Young Lung Cancer Initiative Podcast

Aurora's journey from misdiagnosis to stage four lung cancer diagnosis highlights the challenges and emotional impact of survivorship. The delayed diagnosis, treatment options, and the emotional toll of progression are key themes in her story. Aurora Lucas shares her journey of being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, her experience with radiation treatment, and the emotional impact of the dia...

Mayya also shares the reality of living with metastatic lung cancer while raising two young children. She discusses working with a child life specialist, explaining cancer to a preschooler in age-appropriate language, and why she chooses to let her children see some of the difficult emotions that come with cancer. Finally, Mayya and Leah discuss early progression and short responders, why patients...

Is it menopause... or the cancer treatment? Brain fog, hot flashes, vaginal dryness, joint pain, mood changes, sleep problems... many of these symptoms can be caused by menopause, lung cancer treatment, or both. So how can women tell the difference? Dr. Narjust Florez, thoracic oncologist and co-director of the Young Lung Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Taryn join YLCI's Leah f...

Is it safe to have sex during lung cancer treatment? How do you handle body image after surgery, scars, or hair loss?? Dr. Narjust Florez and Taryn, who lead the Young Lung Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, join YLCI's Leah for an open, judgment-free conversation covering sex, intimacy, body image, and contraception after a lung cancer diagnosis. This episode covers: ✔️ Why sexual he...

A lung cancer diagnosis raises urgent questions about treatment. For young adults, it also raises ones that too often go unspoken: Can I still have children? Is it too late once treatment starts? And whose job is it to bring this up? Host Leah Phillips sits down with Dr. Narjust Florez , thoracic oncologist and co-founder & co-director of the Young Lung Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Ins...

When you're diagnosed with HER2 lung cancer, most people around you have never heard of it. In this final episode, Samantha and Loryn talk about what it meant to find each other and a community that actually understands. They cover where to find other HER2 patients, how social media opened doors that didn't exist before, what YLCI has meant to both of them, and why connection changes how you navig...

Two women with HER2 driven lung cancer open up about what treatment, grief, and living with stage 4 really looks like from the inside. This is what people don't see. Samantha and Loryn were both diagnosed with HER2 lung cancer in their 30s. In this episode they share what their treatment journeys actually looked like, why second opinions changed everything, how a stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis resh...

"I Googled it. It says poor prognosis. It put me in a really dark place." -Samantha Samantha Murrell and Loryn Fadus are two young women living with HER2 mutated ung cancer. In this first conversation, they sit down with YLCI co-founder Leah Phillips to talk about the road to diagnosis- the missed windows, the misdiagnoses, the shock of hearing "stage four," and what they wish they had known from...

In Part 3 of our HER2-driven lung cancer series, Leah Phillips and thoracic medical oncologist Dr. Kyle Concannon (UC Health, University of Colorado) tackle the harder questions. They get into what resistance actually means, the difference between on-target and off-target resistance, why a cancer can sometimes transform into a different type entirely, and the emerging research and combination appr...

Once you know you have HER2 lung cancer, what comes next? In Part 2 of our HER2-driven lung cancer series, Leah Phillips and thoracic medical oncologist Dr. Kyle Concannon (UC Health, University of Colorado) walk through what treatment actually looks like. They cover how first-line decisions are made for early versus advanced disease, where HER2-targeted therapies fit in, how doctors tell whether...

In lung cancer, HER2 can mean different things. In Part 1 of our HER2-driven lung cancer series, Leah Phillips sits down with thoracic medical oncologist Dr. Kyle Concannon (UC Health, University of Colorado) to cover the basics: what a HER2 alteration actually is, the difference between overexpression, amplification, and the exon 20 insertion mutation, why the type matters for treatment, and why...

"We put out the fire. This is the last ember." In Part 3, Mayya Grinberg breaks down how she secured a second opinion with one of the world's leading ALK+ specialists before she needed one, how she navigated the radiation decision, and what no one prepared her for when the side effects hit eight weeks later. If you are navigating treatment decisions with a targetable mutation, this one is for you....

I feel like I'm the tornado that happened to other people" A cancer diagnosis doesn't just change your health.. it changes everything. In Part 2 of 3, Mayya opens up about what it meant to lose her identity as the high-achieving professional, the mom who had it all together. She talks about having to stop breastfeeding because of cancer medication, her mother selling the house she'd lived in for 3...

