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Ep 03: Cancer vs Marriage!
91 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we find out what happens when the two hot college kids have to deal with a literal life and death situation... Zandi recounts her journey after finding out she has Stage 3 breast cancer. No one at this age is ready to deal with such a life-altering event, right? Well, Zandi is a special breed. Tune in!
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Transcript
Introduction and podcast beginnings
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Hey, guys. I'm Zandi. I'm Jin. And this is We Used to Be Married. A podcast about two hot-ass college kids who dated. Broke up. Dated again. Broke up again. Had a baby. Got married. Got divorced. And we're still friends. Welcome to episode three. Mm-hmm. Brought to you by... No one. ...yet.
00:00:23
Speaker
Cause we're still newbies. Yeah. We're still trying things out. Like look at this new back setup that we've got going on. Yeah. Something new, add a little bit of texture, a little bit of fun. New hair. Oh, I got it. So I got a haircut because I mean, listen, you're going to, you're going to always going to be the pretty one in this podcast. You know, thank you very much, but I don't want to be so far behind. So I want to try a little bit more. Yeah. So I got a special hair treatment done.
00:00:49
Speaker
So for those of you who are only listening and you can't see the screen right now, Jin got a perm, a Korean perm. Korean man perm. And I have this little curl now I could do in the front of my little Superman curl. He's also wearing like a floral button up.
00:01:05
Speaker
with a, wait, show your chain. Oh, the gold chain. Yeah. Yeah. This is from my girlfriend, Audrey on. Yes. For Christmas. And so I am rocking the island
Surviving COVID and its impact
00:01:15
Speaker
guy vibe. Gangster Korean. Something. Yeah. K-pop manager. Oh, manager. Okay. Because I'm not young enough to be a K-pop star. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You look like you could manage a K-pop group. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I had my glory days.
00:01:30
Speaker
Yeah. Also your features are not as feminine as they would need to be to be in a K-pop group. That's true, but that can also be changed. Yeah. You need a nose job. Wow.
00:01:44
Speaker
Oh, she just went right for it. She's been thinking about it for years and years and now she was just like, this is my chance. Get a fucking nostril. No, it's just because their noses are so like. Narrow and tiny, like a cartoon, like a manga. Yeah, I know. It's I don't I mean, I don't hate my nose, but I understand it's like not the most, you know, like magazine looking, muddly nose. It's fun. I also have a deviated septum, so even better.
00:02:11
Speaker
Hey, it works. It does. And you're still getting jobs with that nose. So good job. Good for you. Maybe I'll get more jobs with a new nose. Something to think about.
Zandi's cancer diagnosis journey
00:02:22
Speaker
Anyways, today's episode is about cancer versus Mary.
00:02:27
Speaker
Who's the winner? You won't believe what happens next. Clickbait. Wait, quick question. I also want to celebrate something real quick. So you and I survived COVID. Oh my gosh. So between episode two and three, you have to take some time off to record because we got COVID. Finally. After two years of being really vigilant. Like two and a half years. You know what I mean? And the thing is, we did good. We did the social responsible things. We did everything we needed to do.
00:02:57
Speaker
And at this point, I think it became a matter of when, not if we were going to get it. And you know, the vaccine worked like we had some residual effects, but we got through it. And I think it was more like, for me, it was emotionally a little damaging because I was like, Oh man, I felt like a unicorn. I hadn't gotten the original. I hadn't gotten
00:03:16
Speaker
Omarion, I had gotten Unicron, I had gotten Zeta, Beta, Alpha, none of those. And then I finally got, I don't even know which one I got. Yeah, we don't know. Now that we finally got it, it's like a relief, but also I don't feel like a unicorn anymore. Did you have any symptoms? I had a cough and a sore throat. Okay. Yeah. So I had a cough, a sore throat. I was extremely fatigued and I still have a lingering cough. So if you hear my voice is a little scratchy or if you hear me cough, it's because I'm still going through it. And yes, COVID, absolutely COVID.
00:03:45
Speaker
so yeah let's celebrate our yeah and also i thought you were gonna say let's celebrate our non-anniversary as in like it was our anniversary of our marriage but we didn't celebrate it because we're not married anymore yeah that's right so april 4th april 4 it is april 23rd now yes but we hadn't recorded since it's been a while right yeah i think it was like three weeks
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, so anyway, we're back. Yeah, we're back and we're still not married. Thank you. We're still divorced. Yeah. Thank you for celebrating our non anniversary out there. And yeah, here's an interesting thing. Talking to the mic.
