Anne Woodward  in a conversation about the upcoming season 5 of the podcast and some new things the team is  doing and  exciting details for very special giveaways for the Our MBC Life merchandise. The podcast team is  still grieving the pas...

Send us Fan Mail The biggest cancer conference in the world,  the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2022 annual meeting, was back in person after 2 years online during the COVID pandemic. Some of the research highlights presented this year are “practice-changing.” and received a rarely given standing ovation. What is  practice changing in MBC?  Get the answer to this  question and a lot...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the third and final episode in our series on the potential of psilocybin-assisted therapy to relieve the existential distress of, and help us live as well as possible with, metastatic breast cancer.  In this episode, we speak with two women taking action to increase legal access to psilocybin-assisted therapy in the United States. The first is a patient living with MBC...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the second episode in our series on the potential of psilocybin-assisted therapy to help us live as well as possible with metastatic breast cancer. In this episode, we talk to two women with breast cancer who had legal access to psilocybin-assisted therapy. Journalist and writer Erica Rex participated in a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins after being diagnosed with early...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to our series on the potential of psilocybin-assisted therapy to help us live as well as possible with metastatic breast cancer.  Distress, including anxiety, depression, and loss of meaning, is a common side effect for those of us living with MBC.  Psilocybin-assisted therapy has been tested and found effective in relieving distress among advanced cancer patients but is n...

Send us Fan Mail How does one even begin to bring up the topic of metastatic breast cancer to a child? In this third episode of our MBC & Parenting series, we’ll talk to three experts that can give us some insight and guidance on how to talk with our children in the most open and safe ways.  First up, Co-host Martha Carlson and Senior Co-host Victoria Goldberg speak with Dr. Leeza Park, psychi...

Send us Fan Mail What does a metastatic diagnosis mean for our children? In this second episode of our MBC & Parenting series, we talk to the kids of those women in our community who are thriving with metastatic breast cancer and those kids whose mothers have died because of it.  Our interviewees range from ages 6 to 29, lending their diverse voices to the conversation and their unique perspec...

Send us Fan Mail Brain metastases are unfortunately an all too  common and devastating complication of breast cancer.  The blood-brain barrier has long been a key obstacle to developing effective systemic therapies; however, newer agents are showing signs of overcoming this  challenge. Dr. Nancy Lin explains in this Road to a Cure episode, hosted by Victoria Goldberg. Thanks for listening! More in...

Send us Fan Mail Remember all those birth and parenting books we poured over as newly minted parents? Well, I bet if we checked, there would be nothing on how to parent while living with MBC. This episode is one of three in our series of “MBC & Parenting,” where we will address all things related to being a parent living with a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis. In later episodes, we’ll share...

Send us Fan Mail About 80% of breast cancers are ER+, meaning that the cancer cells have estrogen receptors, and estrogen is likely to make them grow. Here’s the good news/bad news story for ER+ MBC patients. First, the good news: there are a number of effective medications that either reduce available systemic estrogen or block its ability to stimulate cancer growth. The bad news: over time, ER+...

Send us Fan Mail In the inverted language of MBC, “unremarkable” is something we all aspire to, and “progression” is something we dread. Progression means that our current medication regimen is no longer working and cancer is spreading and/or growing. It means that treatment is likely to change—bringing new drugs with new side effects. It also means that we’ve exhausted one of the available treatm...

Send us Fan Mail This episode has been a long time in the making.  We knew that to cover our varied perspectives on grief, loss, and end-of-life, a discussion on faith traditions would be an important part. The world around us infers that talking about death is not the same as talking about the joy of birth or the happiest of life's milestones. Certainly this unspoken “sweeping under the rug”...

Send us Fan Mail Before our MBC diagnosis, many of us saw our doctors once or twice a year or even less often. And most visits were likely routine check-ups or focused on a particular issue with a relatively straightforward solution. But MBC changes all that. It throws each of us into an unfamiliar world--with its own language, new and complex information shared in high stakes appointments and a r...

