Healing Spaces
Burning Questions
Cancer treatment takes time. It involves seemingly endless time spent in waiting rooms, hours and hours spent in treatment and then hours of recovery. One’s treatment may take them to a hospital, which is a clinical space. “Grey, windowless spaces,” as Bhairavi’s mother used to call them. Harshly-lit hospital rooms, cramped, crowded and noisy waiting rooms are spaces that leave often leave patients and their family’s feeling overwhelmed, fearful, anxious. Bhairavi believes it doesn’t have to be that way. In this episode of Burning Questions she talks about healing spaces, both...
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Life Affirmed
Burning Questions
A cancer diagnosis can feel life shattering as things spin out of control. But it is possible to slowly take back control and recreate and reshape one’s life, piece by piece. When you don’t let cancer control your life, you gain a sense of agency and ultimately, there is something liberating about this. In this episode, Bhairavi Madhusudhan Shibulal examines the realities of survivorship and what life - and sometimes loss- after cancer means to patients and caregivers. It’s important to humanize cancer, the people coping with the disease, as well as those treating the disease. Listen in...
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Living With Loss After Cancer
Burning Questions
Hope is often what keeps cancer patients and their family’s going. But it can be hard to process the grief, hurt, anger, pain, and despair that comes with a cancer diagnosis and treatment journey. And when the worst happens - how do you live with the loss? Content Warning: This episode contains conversations centred around death, loss and grieving. We advise listener discretion. In this episode of Burning Questions, Bhairavi takes an in-depth look at grief, coping with loss and afterwards. How can one come to terms with the idea that life is still worth living after losing a loved one to...
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Mind, Body and the Big C
Burning Questions
In the first two episodes of Burning Question, Bhairavi examined the many complex emotions a cancer diagnosis inevitably brings. Alongside these emotions, physical changes during the cancer journey often impacts how patients look or how they live their lives, and this in turn can cause severe emotional distress. Some of these changes are visible - hair loss from chemotherapy, fluctuations in body weight, scarring or losing a part of the body from surgery. Other changes like extreme fatigue and infertility may not be visible, but impacts patients and families just as deeply. So how can one...
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Is a Second Opinion Right for Me?
Burning Questions
In episode two of Burning Questions, host Bhairavi Madhusudan Shibulal looks at the aftermath of the cancer diagnosis, when decisions need to be made about the way forward. Patients and their families often need time to process the diagnosis before understanding and weighing their options, and deciding on what the best course of treatment is. But with doctors and healthcare professionals under tremendous pressure, struggling to keep up with staggering caseloads and optimizing resources, time is often presented as something one doesn’t have the luxury of. So where does that leave the patient...
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Cancer and The Things People Say
Burning Questions
One of the most difficult parts of the cancer journey is perhaps at the very beginning: the diagnosis. It leaves patients and their families facing choices, decisions, and feeling overwhelmed. They want answers, reassurance, empathy and compassion. But are these things all healthcare professionals are able to provide? And what happens when even friends and family withdraw from them, unsure of what to say or how to help? In this first episode of Burning Questions, host Bhairavi Madhusudan Shibulal speaks to cancer survivors and caregivers about what went through their mind when they were told...
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Burning Questions - Trailer
Burning Questions
Burning Questions is a podcast that features fearless conversations about cancer - a show where we talk about the things we, as a society, usually don’t talk about when it comes to life with cancer. Hosted by Bhairavi Madhusudhan Shibulal, Founder and Director of Solis Health. For more information on Solis Health you can reach us at or find us on social media at
info_outlineA cancer diagnosis can feel life shattering as things spin out of control. But it is possible to slowly take back control and recreate and reshape one’s life, piece by piece. When you don’t let cancer control your life, you gain a sense of agency and ultimately, there is something liberating about this.
In this episode, Bhairavi Madhusudhan Shibulal examines the realities of survivorship and what life - and sometimes loss- after cancer means to patients and caregivers.
It’s important to humanize cancer, the people coping with the disease, as well as those treating the disease.
Listen in as an oncologist shares his own experience of how healthcare professionals balance the incredible demands of their profession - the highs, lows and everything in between - with their own emotions, indeed their own humanity, so that they are able to deliver the best possible care.
Thanks to Aashna Suvarna, Chinmayi Arakali, Bennita Ganesh, Kaveri Ganapathy Ahuja, Amrita Rao and Oona Yadav for sharing their stories. Thanks to Dr Vijay Agarwal for sharing his perspectives with us.
Burning Questions is produced by Solis Health.
For more information visit https://solis.health . Follow us on Twitter @Solisforyou and on Instagram @solis.health and LinkedIn @Solis Health. You can send in your questions and comments to [email protected].