00:04:20
Speaker
Here's an interesting thing. I feel like at some point people are like, oh my God, like will they, won't they? Like a Ross and Rachel thing. And if this ever gets to a point where someone starts thinking about those questions, let's just say it's never gonna freaking happen. So let's put that to bed right now before anything else gets recorded.
00:04:48
Speaker
Not gonna happen. So one thing I learned in the however many years we've known each other is that we do not work well in a committed relationship. But we're great friends. I think when the pressure of being like in a relationship is out of the picture is not in the equation, we're like super good homies.
00:05:14
Speaker
Um,
Impact of cancer on relationships
00:05:15
Speaker
so that's why this podcast works. That's why our co-parenting situation works. And that's why we'll never be in a relationship. So don't ask y'all. So annoying. You have a partner and she's great. And you.
00:05:35
Speaker
I agree with that. Dating is the best. Dating is the worst and the best. That's my new single. Nice. Dating is the worst and the best. Look out for it on Spotify, iTunes, wherever. And TikTok. And TikTok. OK, so back to the subject. I love that. I love that little thing, that little song that you made. Yeah. So today's chapter, chapter three, is about cancer and how
00:06:03
Speaker
how we handled it, each of us. I think we touched on it a little bit in the last episode. I talked about kind of my perspective, you know, and now we're going to get into the meat, the source of the cancer. Yeah. So I guess I'll start off because I'm the one who had cancer. I had
00:06:25
Speaker
I was diagnosed at age 27, which I thought was impossible. I thought breast cancer was like a 65 plus kind of cancer. I didn't know you could have breast cancer at that age.
00:06:39
Speaker
We were both pretty dismissive about it too. Yeah. So when I first
Art as a coping mechanism
00:06:43
Speaker
had like suspicions of this like pain in my chest and the tightness and like a growth even, I had an ultrasound and the doctor was kind of suggesting I could either monitor it for six months or get a core needle biopsy. And I was like needle?
00:06:59
Speaker
No, and he actually said that it would be painful and invasive process. And that also further turned you off. Well, yeah, I was also concerned about insurance for some reason. I don't know. I was like, is it expensive? Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's hard. Yeah. So yeah, that's one thing I learned is like, you know what? Invest in yourself and be an advocate of your own health. Don't leave it to kind of like,
00:07:25
Speaker
I mean, professionals, but no, no, I mean, like, don't, when they said monitor it, it's kind of like, eh, we'll see what happens. Like I would rather have peace of mind going back. I would have been probably like, yeah, you know what? Let's just do it. Yeah. Let's just do it. Like for example, um, this past week I couldn't breathe and I was like really coughing up like a lot. And were you just being dramatic?
00:07:48
Speaker
I was probably just being called. I called Danny. I was like, do you have our old inhalers? Please bring it over. And he's like, oh, my God, this is what you call my art in Filipino culture.
00:08:00
Speaker
Um, in English, extra that's me. That's my middle name. Um, that's what I learned from being married. So I went to urgent care and I was there for five hours, five hours to tell, to, to hear what, what was the need to hear that my checks checks, my chest X-ray was fine. And your checks bounced. No, my checks did not bounce, but I got prescribed some prescription cough pills and an inhaler.
00:08:30
Speaker
After five hours. Five hours, wow. Of being there. Yeah. So yeah,
Chemotherapy and its challenges
00:08:33
Speaker
I'm fine. It's just being Marthรฉ. But hey, long story short, if you have a medical concern, just go take care of it. Yeah, get it checked out. And yes, it is 100%. Oh, medical bills and all that stuff. But you know what? You're going to pay for it twice if you are... Trust me, I had bills.
00:08:52
Speaker
Okay. So I would say less than two to three months later. Yeah. It was between June through August. Yeah. August. We were like, yeah, I was, um, I noticed in the mirror that my, like this side, this, the left breast was overflowing in my bra cup. And I was like, this is not normal. I had, I had pretty small boobies 32 a, I think.
00:09:18
Speaker
This became less of a blessing to me and more of a concern. Are we talking about you? Yeah, we're talking about how I perceive the breasts. Okay.