Send us Fan Mail How does one do things right at the end of life?  There are many ways to answer this question, as varied as all of us.  In this episode, we continue with our Grief, Loss, and End-Of-Life series.  Co-hosts Shonte Drakeford, Ashley Fernandez, Natalia Green, and Lisa Laudico speak with Julie McFadden, aka Hospice Nurse Julie; Jennifer O’Brien, author of Hospice Doctor’s Widow; Cal Ca...

Send us Fan Mail This is a new stop in our ongoing series Road to a Cure. From the start, our goal for this series was not only to educate and give hope to every listener  but also to ensure that  each of these special interviews feels like an intimate conversation with our smartest friend who also happens to be an oncologist researcher.  Co-hosts Victoria Goldberg and Dr. Paula Jayne sit down wit...

Send us Fan Mail All of us have experienced a wide range of loss and grief from the last 2 years of life under a pandemic.  In this second installment of our focus on grief and Loss, host Lisa Laudico speaks with leading social scientist, family therapist, professor, and writer Dr. Pauline Boss about all of her research and her latest book, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic...

Send us Fan Mail The future of personalized care for those living with MBC is already here, and it is happening in Kansas City, Missouri. Dr. Timothy  Pluard,  Medical Director of  the Kansas City's  Saint Luke's  Koontz Center for Advanced Breast Cancer  is with us today.  We'll ask him how he and his team create an individualized, completely comprehensive plan for each woman. More...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to our premiere episode of Season 4!  We wanted to bring you something very special and our guest, Lara MacGregor certainly delivers on that and more. Host Lisa Laudico spoke with Lara in November of last year.  In 2012, Lara MacGregor founded Hope Scarves which to date has sent over 20K scarves to people facing cancer in every state in the US and 29 countries around the w...

Send us Fan Mail Join Co-host Sheila Johnson for a very special panel in honor of Black History Month.  Sheila speaks with Rev. Dr. Tawana Davis, Ricki Fairley, Kelle Southern, and Stephanie Walker.  This wide-ranging conversation is one not to miss as we dig into what it is like to be a Black woman seeking medical treatment for breast cancer or metastatic breast cancer and what these incredible w...

Send us Fan Mail Learn about the most recent information released at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium regarding metastatic breast cancer research with Dr. Peter Schmid, Professor of Cancer Medicine at Barts Cancer Institute in London, England. Dr. Schmid will provide a comprehensive update and answer your questions about these new developments. More info is available on our website w...

Send us Fan Mail  Last year in October,  SHARE and MBC advocate living with brain mets, Lianne Kraemer,   hosted two brilliant, young clinicians from Moffitt for  a discussion on the management of breast cancer brain metastases.  Today, we are bringing you this webinar with additional commentary.  AND we will let you in on a little secret...this episode is a small glimpse into how the work we are...

Send us Fan Mail Musa Mayer is known to many in the art world as a steadfast manager of her father, Philip Guston’s foundation, and as the writer of two well-received books about his life and art.  But for those of us in the world of tumor markers and CT scans, Musa is a legend for different reasons.  Host Lisa Laudico speaks with Musa about her life as an advocate for individuals living with MBC...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the seventh stop in our series, Road to a Cure. Our goal is not only to educate and give hope to every listener but also to ensure each of these special interviews feels like an intimate conversation with our smartest friend who also happens to be an oncologist researcher.   Co-hosts Lisa Laudico and Ellen Landsberger talk with Sarat Chandarlapaty, MD, PhD,   a leading...

Send us Fan Mail  The Season of Giving is upon us. Purely by chance, we may be starting a new tradition here on the Trailblazer series - guests bearing gifts.  This gift will be symbolically unwrapped during this interview with this month’s Trailblazer - national nonprofit United for HER and Susan Weldon, Founder and CEO. We’re so happy you joined us! If this conversation resonated with you please...