We Talk Living, Not Numbers: Defying the Odds of Stage Four Breast Cancer
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Five years out from her first cancer diagnosis, Bridget finally felt like she was in the clear. Then a car accident, some persistent shoulder pain, and a strange divot in her reconstructed breast led to a scan that was only meant to be a formality before minor surgery. Instead, on the day she was set to go under, her surgeon sat down with her and her mother and told her what he'd found: the cancer was back. Stage four metastatic disease, spread to her liver and her bones.
One number followed her out of that room — the number of months an oncologist told her she likely had left. In this conversation, Bridget — a palliative and hospice nurse practitioner herself — brings a rare dual perspective to her own terminal diagnosis. She talks candidly about the statistics she knows better than most, and about the new oncologist who looked her in the eye and rejected that number outright: "We don't talk numbers, we talk living, and you're gonna live."
She opens up about the financial reality of living with cancer, the friends and family who've shown up in ways she never expected, her faith, her advocacy for hospice and honest end-of-life planning, and the public speaking that's given her an unexpected new purpose.
Bridget never thought this would be her life. But she's here, she's smiling, and she's outliving the odds anyone gave her — one day, one scan, one dash at a time.
Topics Covered: Metastatic & Recurrent Cancer · Hospice & End-of-Life Planning · Faith & the Afterlife · Financial Impact of Illness · Community & Caregiving · Purpose After Diagnosis
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fourwalls, “Taking It Slow”
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