00:09:30
Speaker
okay cool so then i asked for another ultrasound and when i um got that was on a friday and then i immediately saw them because they they wouldn't they couldn't help me over the weekend so they're like on monday you can come in if you're really concerned come in from an ultrasound and i ended up going my dear
00:09:51
Speaker
and he took me to the UCLA like women's imaging center and I was just supposed to have an ultrasound and then when they I was the youngest one there um I had the ultrasound and they saw something and they're like we're also gonna do a mammogram I was like ah who I thought that was for old ladies right and so they did the mammogram and I don't know if you guys know this but um
00:10:15
Speaker
When you do a mammogram, you basically have to like take as much breast tissue as you can and smash them between two metal plates. I heard. Yeah, it's really sucky. And I didn't have much to smash between the plates, so it was really painful. And then they were like, sorry,
Surgery and reconstruction experiences
00:10:32
Speaker
the results were inconclusive and the doctor wants us to do it again. So they had already like everyone cleared out. It was almost closing time. They're like, we're going to do it again. After the second time, they were like,
00:10:46
Speaker
we're gonna do a biopsy. And I was like, when? And they're like, we'll schedule another. I was like, no, we're doing it today. I'm here now. So literally they were shutting down, but they stayed open just for me. I had nurses holding either one of my hands and they shoved needle, this big old needle that was like hollow, shoved it in to three different places and took samples.
00:11:11
Speaker
And you could see they were already really concerned. And I was asking like, what does it mean? When will I find out the results? And she was like, let's just wait to see what the report says. When really I knew from the way she said it that it was really concerning. And do you think they were extra concerned because you're so young? Do you think that had anything? I think it was already spreading. They were like, and it was big enough. So
00:11:37
Speaker
yeah okay yeah so basically it was um i mean good on them for getting it done and everything that day yeah let's take a quick break all right oh what were you talking about uh okay oh so my question was they were so concerned because
00:11:59
Speaker
Because I was young and because they probably saw an advanced, I don't know, advanced cancer, basically, because it had its spread. It wasn't in just one area. There were two lumps. Can you explain that biology of how it spreads and at what point you were?
00:12:19
Speaker
So basically cancer is a mutation in your cells. Okay, that's too far back. I think people know what that is. I mean in terms of breast cancer when you get it, then what is the next stage? What are the stages? Oh, okay. Well, first of all, you can get breast cancer in different areas and there are different types of breast cancer.
00:12:34
Speaker
So, some of the breast cancers out there are responsive to hormones, and mine was not that type. It was caused by an overproduction of a protein called HER2. So, with HER2 positive, it was ER and PR negative. So, those are our hormones, estrogen and progesterone, and it wasn't responding to that. So, it wasn't the type where my eldest sister and my aunt both had that kind of cancer.
00:13:03
Speaker
Um, and stage one is where you, you know, it's very localized and it's easily like you could remove it and you should be okay. It's like a piece. Yeah. Okay. Stay shoes, a little more advanced.
00:13:15
Speaker
Stage three is even more advanced where it's like aggressively like spreading. When it has metastasized to another organ in your body, it's stage four. And that means it's like, it's spreading and it's really hard to treat that because
Radiation treatment and recovery
00:13:31
Speaker
it's already been like so invasive everywhere around the body. And different parts of the body respond differently to different treatments and everything. So it's a whole other level of confusion and chaos. So mine was stage three because it was in my breast, but it was moving into my armpit.
00:13:44
Speaker
It was moving into the armpit, right? So the lymph nodes and then it could move into the whole lymphatic system and move into other lymph nodes all around my body and travel and go around to the body. So they had to catch it and act quickly because they didn't want it to continue spreading. So the first course of action was to do chemo. So that was really hard. I did six rounds of chemo. Each one was about three or four weeks apart, I think.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I remember one thing about the treatment to the kind of cancer that you had the HER2 positive. The treatment for that hadn't been developed until very recently. Yeah, there's a targeted therapy called HER2.
00:14:32
Speaker
I mean, yeah, it's it's a targeted chemo just for that protein. So and it was I think it was developed at UCLA. But yes, so we I was really lucky to be a UCLA patient. I was also put on a voluntarily participated in a trial, a drug trial. And that wrecked me. So they took me off after a few weeks of being on that.
