0:03

Welcome to Season two of The Next Great

0:05

Podcast. My

0:09

Heart Radio and Tongle have once again teamed

0:11

up to bring you another round of amazing and unique

0:14

voices. We're excited to share these ten

0:16

incredible podcasts with you and need your

0:18

help crowning the winner. Check out the pilots

0:21

and be sure to vote for your favorite at Next Great

0:23

podcast dot com.

0:28

Today's entry's Life Salad by

0:30

Stevie Weiss and Marty Heart. We

0:32

all started out as a collection themselves, and

0:34

though we've since evolved into unique human beings,

0:37

we're all still held to the same arbitrary

0:39

standards about what our bodies should and shouldn't

0:41

look like. We love this concept

0:43

for the way it questions those standards and aims

0:45

to deconstruct the social and political meanings

0:47

of our bodies. Stevie

0:50

and Marty's dedication to body positivity,

0:52

diversity, and mental health awareness, among

0:54

other vastly underdiscussed topics, is

0:57

what makes this show both interesting and necessary.

1:08

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

1:10

multi sacks, undecided and robots.

1:12

You're listening to Life Salad. I'm

1:14

Marty, I'm Stevie, and you're

1:16

listening to the pilot of Life Salad,

1:19

which is part of the Next Great Podcast

1:22

competition from I Heart Radio and

1:24

Tongle Life. Salad tosses together

1:27

a variety of stories and experiences

1:29

where season one we're talking about the human

1:31

body, and obviously we couldn't call the

1:33

show human salad. So from the hair

1:35

on your head or lack thereof, to

1:38

the tips of your toes, your guts,

1:40

your skin, your tips in your nose. Now,

1:42

normally each episode will focus on just one

1:45

specific body part at a time, Like imagine

1:47

an entire hour dedicated to back hair. Maybe

1:50

not that specific, but since we

1:52

are trying to win a contest here for the pilot,

1:54

we bring you a whole bunch of body stories that

1:57

really run the gambit. Today on the show,

1:59

we're talking to it Natalie, we just

2:01

say we will not whale Jessica.

2:05

Cancer runs in my family until

2:07

it runs into me and to a mirror.

2:09

Having scars, either you

2:12

like it's done something really stupid

2:14

along the way, or you've like lived or

2:17

you've like like memorable

2:19

experiences. Now let's get

2:21

right into it. My

2:29

breast cancer story starts when I was eighteen

2:31

years old, and um, you know

2:33

that was back in two thousand three. I

2:36

came up smelling like food. Needed a shower

2:38

before my second job, and as

2:40

I was bathing, I accidentally

2:42

stumbled upon a lump

2:44

in my right breast and about the six

2:46

o'clock position, the bottom

2:49

quadrant, and I thought,

2:51

oh my god, I'm eighteen. This this must

2:53

be cancer. Um.

2:55

I have so much cancer in my family. This

2:58

is got to be what it is. I

3:00

have, you know, two aunts

3:03

on my dad's side of the family who have had cancer.

3:05

UM, paternal grandmother, five

3:08

paternal grand aunts, and my paternal

3:11

great grandmother. I am the fourth generation

3:13

in my family to have breast cancer

3:15

and there's been no known gene mutation.

3:18

So at eighteen years old, when I find this

3:20

lump, I'm thinking, oh my god,

3:22

I have cancer. I

3:25

am a twin and

3:28

my twin and I were born

3:31

ten weeks early, so we

3:34

were supposed to be born on Halloween,

3:36

but we were born in summer

3:39

instead. Um.

3:41

And the thing about Sir Poolsy

3:43

is it's not cause

3:46

um in utul sort of in the it's

3:49

caused by the fact of

3:51

being born early, usually

3:55

down to oxygen

3:57

deprivation and things like that.

3:59

Sort of. It's not like genetic

4:02

it can't be prevented.

4:06

It, so

4:09

I had my biopsy. I

4:11

was officially diagnosed at

4:13

thirty three years old with invasive ductal

4:16

carcinoma stage two

4:18

BE. My lump

4:21

was four point three centimeters

4:24

and I had two diseased

4:26

lymph nodes. I went through

4:28

sixteen rounds of chemotherapy, twenty

4:30

four rounds of radiation, a double

4:32

mestectomy, for which I lived without

4:35

breasts for two years. UM.

