On the one-year anniversary of Kicking Cancer's Ass, host Joelle Kaufman answers the question the show's name keeps provoking: what does it actually mean to kick cancer's ass?
A lot of people hate the warrior language around cancer, and Joelle thinks they have a point. In this solo episode she makes the case that kicking cancer's ass has nothing to do with winning. You can do it and still die of cancer. It's about authorship: deciding what role the disease gets to play in your life and how you respond, on the good days and the hard ones.
Joelle tells her own story: a BRCA1 mutation, a surgery meant to prevent cancer that instead found it, twelve rounds of chemotherapy, and a clinically complete response she refuses to credit to her attitude. Then she plays back the advice of 52 guests, patients, survivors, caregivers, oncologists, scientists, and therapists, who almost never answer with fighting. They talk about staying the quarterback of your care, building a team, being good to your body, and finding the joke.
For anyone newly diagnosed with breast cancer or living with hereditary cancer risk, this is a year of hard-won wisdom in one place.
In this episode, she dives into:
- Why the host agrees with her own critics
- Authorship, not outcome: the real definition
- A surgery to prevent cancer that found it
- VoldaPort, and naming what scares you
- Why she won't credit the good scan to attitude
- 52 guests, and how few said "fight"
- Softness and laughter as survival tactics
- Hope that used to be a poster, now data
You're not done. That's not a failure. The calendar is yours.
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Kicking Cancer's Ass. We never chose the pitch, but we always choose the swing.
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