00:14:57
Speaker
and after six rounds of chemotherapy after losing my hair after you know my eyebrows thin my eyelashes everything and it was it was really really uh taxing so if any of you have been through that you know what that's like if you haven't it's it causes a lot of nausea it's it's really hard to sleep um your brain feels like it's on fire you can't you can't remember a lot of things you have like chemo brain
00:15:27
Speaker
From what I do know about chemotherapy, it is a poison. You are poisoning your body. You're trying to kill the bad cells, but in the process, you're killing good cells as well. So you can't be selective of which cells you're going to kill. You're just killing everything and hoping that your white blood cells will recover and heal everything that was
00:15:56
Speaker
So if you have a other, if you have a weakened immune system already, if you tend to get sick and cold and flus a lot, this treatment, any kind of cancer treatment would basically take you out potentially all the way. Yeah. Yeah. It's why a lot of people don't survive and a lot of older people, especially.
00:16:15
Speaker
So yeah, luckily I was pretty strong and I had a great support system. My mom is a nurse and she was there a lot of the time. My sisters were amazing, my best friend. And I had a lot of people who actually like showed up out of nowhere who were friends of mine in college or different parts of my life who were like,
00:16:38
Speaker
Hey, we care about you. And so that was really great. That was really nice to see people who I hadn't heard from just show their love and support. And that's something that was really interesting for me to see is that it's not, you know, not everyone is your best friend shows up every time, but people out there, you know, wish you well. And when you're not doing well, we'll show up.
00:17:02
Speaker
Well, I mean, everyone handles crisis and trauma in a different way. So I did not fault anyone who I thought would show up, who didn't show up, except for you. I did fault you. Absolutely. I was about to say, I was about to literally just say, and all the people that showed up, I was not one of them in a way that I'm proud of.
00:17:26
Speaker
at all. But you
Creating a short film about cancer
00:17:29
Speaker
were the closest to it. You had to see a lot of that go down and it's kind of like traumatizing. I don't understand. And I think I'm getting better now. I'm like one of those people who see people crying or whatever. I'm like, it OK. Like now, you know, so imagine how bad I was, you know, over a decade ago. But yeah, we you know, it was it was yeah.
00:17:56
Speaker
And then also having a two-year-old. So we had wonderful friends. Two of Maxwell's godmothers took him in whenever I would have chemo and put him in a different school for that week. It was really a blessing to have so much support.
00:18:29
Speaker
and I was just trying
00:18:30
Speaker
kind of proud of. We being artistic types, we wrote a short film about your experience. Insert going into insert the thumbnail here. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's called. You can. Yeah. Go on. It's called
00:18:49
Speaker
Breast day ever. So, Jin wrote this short film about what it was like to tell all of my loved ones that I had cancer and also my coworkers. And you'd be surprised about like the responses that you get when you're the one with cancer and then you have to tell somebody. It's almost like you have to like put your own feelings aside because they're about to just like feelings dump on you like,
00:19:15
Speaker
oh my god are you gonna be okay and so the craziest things obviously we kind of like
00:19:23
Speaker
amped up the humor. Yeah, we made it a little bit more my art. But that's the word of the day. My art day. Yeah, so you know, we obviously amped up the drama a little bit. But you know, they were, the reason we were inspired to write this was because of the fact that from the doctor that initially diagnosed her, it not not the treatment doctors, but their initial, it was like the
00:19:47
Speaker
It was my OBGYN. Yeah, it was just such a weird series of responses and we just started laughing because we couldn't do anything else about it. And this was, you know, kind of just you had started treatments. And so anyway, we wrote this thing to kind of make ourselves laugh and you can look it up on YouTube called Breast Day Ever. Okay, what am I going to put? It's every time I say Breast Day Ever, it's going to pop up right here. Yeah, that's what I do. So I mean, that was kind of
00:20:15
Speaker
Part of my journey of like kind of coping with it and trying to figure out ways to like for me to cope with it and something that you know You could star in as well that I thought would be kind of a cool thing for us to work I hope you I would hope you wouldn't would include me and not recast me and be like this person playing my life Yeah, yeah, yeah, especially because I still had my hair so I like I was still capable and
00:20:40
Speaker
It was like before my first round of Kimo or right after my first round of Kimo. I think so. Because at the end of it, after editing and everything, there's a special clip of a very candid moment of... Oh, when I shaved my hair. When I cut your hair.
