Season Two Finale on ACTIVISM

I'd hoped to make season two an even 20 episodes again, but there's more important work to be done right now....

 

Transcript: 

Well, I had hoped to have three more episodes before closing for the summer, but I had a long month and a half off after my dad's passing, and I didn't get back on until last, uh, two weeks ago. And in the meantime, our country seems to be in quite a bit of turmoil. Our world seems to be in quite a bit of turmoil and I don't feel comfortable kind of moving merrily along on my path, just ignoring that at this point in time.

I've always been an activist, at least at heart. I have only been an activist actively since I was about 30, when I adopted my daughter, but. I think I was meant to be an activist 'cause I picked it up and ran with it. And, uh, so I feel like that's where I need to pour my efforts right now.

A lot of heartbreaking things going on in our country. A lot of shock and awe, which is just part of the plan with this administration, but also just legitimate, heartbreaking. Things happening. A US center senator in California was thrown to the ground by the FBI in his own federal building in his own state after having been invited there by the feds.

And, it just seems particularly interesting that they invited him there and provoked him to speak and, um, speak the truth and then threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. That I just can't get over that, that is like so rattling to me that I can't talk about anything else right now. And today I'm recording on Saturday, the day before this is going live.

And today is No King's Day, otherwise known as Trump's birthday and, Flag Day and the 250th anniversary of the military or the army. A lot of things today. It's a, it's a very momentous day and I've already been to one demonstration and I'm headed out in an hour to go to another one. And that's what's giving me life right now.

I can't even talk about breast cancer advocacy because I've gotta get out in the streets and do the thing that brings me hope. Um, but I wanted to share, for those of you who are intentionally ignoring the news the way that I did up until a few months ago, I wanted to share some of the things I've been learning.

That do affect us in all of this as breast cancer survivors and patients. And I think the most upsetting thing to me is this, um, what they're calling the big beautiful bill in Congress and, um, all of the damage it will do to Medicare and Medicaid patients. We've already seen a lot of our breast cancer research funds go away.

They're gonna be going away permanently in the fall, but they're starting to dwindle already now. And I, I would encourage you to not give up on breast cancer research and do what you can to contribute to research through organizations like the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Komen and other local research, uh, providers so that we can keep as many scientists in our country as possible because a lot of them are already leaving for Europe, where they'll be paid to do what they're good at.

But I also wanna talk about the VA. Uh, the fact that VA is slated to lose 83,000 employees and the VA already serves breast cancer patients really poorly right now, they are stretched thin on the budget that they have right now. And so just imagine 83,000 employees going away Our veterans who, largely because of their service in the military, are being exposed to the toxins that cause breast cancer are going to be left out in the rain, out in the cold and not served sufficiently at all.

And that is really tragic to me. I did wanna say one thing that I was hoping to say in this episode, the episode that followed my interview with Nanette. Uh, before I go for the summer, I wanna say, uh, there was a reference in my interview with Nanette where I kind of was shocked and showed my shock very candidly.

And, um, that was because I had just read, a review of, of trial, of studies, making it clear that CT scans are extremely dangerous for us cancer patients and for people in general, especially when they're performed over and over again in close proximity, like within a year of each other. So I was really shocked to hear that she got regular CT scans as a part of her trial, and I think that's pretty common.

Trials are there to see if drugs are working, and the way to see if drugs are working is scans. Um, and CT scans are among the best. And so of course trials are gonna be set up and designed to require a lot of scans. I think. It's really hopeful to me that, um, we still have some research money here in the US for breast cancer and the research money that we do have still here in the US is the kind that, requires things like patient involvement in studies.

And I just became a patient advocate on a, on a study myself that hasn't been funded yet. Hopefully it will be funded, but it's, it's in the application process for funding. Going to a different source than the national, the federal funding that's been stripped away. But, um, I think it's really important that, that we as patients are advocating for things like less toxic scanning because based on.

Results of studies like this, which I will reference. I have, actually, I'll just point you to my, my Substack. I have a, a paid substack that is for my clients only and it's just, a subscription service. But I do every once in a while have posts on it that are free. And so I'll just point you to that where I posted, uh, a free reference to this.

Um. Review a systematic review of studies that shows how dangerous CT scans are for cancer. And that is at cleanupafterbreastcancer.substack.com. And it's not the last post that I made, but it's the second to last post that I made, and that's why I responded to Nanette with such shock at, at hearing that she had CT scans every six months.

I think as patient advocates who sit on trials on the boards of trials, we need to advocate for less of that kind of toxicity now that we know just how toxic it is. So that's my one little breast cancer plug for today. Um, but I also wanna tell you about some other things that I've been thinking about in the last week or so as I'm trying to.

Discover what my involvement in on the national situation will be. I really liked, I, I always love Heather Cox Ri Richardson, which she is, is kind of the most famous person on Substack. So since, since I moved all my socials over to Substack and all of my videos and, and audio over here to podcast, um.