4:38

I had a hysterectomy prophylactically,

4:40

which means it's preventative, and

4:43

I had a two phase

4:46

breast reconstruction called deep

4:48

flap, and it's where they take

4:51

fat tissue and blood vessels from

4:53

my abdomen and they used

4:55

that to recreate breasts. I went

4:58

from being essentially UM

5:01

a double amputee, to a double transplant

5:03

recipient with my own uh

5:07

breasts, my own tissue, my own

5:09

body, so like my

5:12

My government initial

5:15

COVID strategy basically amounted

5:17

to it's okay, nobody needs

5:19

to worry because it's only old and disabled

5:22

people that are going to be affected, so

5:25

only they're gonna die, so the rest of us

5:27

are okay, which a is

5:29

not true at all, but also

5:32

quite one did feel

5:35

a bit like a throgle, sacrificial

5:37

lamb, just being

5:39

like thrown to the wall. I

5:42

was driving to meet friends

5:44

who had ended up being friends who are going to surprise

5:46

me at a beach out in the Salma

5:48

area, and an animal ran across

5:50

the street. Or we think, we don't even know what the true

5:52

story is anymore. Swerving happened.

5:55

And then in movies when you see people like flipping

5:57

in their cars and the woo woo woo woo

6:00

whoop, I experienced that as well. Full one.

6:03

Uh So, there are quite a few injuries along the way, but

6:05

one of them was a piece

6:07

of glass that chose to stay in my arm for

6:09

a very long time. Um. Multiple

6:12

attempts at surgery happened. The doctors are currently

6:14

oh for three with it. Um

6:16

So now they have decided after like a lot

6:18

of like cutting and surprise surgeries,

6:21

which I got really excited because you get to like look

6:23

inside your own arm and like see the tissues

6:25

and the muscles being ripped apart and moved and me

6:27

like egging them on. There was a lot of blood everywhere.

6:30

It was quite glorious. Uh

6:32

that the doctors have decided that at this point,

6:35

your two options are either having like a gigantic

6:37

star scar for them to cut through, um

6:40

to potentially be able to find it or accept

6:43

that this is a piece of glass. Le Wil forever

6:45

living you um So now I

6:47

live with Sharpay forever. When

6:49

someone tries to relate

6:51

to you, they will

6:54

often start, you

6:56

know, oh, I'm you know, I'm sorry

6:58

you have cancer. My aunt died of cancer

7:01

like three years ago or

7:03

something like that, and I'm just like, I'm

7:07

really sorry to hear that. And then

7:09

I'm thinking like, well, what kind of

7:11

cancer did she have, what treatments did

7:13

she have? Did I do everything for myself?

7:15

Did she still have a reoccurrence? Like why did she die?

7:18

You know, I'm thinking about those

7:20

things. Um

7:22

So again, I know that people

7:24

are trying really hard to relate to

7:26

you by saying those things,

7:28

but it does, um it's

7:30

really not the best way to empathize.

7:34

I get it like five or six times

7:37

a Dane. People think it's been

7:39

funny and it gets really

7:42

boring, which is um

7:44

some variation on oh,

7:46

very impression to anyone with that What

7:48

should top speak that

7:51

stuff? Because them I have

7:53

a wheelchair to get around, So

7:56

I get it at least like two

7:58

or three times a day. I get some kind of

8:01

variational that and I

8:03

don't mind it from like you little kids, but when

8:05

it's like adults and really

8:08

like and they always looked so pleased

8:10

with themselves, like they're the

8:12

first person ever to come up with them,

8:14

Like I've literally heard this every day of my

8:16

life for about I

8:18

don't know even what now, eighteen years

8:21

however long it was my first.

8:25

And then um, I was actually

8:28

um at a hotel uh

8:31

Bar one night. I was there

8:33

with a group of friends and

8:36

um I was at the end and a

8:38

gentleman came up next to me and sat

8:40

down, and I really I could tell

8:42

he was already inebriated, and I just it

8:45

was a little annoying. I was just kind of

8:47

like keeping him at bay and just giving

8:49

him really like just short answers to kind

8:51

of turn him off to wanting to talk to me,

8:53

just trying to be uninterested as polite

8:56

as possible. And then

8:58

he's like, so what do you do, and and instead

9:01

of telling him, you know, about my day job,

9:03

I said, well, I'm a breast cancer survivor.

9:06

That's what I do. I survive and

9:08

uh he then he's

9:11

like, looks at my chest, and

9:13

says, well, are they real or fake?