Mayya went to the doctor with a dry cough, fatigue, and no appetite. She was sent home with an inhaler. She had stage 4 lung cancer. In this episode, she shares her path to a stage 4 lung diagnosis with host and lung cancer patient, Leah Philliups. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:23 — First signs: pregnancy, appetite loss, and a cough that wouldn't quit 1:44 — Going to the doctor and not being bel...

"I completely deflated." When Jessie was told she was "not a candidate" for surgery to remove her primary lung tumor (the "mothership"), she didn't just accept the answer. As a professional producer, she did what she does best: she assembled an "A-Team" of the world’s leading experts to find a path forward. In this powerful conclusion to our three-part series, Jessie shares the "sobering conversat...

"My five-year-old asked if he could watch a show now. My middle daughter wanted to know how this cancer was different from everyone else's." In Part 2 of this 3-part series, Jessie and Leah go deeper into what it actually looks like to live with Stage 4 EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer. Jessie walks through how she told her three kids about her diagnosis. She and Leah discuss the caregiving...

Jessie was 42 when she was diagnosed with stage IV EGFR non-small cell lung cancer but her symptoms had been dismissed for nearly a year. Night sweats, panic attacks, a pneumonia that never fully resolved, and a cough that just wouldn't quit. It wasn't until November that a pulmonologist finally told her, "We should have given you a bronchoscopy yesterday." What followed was five days that changed...

he future of KRAS lung cancer treatment is moving fast ..here is what patients need to know about resistance, clinical trials, and emerging therapies, with thoracic oncologist Dr. Fawzi Abu Rous In the final part of the Young Lung Cancer Initiative KRAS Lung Cancer Biomarker Education Series, Dr. Fawzi Abu Rous of Henry Ford Cancer Institute walks us through the KRAS pipeline beyond G12C, how resi...

In this episode, Dr. Fawzi Abu Rous provides a comprehensive overview of the treatment, monitoring, and progression of KRAS-driven lung cancer. The discussion covers the use of immunotherapy, targeted therapies, and the importance of clinical trials. Additionally, the role of monitoring and the emergence of new therapies are explored in detail. Takeaways KRAS Treatment Overview Monitoring and Prog...

Mirrored EGFR template structure for KRAS podcast description In the premiere of our KRAS Biomarker Series, we're joined by Dr. Fawzi Abu Rous, a renowned thoracic medical oncologist at Henry Ford Cancer Institute, to demystify the biology of a KRAS positive diagnosis. For decades, KRAS was labeled "undruggable" the most common oncogenic driver in lung cancer, yet completely out of reach for targe...

In the final episode of our three-part EGFR Biomarker Series, Leah Phillips of Young Lung Cancer Initiative sits down with Dr. Eric Singhi of MD Anderson Cancer Center to go beyond the basics into the topics EGFR patients ask about most. This conversation covers small cell transformation, leptomeningeal disease (LMD), resistance mechanisms, the role of co-mutations like TP53 and RB1, and the emerg...

How is EGFR driven lung cancer actually treated and monitored? In Episode 2 of the YLCI EGFR Education Biomarker Series, co-founder Leah Phillips sits down with thoracic oncologist Dr. Eric Singhi of MD Anderson to talk through early-stage treatment, adjuvant TKIs, brain MRI surveillance, oligo versus poly progression, and his "chess, not checkers" approach to long-term sequencing. Sponsored by Jo...

In the premiere of our EGFR Biomarker Series, we’re joined by Dr. Eric Singhi , a renowned thoracic oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center, to demystify the biology of an EGFR positive diagnosis. Lung cancer treatment has evolved into the "poster child" for precision medicine, but getting the right treatment starts with one critical step: Comprehensive Biomarker Testing. Dr. Singhi explains why t...

his episode is dedicated to Chad Dunbar, Elizabeth Campbell Moir, & all of those we have lost. "I lost one of my nearest and dearest. Same age. Same cancer. Same mutation." In this third and final episode of Jamie's story, Jamie and Leah have one of the most honest and raw conversations you'll find anywhere about what it really means to live with a metastatic cancer diagnosis. Jamie, living wi...

While often intended as a compliment, Jamie explains why this phrase is actually one of the hardest things for a patient to hear. It can feel dismissive, invalidating the daily side effects, the mental toll, and the incurable reality of her diagnosis. It creates a gap between how the world sees her and how she actually feels. As host and patient states, "the most unhealthy healthy person you’ve ev...