I'm Still Here: Real Conversations About Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer18 Mar

Episode 266: The Loneliness Nobody Talks About with MBC

There's a particular kind of loneliness that comes with long-term metastatic breast cancer — and it's not the loneliness of being sick and scared. It's quieter than that. More structural. More built in.

In this episode, Heather gets honest about something she's been sitting with: feeling alone in a way that doesn't fit the story people expect from someone 27 years into survivorship. She talks about the isolation of living in the middle — too sick for the healthy world, not visibly sick enough for people to really get it. About the financial behindness of watching friends prepare to retire while carrying decades of interrupted plans and illness costs. About the withdrawal she's been doing from the people closest to her, and the comparison and grief underneath it. And about the exhaustion of living at the surface when your interior life is so much deeper than any conversation you're allowed to have.

This isn't a tidy episode. There's no resolution at the end. But it's honest — and if you've been nodding along, that's exactly the point.

You are not too much. You are not imagining it. And you are not alone in feeling alone.

Heather was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at 26 and has now been living with the disease for more than 25 years. Through this podcast she shares perspective, lived experience, and conversations that help people navigate life with metastatic cancer.

Sensational Survivor Series If you have been living with metastatic breast cancer for 10 years or more and would like to share your story on the podcast, you can apply here:

https://forms.gle/6H9K7NXMAeN1QEv87

Listener QuestionsHave a question you'd like answered in a future episode? Submit it through the contact form:

⁠https://heatherjose.com⁠

Connect with HeatherInstagram: ⁠https://instagram.com/heatherbjose⁠Website: ⁠https://heatherjose.com⁠

MusicIntro and outro music for the podcast was created by Heather’s son, Ty. You can find his music here:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/tyjosee

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Episoder(283)

Episode 279: Tammy Eagle Bowling on Light Up MBC and the Campaign Raising Millions for Research

Tammy Eagle Bowling was 41, healthy, and diagnosed out of nowhere after a routine mammogram caught what blood work and a clean physical missed. She'd never even heard the word metastatic before a scan...

23 Sep 33min

Episode 278: When October Doesn't Feel Like Yours

Heather's solo this week, getting ahead of Breast Cancer Awareness Month before the pink shows up everywhere. This one's less a tidy takeaway and more her thinking out loud — the complicated feelings ...

16 Sep 25min

Episode 277: Beyond the Pink with Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky

This week I'm joined by Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky, a medical oncologist specializing in breast and gynecologic cancers, for a conversation about what actually helps people live well with metastatic disea...

9 Sep 30min

Episode 276: We're Back!

Heather and Larry are back after a summer break, and they're kicking off the new season with a little reflection. After 275 episodes, Heather opens up about why the podcast started in the first place ...

2 Sep 26min

Episode 276: Encore Episode: Gillian Burles — 20 Years Living with HER2+ Metastatic Breast Cancer

Gillian Burles was 39 years old when her breast cancer metastasized to her spine — so severely that her T10 vertebra had to be replaced with a titanium alloy cage. She was living in the Northwest Terr...

24 Jun 40min

Episode 275: This Is the Good Stuff

Heather and Larry are back together, and they're catching up on a full couple of weeks. First up: Larry's first time volunteering at a Little Pink Houses of Hope retreat on the Outer Banks — what he e...

3 Jun 26min

Episode 274: Just a Tuesday

What do we actually want when we go into a scan? When we make the hard choices about treatment and energy and how we spend ourselves? We want a Tuesday. An ordinary, unremarkable, nothing-special day ...

13 Mai 25min

Episode 273: You Asked, I Answered

You had questions. Heather answered them. In this episode, Heather pulls from questions submitted on Instagram to talk about where her mets were, the treatments she's been on since her 1998 diagnosis,...

6 Mai 33min