9:16

And I look at him and I'm like, I've

9:18

gone through sixteen rounds of chemo, twenty four rounds

9:20

of radiation, a double mistectomy, a hysterectomy,

9:24

and um to phase multi

9:26

flap breast reconstruction. Everything

9:29

about me is real, very

9:32

real. And I just got up and went

9:34

to the bathroom. So, um,

9:37

that's really been the only time someone's asked

9:39

something insensitive. But you

9:42

know, I think, you know, people

9:44

are most of the time, are are well intentioned

9:47

with that stuff. Well,

9:52

it started when I was really quite

9:55

young. In my family.

9:58

I was always I've got choose to stairs, and

10:00

we were always treated the exactly saying.

10:03

So it wasn't until I started school

10:07

that I kind

10:09

of realized, oh, this is weird people

10:12

pointing, whispering, saying

10:16

things. A lot

10:18

of the time people would

10:21

sort of point and whisper and then and I would

10:24

say to them stop

10:26

whispering about me. There would go, oh, we're not, even

10:29

though I could literally see it in front

10:31

of me. One story to sort

10:33

of summing out, I

10:35

would have been about ten, would have been

10:37

in what you guys would probably call

10:40

middle school, and

10:43

my friend had painted

10:45

a picture of me um

10:48

in art class. We've sort

10:50

of done each other. I

10:52

came into school the next day to find

10:55

that her portrait

10:57

had been pinned up in the hallway.

11:00

Her portrait that she drove me. Next

11:02

to it was written, it

11:05

is our school ethos to help

11:08

the needy and that was less fortunate

11:10

than us. So that was a pretty

11:13

um, pretty depressing

11:15

day. I mean I kind of

11:18

I already knew that I wasn't really

11:21

consider the them, but

11:23

to have it actually written out on a wall

11:25

for everyone to see that I was in

11:28

fact on us, that

11:30

was I was interesting. I

11:33

went to the headmaster to complain about

11:35

it, and he couldn't see what my problem was.

11:38

Yeah. So, when I was going through my second

11:40

round of chemotherapy and my body

11:42

was changing, I was losing my hair, I was losing

11:45

my nails, my I had

11:47

my upcoming double mysterchtomy

11:50

approaching, and I

11:54

didn't tell my friends and family at first

11:56

because I was really dealing with the emotions. But

11:58

as my body was changing, I thought, Okay, well,

12:01

I'm not gonna hide under a rock. You

12:03

know, throughout the rest of my cancer diagnosis,

12:06

people are gonna see me, They're gonna ask questions they're

12:08

gonna want to know. So, as I came out to my

12:10

friends on social media and told them that I had

12:13

breast cancer. UM,

12:15

my friends were like, well, how did

12:17

you even know to go get checked or even

12:19

think about it? I said, well, I

12:22

do my monthly self breast exams,

12:24

don't you? And they were like, no,

12:27

no, no, we we don't. And I'm like, wait,

12:30

wait what I've been doing this since I was

12:32

eighteen. Why aren't you doing them? And

12:34

I found out there were three primary reasons.

12:38

Either women UM didn't

12:40

know how to do a self breast exam,

12:43

they were afraid of finding something

12:45

and not sure what to do next,

12:48

Or they weren't comfortable with

12:50

their bodies. So I wanted to do

12:53

something about that UM.

12:55

I started a social media project

12:58

called Feel for Your Life on Facebook

13:00

and Instagram, and I started sharing

13:02

my story there. I started sharing information

13:05

about self breast exams and screenings and

13:07

how to advocate for yourself UM

13:10

and to stand up to medical gas lighting.

13:12

And then actually this year, well

13:15

last year, after Breast Cancer Awareness

13:18

Month, I thought, I want to do something bigger

13:20

with Feel for your Life. I want to reach

13:22

more women and I want them

13:24

to be empowered and equipped

13:27

to uh know about screenings,

13:29

know about self exams, know about their genetic

13:32

history, know about uh

13:34

DE dents breasts and what

13:36

to do about it. So I became the first

13:39

breast cancer patient to create an app to

13:41

show you how to do a self breast exam,

13:43

how to advocate for yourself, how

13:45

to um how

13:48

to set reminders, and how

13:50

to track and monitor your changes so

13:52

that you can take this information to your doctor.