00:20:56
Speaker
first, you know, from the length to because you were starting to lose your hair. I was so I was like around the second round of chemo, second or second or third round of chemo where I literally would just touch it and then like chunks of it would fall out. And I was at work. Yeah. And I was like, I can't I can't keep I can't I can't stay here. I have to go home. And my supervisor was like, just don't touch it. I was like,
00:21:25
Speaker
Well, thank you for problem solving. You're so right. It was the hair falling out. That was the issue. Yeah, it's my fault for touching it. Yeah, I should just leave it. It'll be fine. That just gives you an insight on the kind of things that you could look forward to if you go pull this short film up. Yeah, please excuse my really bad acting.
00:21:43
Speaker
as mine. Listen, you look back and you're just like, oh, I would have made a different choice or whatever. But yes, maybe you should have been casting with somebody else. But I think, you know, and going back to your journey with all that, I thought that this was something that
Life after cancer and personal growth
00:22:01
Speaker
I can offer. Sure. This is the way you cope. This is and yeah, and you know, this was the initial stages and I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to
00:22:09
Speaker
be able to deal with the course of everything else that happened after that, obviously not well. But I think that was my kind of way of trying to stay connected with you and try to inspire and whatever. And at the end of the day, I think we have something at least we can show our friends.
00:22:31
Speaker
It did not serve as the, it was not enough, basically. You couldn't just say, I did this. I supported you. I did this. But it was still a great, it was a gift. It was a nice gift. And I am glad it helped you a little bit through it.
00:22:50
Speaker
So after chemo, the next step was a bilateral mastectomy. So I opted to do bilateral because even though I didn't have cancer in the right breast, I wanted them to be symmetrical. So I said, just take them both. Not only that, so that was kind of.
00:23:06
Speaker
That was kind of superficial, but also they said there is a slight chance that it could show up in the next one in the other side. So I said, I don't want that chance. Just take all the breast tissue and reconstruct. So first I had to get rid of the tissue and we can insert my blog here called Once Upon a Boob. And there are graphic images of the surgery and even what the breast tissue that they extracted looked like.
00:23:33
Speaker
And then after that, they placed these things called spacers and they're really rigid. I don't know what they are. They just stretch the skin out, right? It felt like Tupperware inside my chest. I don't even like Tupperware in the pantry.
00:23:48
Speaker
So then they would inject every week a little more saline into my chest to give me the desired size. So. Double Ds. No. No. I was a 32A and now I'm a 32B.
00:24:07
Speaker
So I used to wear like Victoria's Secret push-up bras and I said, they said, how big do you want to go? I was like, well, can you just make me look like this so I don't have to wear a push-up bra anymore? He's like, yeah, we could do that. And I could even like I could have gotten bigger. But honestly, that process of stretching my skin was torturous. Yeah, it was so uncomfortable. It's like it's like wearing the tightest bra and then never being able to take it off because it's inside your skin.
00:24:34
Speaker
That's a horror movie. It still feels that way, to be honest with you. Sometimes it itches and I realize it's not like on the outside of my skin. It's like on the inside. And I'm just like maybe like the nerves I'm regaining feeling, they're finally coming alive or and it's 10 years later. And or like the silicone implant is like, I don't know, doing something inside. And I'm like, it's so itchy. I wish I could like just go in here and just
00:25:03
Speaker
Oh god like a little like a back scratcher but for inside your skin. Sometimes I forget to I'm in public like at work and I'm like I'm just like doing this like rubbing my chest and I'm like oh oh that's not a thing that people do. I can't just like grab my boobs.
00:25:19
Speaker
Um, so yeah, there's that also I didn't elect to get so wait reconstruction. No, no, no. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. I didn't like to get nipple reconstruction because I didn't want to have to wear a bra the rest of my life. So I just have these like gnarly scars across my chest and I'm hoping that one day I'll save enough money one day to get like tattoos that are like 3d looking nipples. Like the shading is so good, but like it's expensive.
00:25:47
Speaker
Oh, so that was a cosmetic procedure? Yeah, it's not covered by insurance. Oh, I remember the doctor talking about that. And I thought you got it. You you know, I didn't get it in. Yeah. That's funny that you don't know that. That's right. I have not seen your boobs.
00:26:08
Speaker
breast cancer. That's funny. She's really hilarious. I'm like, I'm like realizing this now my light bulb. Yeah. Like, yeah. Oh my God. Actually, yes. So my, the only image I is from pre since you were 27.
