When someone else tells your story (and gets it right)
My conversation with Dr. Timothy J. Hayes on On Your Mind went places I didn't expect.
There’s something different about being interviewed by someone who actually listens.
I’ve done a lot of podcast appearances since From Patient to Advocate launched in March, and most of them follow a predictable arc. The host skims the book description, asks a few surface-level questions, and we wrap up in 20 minutes. That’s fine. I understand it. Everyone’s busy.
But my recent conversation with Dr. Timothy J. Hayes on On Your Mind was something else entirely.
We went places I didn’t expect to go. We talked about what it felt like to be told there were no options, and what it took to refuse that answer. We talked about mental health in survivorship, which is still one of the most underdiscussed parts of the cancer experience. And we talked about something I find myself navigating constantly: what do you do with the weight of losing people in this community?
That last part, I think about it a lot. When you’re an advocate long enough, loss becomes part of the job. People you’ve walked alongside, people who fought just as hard as you did, people who deserved more time. I’ve developed a framework for how I hold that grief without letting it hollow me out, and I shared it openly in this conversation in a way I haven’t in many other interviews.
We also got into the living donor liver transplant path I pursued, a chapter of my story that a lot of people don’t know, and what it truly means to become the “general manager” of your own care. That concept is at the heart of the book, but hearing it out loud in conversation, I was reminded why it matters so much. Patients are not passive recipients. We are the ones who have to hold the whole picture together.
If you’ve been wanting to get a feel for the book before diving in, or if you just want to hear this work in conversation form, I think this episode is a good place to start.
Or find On Your Mind with Dr. Timothy J. Hayes wherever you listen to podcasts.
From Patient to Advocate: Turning Survivorship Into Impact is available now on Amazon. If it’s resonated with you, a review goes a long way, and sharing this post with someone who might need it means even more.