13:55

And then another one is on the top of

13:57

my foot on myself, my right foot,

14:00

because this reminds me of like when I was

14:02

backpacking in Peru. I can't surf

14:04

to save my life. I pretend I'm really good at it, but

14:06

I'm not. And there was an incident

14:08

that I

14:11

someone saw a fin, but they're not

14:13

too sure that they saw a fin, so they yelled

14:16

something and I got distracted because

14:18

I wasn't too confident, and I slipped off

14:20

my surfboard who went underwater, and

14:23

as I was underwater, to surfboard hit

14:25

me in the back of the head and went

14:27

back further down and cut my foot

14:30

at the on a coral somewhere, And

14:32

then I was that pathetic human who

14:35

swam back to shore dragged

14:37

my surfboard, left a trail of blood

14:40

in the sand um and the

14:42

poor Peruvians are just like freaking

14:44

out because there's like blood coming understand

14:46

from this complete stranger who barely understands

14:49

anything they're saying. I was talking with a

14:51

friend of mine about this the other day. You don't see,

14:54

you know, people with disabilities,

14:56

physical disabilities in media,

15:00

and you don't see a lot of them full stop.

15:03

But when you do, the characters

15:05

have usually acquired the disability

15:07

somewhere. The one in my stomach is

15:09

the most embarrassing one. This would have been

15:11

at a summer camp about five

15:14

six years ago maybe, and we set

15:16

up a slip and slide for the campers and

15:18

the kids to go on. Some of the staff

15:21

got a little bit too excited, myself included,

15:23

and it turned into a very aggressive

15:25

form of slip and sliding that at

15:27

some point it turned into like a burn slash.

15:30

There could have been a rock on this tire to

15:32

that as I went down, it

15:34

cut me right above

15:37

the belly button area, like on the stomach. And

15:39

then the slip and sliding had to be canceled

15:41

because it was a mixture of water and

15:43

soap and my blood again. Another

15:45

one of my lovely Twitter friends.

15:49

She got challenged by someone once

15:51

because they didn't believe that the

15:53

same parking spaces needed to be

15:55

April after ten pm

15:58

because they didn't see why any quite

16:01

disabled would be out

16:04

after that time. Not

16:06

an amazing response that we

16:09

disabled, Daniel, We're not wear wolves.

16:12

You know. I am grateful and I'm

16:14

happy, and I always say that I

16:17

hope this is my last surgery with

16:19

cancer. You just kind of always wait

16:21

for the other shoe to drop

16:24

sometimes, um because it's

16:26

like, oh wait, there's more, you know, after the double

16:28

mistacum me, it's like, oh wait, there's more. You're gonna

16:31

have to have radiation, and then thinking

16:33

I'm gonna have surgery. Oh wait, you know, the

16:37

hospitals canceling all surgeries,

16:39

and so anytime you know, I

16:41

have blood work or I have to have a

16:43

scan, you know, and the cancer community

16:46

we call it scanxiety when

16:48

we get nervous because we think something is going to start

16:50

lighting up like a Christmas tree and it's gonna

16:52

require, you know, further testing in

16:54

a biopsy. So I'm grateful

16:57

to be what I think is

16:59

that at the end, and I hope to close

17:02

the chapter on cancer, and

17:04

at the same time, it's just kind

17:07

of I'm cautiously optimistic,

17:09

kind of tiptoeing and walking on eggshells,

17:11

just wondering if something else is

17:14

around the corner, but you know, I'm working

17:16

through it. We want

17:18

to say thanks the Natalie, Jessica and

17:20

Amana for sharing your stories with us. Sure

17:23

well, my name is Jessica and

17:26

I'm a breast cancer survivor. By

17:29

everyone, my lane is naturally

17:31

hipot. I am

17:33

an author of young

17:36

adult fiction. I also happened

17:39

to have a theme call

17:41

share. I'm a mare,

17:44

I'm thirty one, and I just

17:46

gave you a brief synalypsis of what

17:48

my scars look like and where the stories

17:51

came from. The Lifestylead podcast

17:53

covers diverse guests and stories from

17:56

over sharing grandma's to opinionated

17:58

teens and everything in between. Stories

18:00

from all walks of life, any age, gender,

18:03

race, ability, and so on. So if you've

18:05

got a story that you want to share, let us know. And

18:07

more importantly, if you liked the Life Salad

18:10

pilot episode, go vote we can

18:12

keep making more. I'm Marty,

18:14

I'm Stevie, and now over to Millie

18:16

for her take. Milly, what's your favorite body fund

18:19

um um?

18:22

What you call a home?

18:31

Hi. This is Sienna and Leanna from

18:33

Tossed Popcorn, last year's winner of the

18:36

Next Great Podcast. Thank you so much

18:38

for listening to this episode, and be sure to go vote for your

18:40

favorite at Next Great podcast dot com.