00:26:28
Speaker
Wait, 27 years ago. Yeah, actually, that's funny. It's so weird to think about random facts like that. It's just like, holy shit. And then five months later after we broke up and I was still going through my last bit of treatment, I met my daughters. Yeah. And he was actually the first one to see. And that was a really traumatizing experience. I was like, oh yeah, I'm about to sleep with you.
00:26:54
Speaker
sorry that's gonna be weird i'm so sorry luckily he was very like you're fine you want the breast cancer you're fine but um yeah so i didn't i like to have that i still don't have nipples um but what were you gonna say i i just felt like i had to share that
00:27:09
Speaker
I love, I love that you did. I mean, you know, it's very, that's, it just shows how long and how far you've come, you know, when I have vanity too, you know, it's a little bit of prison vanity, but also just kind of really dealing with the reality of your situation. I'm proud of you for that.
00:27:24
Speaker
thinks, well, I want to have s***. I had relatives on her dad's side ask me, you're breastfeeding, right? Are you breastfeeding? And I want to be like, I don't have nipples. I went through breast cancer. I have no choice but to give my child formula. But I didn't want to be rude.
00:27:45
Speaker
So I just said, no, I'm breastfeeding. I mean, I'm not I'm not breastfeeding. I'm feeding her formula. But the people who did know eventually like kind of figured it out. I just didn't want to be like, no, dude, I had cancer. I can't do that. Yeah. So you didn't just like wave that flag around. You know, I know. I'm a third biker. I'm a survivor. I really wanted to.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. Anyways, after
Reflections on healing and positivity
00:28:12
Speaker
I had the reconstructive surgery, I had to have radiation. And that's actually around the time that we split up. So I moved to Lancaster to be with my sister and they and I moved from UCLA to I think Antelope Valley Hospital or something like that. And I did I think I did six weeks of radiation there. So radiation is different from chemo?
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, Keno, they pump poison into your blood or not blood into your system through your veins. I had a port in my literally like. Wait, can you use that port and stick something in there and scratch the inside of your boobs when it gets gone? The port is gone. I had a port removal. Yeah.
00:29:00
Speaker
So wait, radiation is when they literally like stick you on. I was on like this slab slab and I have five different tattoos. It's my only ink that I have, but they had to give markers where they had to line up the light.
00:29:15
Speaker
And so they they used five dots to line it up every day And then they would like zap me for like I don't know like in the chest area. Yeah for like five minutes with like intense Radiation like it's like, you know, what kind of radiation was was a gamma radiation, bro I don't know Do you have periods where you black out and you wake up in purple shorts? Yeah around like destroyed buildings and stuff. Yes, I
00:29:47
Speaker
You're an incredible zulk. Zulk. Zandy Hulk. What kind of radiation treats cancer, right? Sure. Treats cancer. We're googling it.
00:30:02
Speaker
We're googling it. Gamma rays. X-rays, gamma rays, and charged particles. X-rays, gamma rays, charged particles. Wow. I'm so crazy. Oh, God, yeah. So that happened. And here's another link to my blog where you can see a graphic photo of how dark and burnt my skin was. It was toasted. It was brown. It looked like leather. Like after you got back from Y?
00:30:27
Speaker
No, worse than that. It was burnt. It was so brown. Really? Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, sun radiation, that makes sense. Wait, did you read my blog? You know, I think at that point I was trying to recover from... Yeah, it would be interesting for you to look at it and you could actually see photos of my breasts after surgery.
00:30:47
Speaker
I was not afraid to share that. And there's other people out there who probably are going through breast cancer or have gone through breast cancer and those images actually really helped them. I've had people who are like, thank you so much for writing about it. That's amazing. And now I know what to expect and what you went through and even sharing the really graphic images. Right. Yeah.
00:31:09
Speaker
Wait, so, I mean, and I remember in pop culture, like Christina Applegate, the actress, Kelly Bundy from Red with Children and all that, she got a double most at double mastectomy as well, because of the same reasoning that you had. Right? I think there are other celebrities that also did that. But I mean, I didn't, I didn't realize, like, I guess that makes sense. You know,
00:31:30
Speaker
Well, there are even, I can't remember if it was Angelina Jolie or somebody, somebody who was like, just preemptively. Yeah. They had like stage one breast cancer and they're like, you know, preempt preemptively, I'm just going to get rid of all of it and just get a boob job. Yeah. So, yeah, I have some, I have fake boobs. There's no
00:31:50
Speaker
nipple. But also it's literally just the chest wall of muscle and an implant against it. So it's like, when I like flex my muscles, it looks weird because you could just see. Wait, do you have to, I know it's not inappropriate because there's no nipples.