She's been someone that I've really been enjoying listening to, and she's a political historian. Um, her main job is as a history professor, and she's been a really good general public lay educator lately on both substack YouTube, so I hope you'll check her out, but she had a. A discussion a couple days ago with Pete Buttigieg, who was just remarkably hopeful.

He has this ability to get up out of the current circumstances and see the big picture, the long term picture, like Heather Cox Richardson is looking into the past long term learning from all the lessons of the past, and Pete Buttigieg seems to be a, like a future historian kind of a "Futur-orian," where he's able to look at the big picture and see where we might end up.

That's hopeful as a result of what we're going through now and. Both of them were saying that yeah, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Um, Heather was saying that the next three months are pivotal, and that's why I really wanna take the next three months off and do everything I can to restore our democracy.

It's already backslidden massively in the last couple of months, but I wanna pour myself into that as an activist. But, but Pete was saying that yeah, it'll get. Worse before it gets better, but when it gets better, it might get way better. Like it could also just get way better. 'cause we've had a lot of really icky stuff in Washington.

I mean, people are pretty disoriented with both sides of the political spectrum for good reason because our leaders have been bought out. Like they've, they've been. Pretty much just thinking about themselves in a lot of ways. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And so if we can kind of have a, a fresh start and kind of a renewed spirit, um, and cut down some of the traditions of callousness in, in politics, um, and, and money grubbing in politics, once we get past this like.

Oligarchy problem and the billionaires being the only ones that seem to have a voice right now. Um, I think, you know, we can have a lot of really grassroots leaders coming up from the states that are much more effective at caring about the little guy than the current folks are. So that was really helpful and I encourage you to go and, and listen to that on Heather Cox Richardson's Substack channel.

Uh, I think that's helpful for everyone. And the other thing that's really hopeful for me on a daily basis is that I am associating myself with not a party, not the Dems or the Republicans. I grew up in a Republican household, um, staunchly Republican and around pretty much all Republican people. And you know, for the last 20 years I've been a, a staunch progressive, sometimes third party, sometimes democrat, but.

I am so in love with this organization that I am leading with that I'm on a steering committee for locally called Indivisible. If you haven't heard of it, go and look it up. It's two young people, husband and wife who worked in the Obama administration and, um, learned not just from Obama how to do things, but learn from.

The icky, ugly tea party folks how to organize, and they have been organizing since 2016. Not just Dems, but Republicans too. People who are fed up with the way that things are going on both sides. And, uh, they wanna bring us together, and that's the word, indivisible. We, we need to stand together as a country and not be so divided, which we are because of Facebook, you know, because of social media.

We're getting so polarized and because of COVID and all the things. But, um, these young people, Ezra and Leah, they're just so inspiring to me because they are breaking down those walls and there is a, a new indivisible group popping up in the US or, or two or three every day, um, you know, or 10 or a dozen every single day.

And, and every week I get on their Zoom calls and I hear them talk about all the new groups and. I hear, you know, one like this last week I heard one from my state and um, my little college town near me is, is tiny and, and yet it has a robust, very dedicated indivisible group. Uh, this morning I was at a, a, a little bit bigger suburb, uh, not too far away from me.

And their indivisible group is just exploding. And all we do is work on electing new leaders, uh, long term and raising awareness of showing up in. In the public square and, and waving our signs and talking about what we're upset about and normalizing this kind of democracy because activism and sign waving is democracy.

When things are going bad, this is how we work as a democracy. So I'm given so much hope in this time of, of great despair and heartache. As we see state senators being gunned down in their homes and, and national senators being thrown onto the floor by the FBI and their own states, there is something hopeful that we can do locally.

We can gather with others that are concerned, that aren't burying their heads in the sand and get out there and start organizing and start raising awareness and visibility, showing people that they can be courageous. Um, they can face the fact that things are going really, really badly right now. And it's not all on Donald Trump, unfortunately, because I think he is, he is very likely to be impeached very soon based on what he's been doing, but it's not all him. There are a lot of people behind him that are doing most of the thinking, frankly, and so we have a lot of work to do to control them as well. So that's what I'll be doing over this summer and I'll be on substack updating you about things I'm learning both in breast cancer and in national affairs.

I just wanted to let you know that I am, I'm taking the rest of the summer off from this podcast. 'cause I just can't pretend like this stuff isn't happening out in our streets, in our capitals. Um, that there isn't real human rights global implications to the human rights, um, ignorance that that is, is happening in our leadership as a country.

So. I give you all of my love and all of my courage to go and run with. I am not in despair because I am united with others locally who are concerned and courageous. And so I encourage you to go and . Find those people in your local community who are working on this together and do what work you can too, and I will see you in the fall... or I will speak to you in the fall. If you don't watch me on YouTube. I'll speak to you here on the podcast probably in September sometime. Take care.