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 physical and virtual through conversations with Dame Laura Lee, the Chief Executive of Maggie’s, Dr Carmen Loiselle, a researcher of psychosocial oncology and nursing and Sujayanti Dasgupta, an healthcare architect she worked with on the Solis Health Cancer Support Centre. And finally, Bhairavi and her father look back at how her mum’s cancer journey and how it changed them both forever.

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 burningquestions@solis.health.

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 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 burningquestions@solis.health.

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 cancer? Bhairavi listens to former caregivers Amrita Rao and Oona Yadav as they reflect on their respective cancer journeys. She also continues her conversations with Andrew Anderson, a former oncology nurse and Centre Head of Maggie’s in Edinburgh and Dr. Paul Salins, the Medical Director of the Mazumdar Shaw Medical Centre at Narayana Health in Bangalore. 

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 burningquestions@solis.health.

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 adequately prepare themselves and their family for these changes? How can one live life as fully as possible, before, during or after treatment? In this episode, we hear from survivors Kaveri Ganapathy Ahuja and Aashna Suvarna about their respective cancer journeys and how they have learnt to cope with the long-term impacts cancer treatment has had on their bodies, lifestyle and relationships. Bhairavi also gets Andy Anderson’s perspective. A former oncology nurse and Centre Head of Maggie’s in Edinburgh, Andy talks about the importance of creating supportive infrastructure to better prepare patients and families for the complexities of cancer.

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 burningquestions@solis.health.

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 and the family?

Bhairavi speaks to Chinmayi and Bennita about their respective cancer journeys: what helped and what didn’t. And the support groups that gave them hope, solidarity and vital information. 

Dr. Paul Salins and Dr. Vijay Agarwal, both highly regarded medical professionals, share their perspectives why multidisciplinary care is vital in treating chronic diseases like cancer. And Bhairavi continues her conversation with Dr. Shobana Ramasamy about the importance of building openness, honesty and trust with your care team. As Bhairavi’s conversations reveal, ultimately it’s the patient who has the right to decide what they really want. To ask, is this right for me? Does this care plan fulfill the goals I have for myself? Can we afford this course of treatment? And, crucially, what other options do I have available to me?

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 burningquestions@solis.health.

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 they had cancer, how they felt, what they asked and what they didn’t.

She also has a candid conversation with her friend Dr Shobana Ramasamy about the role clinicians can play to empower their patients with the right information and make the cancer journey a little more bearable. Finally, Bhairavi sits down to talk to her father, and they look back at how they got the news of her own mother’s cancer diagnosis and what they decided together as a family in the days that followed. 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 burningquestions@solis.health.

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 www.solis.health or find us on social media at https://twitter.com/solisforyou