There are moments when you realize that caring about someone is not the same as knowing how to help them.
For Andrea Katz, that moment came in 2013, when her mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile ducts. It was a disease Andrea and her family had never heard of. Information was difficult to find. The diagnosis moved fast. Her mother died 44 days later.
That experience changed the direction of Andrea’s life.
Today, Andrea is an integrative nutrition health coach, founder of Best You Nutrition, and a member of the GI Cancers Alliance Patient and Caregiver Advisory Board. She specializes in digestive health, but her work is also about something larger: helping people understand that they can participate actively in their own care and in the care of the people they love.
Her story is a reminder that advocacy does not always begin with a title, a nonprofit, or a big public platform. Sometimes it begins with staying up late, looking for answers, and deciding that you are going to ask the questions others may be afraid to ask.
The questions that needed asking
After Andrea’s mother was diagnosed, Andrea did what many caregivers do. She went looking for information.
She researched cholangiocarcinoma, treatment options, clinical trials, surgeries, and whether there might be care available outside their immediate area. She was not trying to second-guess the medical team. She wanted to walk into the next appointment informed enough to ask better questions.
Her father was hesitant.
Like many people, he had grown up with the belief that doctors are authority figures and that asking too many questions could somehow be seen as challenging them. Andrea understood the concern, but she also knew that her mother’s care was too important to let fear keep the family quiet.
“I wanted to learn as much as I could in a short amount of time so that the next morning, when we had an appointment with her physician and the oncology team, I had some informed questions,” she said.
Andrea came to the appointment with about eight questions. Her father told her she should not ask them. But when she asked the oncologist whether he had time to talk, the answer was yes.
The doctor did not take offense. He answered what he could, promised to follow up on what he did not know in the moment, and told Andrea’s father that he wished more families came to appointments with those kinds of questions.
That matters.
Too many patients and caregivers hold back because they do not want to appear difficult, uninformed, or disrespectful. But asking questions is not the same as questioning a clinician’s expertise. It is a way to understand the choices in front of you and to make sure the care plan reflects the person living through it.
Andrea put it simply: “Nobody cares more about your health than you.”
That is not an indictment of doctors, nurses, or loved ones. It is a reality of healthcare. Clinicians have many patients. Families have their own fears and responsibilities. The patient, or the person closest to them, is the one living in the body, managing the symptoms, and carrying the day-to-day impact of the diagnosis.
Being an active participant can help make sure important details do not get lost.
From loss to a new direction
Andrea had always been interested in health. She grew up as an athlete and earned her first degree in psychology. But after losing her mother, her curiosity about one rare gastrointestinal cancer expanded into a deeper interest in digestive health.
She went back to school and became a certified integrative nutritionist. Her psychology background did not disappear. It became part of how she sees nutrition and wellness.
Food is not just food.
It is family tradition. It is comfort. It is routine. It can be stress, reward, fear, culture, and memory all at once. That is why advice that sounds simple on paper can be difficult to apply in real life.
“If it was that easy, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic in North America,” Andrea said. “We wouldn’t have heart disease like we have or diabetes like we have.”
Her work focuses on digestive health, but she does not treat the gut as an isolated part of the body. She sees it as connected to mood, sleep, stress, immune health, skin conditions, appetite, and the way people feel in their everyday lives.
People often come to her wanting help with one specific concern. Maybe they are not sleeping well. Maybe they are stressed, experiencing digestive symptoms, struggling with energy, or trying to make changes after a diagnosis. Andrea starts by helping them look at the bigger picture.
Instead of chasing one symptom at a time, she asks a question many people do not expect:
How is your gut?
That question can open a different kind of conversation. It can help people see that their body is interconnected, and that changes in one area may affect another. It can also remind people that health is not only about reacting when something goes wrong. It is also about learning what helps us feel better, function better, and advocate for ourselves before a small concern becomes a bigger one.
Advocacy is active participation
When I asked Andrea what advocacy means to her, she did not give a formal definition.
She talked about being an active participant in your care.
That can look different for everyone. It may mean bringing written questions to an appointment. It may mean asking a doctor to explain a medical term in plain language. It may mean researching a diagnosis, finding a specialist, keeping track of symptoms, or asking for a second opinion.
For a caregiver, it may mean speaking up when the person you love is too exhausted, overwhelmed, or ill to speak for themselves.
Andrea knows that role personally. She helped advocate for both of her parents during their cancer experiences. She also knows that people can be grateful for their medical teams while still asking hard questions.
Her mother’s doctors, nurses, and oncologists were, in her words, “fantastic.” Advocacy was not about assuming anyone did not care. It was about making sure her mother’s family understood the options and could participate in decisions.
That distinction is important for patients, caregivers, and the organizations serving them.
Healthcare professionals and organizations do not need patients and families to arrive with all the answers. They need to make it clear that questions are welcome. They need to create room for people to say, “I do not understand,” or “Is there another option?” or “What should we be paying attention to?”
Information matters, but people also need the confidence to use it.
Keeping her mother’s story visible
Andrea continues to speak about her mother because she does not want her memory to disappear into a diagnosis few people recognize.
During Cholangiocarcinoma Awareness Month this past February, Andrea reached out to media outlets in Canada to help raise awareness. The resulting coverage brought patient and caregiver voices into a national conversation. It also helped connect her with the GI Cancer Alliance, where she now serves alongside patients and caregivers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Africa.
The group is working to improve awareness, information, testing, and advocacy across 12 gastrointestinal cancers.
When Andrea’s mother was sick, finding support and accurate information was much harder. There was no Canadian foundation she could turn to at the time. She found a U.S. newsletter and a Facebook group, and that was about it.
More resources exist today, but low-awareness cancers still leave too many people feeling isolated and underinformed.
Andrea’s story shows why sharing matters. One person’s willingness to speak about a difficult experience can help another family find language, resources, questions, or community they did not know existed.
You never know where a story will lead.
Being there without adding pressure
If Andrea had a magic wand, she said she would want to see a cure for cancer. But while research continues, she also wants people to better understand how to support someone facing illness.
That support is not always as simple as asking, “What do you need?”
The question comes from a good place, but someone managing cancer, caregiving, grief, treatment, or uncertainty may not have the energy to identify a task, make a plan, and delegate it to someone else.
Andrea hopes we can become better at being present without making people do more work to receive help.
Sometimes support looks like showing up with food. Sometimes it means offering a ride, checking in without expecting a reply, sitting quietly, or asking a more specific question: “Can I take care of dinner on Thursday?” Sometimes it is simply letting someone know that they do not have to carry everything alone.
Andrea describes herself as strong, but also sensitive. She said people may see the confidence on the outside and miss how deeply things affect her.
That is true for many of us.
We may look capable while carrying more than people realize. We may be the person asking questions, supporting others, or appearing calm in the room. That does not mean we are not scared, tired, emotional, or in need of support ourselves.
Andrea’s work in digestive health, caregiving, and GI cancer advocacy comes back to the same idea: pay attention. To your body. To the questions you have been afraid to ask. To the people you love. And to the stories that can help someone else feel less alone.
To learn more about Andrea Katz and her work, visit Best You Nutrition or follow @bestyounutritioncoach on Instagram and Facebook.
Listen to the full episode of Advocacy at Work on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