00:32:08
Speaker
Right. It's not going to be censored. And I know with cosmetic implants, you have to get them replaced every 10 years or so. 10 to 15. 10 to 15. Yeah. So that's something you're going to have to look forward to. Yes. I'm going to have to have surgery again in the next few years. Damn.
00:32:26
Speaker
surgery is crazy. It's invasive. And you're talking about nerve endings earlier. And I'm like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Um, having broken now, but five bones. Jeez. Yeah. So, um, Oh, this, this is probably the closest thing to scoring. You're showing your collarbone on the camera. This is a podcast. Remember?
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, I know, but in case anybody watched the video. So I'm showing, it's about a six, seven inch scar on my shoulder blade because it broke my collarbone and they fixed it. So they're going in there and there's like metal and stuff in there. So like is a scar, what kind of like, how big are your scars? Are they like? Yeah, I would say they're about that size. Are they like discolored like this too? Yes.
00:33:06
Speaker
Oh man. Okay. And you have two of like ones about that. And I have one slice down in my armpit as well. In my armpit area. Okay. So yeah, it's, I mean, I look at them now and I say, wow, you survived. You know, they're no longer like, oh, I'm sad. Sometimes I get sad and that's okay. But mostly I look in the mirror and I say, you're a badass. You survived. Good job. Good for you. And good job medicine and science, right?
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, science, man. I mean, it's not perfect, but I think we're all trying to do our best. And I'm glad, I am very relieved that they found a treatment that worked for your type of breast cancer too. It was rough though. And it is the reason why we titled this episode Cancer versus Marriage. Yeah, who won?
00:34:00
Speaker
Cancer won the battle between cancer versus marriage, but I won the battle against cancer. Yes, you did, and I lost everything.
00:34:14
Speaker
I really did. You regained your freedom. You needed to. Honestly, yeah, freedom is sometimes overrated. But you needed to find yourself. I needed to find myself as well. I think that's the thing too. And I think we spent some time trying to fund ourselves with other people. And I think this is kind of the first time in both of our lives. And I think that's also a key milestone that
00:34:42
Speaker
We are now figuring things out.
00:34:45
Speaker
like, as individuals. And because of that energy, I think that's why, you know, I felt like we needed to kind of have these conversations and talk about stuff that hurt us and affected us so deeply back in the day. Yeah. And now we're healing, we're actively healing from them. Yeah. Go us. Go us. Go therapy. Again, we're toasting our therapists and props to our therapists. Okay. So I want to, one more time, I want to, what is your, uh, the link for the vlog?
00:35:13
Speaker
Okay, so it's onceuponaboob.wordpress.com. Okay, great. Onceuponaboob.wordpress.com. And how can we find the short film on YouTube? Ah, yes. I love this. We have content.
00:35:30
Speaker
We're offering content. This is called Value Listeners. Yes, the short is called Breast Day Ever. And we came up with that after many, many hours of hemming and hawing and creative walls that we've hit. And it is still live on YouTube.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a play on how it was actually not the best day ever. It was the worst day ever. Yeah. But it's good for a laugh.
00:36:00
Speaker
And my favorite character is played by our friend Jerry Yang. He plays the doctor who diagnosed me. Yeah. Somehow he perfectly encapsulated just the callous energy of the OBGYN. Yeah. Yeah. It has to be a man and he has to be... He has to mansplain it and he has to be completely insensitive. Absolutely. So yeah, go check that out. Go check out her blog. I am definitely going to go check it out because I totally forgot that you had that going on and I just was like,
00:36:29
Speaker
oh poor me how do i survive this oh but you know i did and you did i yeah we did we sure did we're here today to tell the story and talk about how it definitely played a huge role in our divorce um you know in the end of our marriage it wasn't the only thing but it definitely was a huge factor um in a marriage that was already really
00:36:55
Speaker
It really highlighted all the weaknesses already there. Yeah. Um, so, you know, it's, uh, I can't even call it blessing in disguise. That's just such a stupid statement. I mean, it was, it was part of our journey, part of our path. And it brought us to where we are today. And I'm so grateful that we can, that we can sit here and tell the story and reflect on the things that we learned, the shitty things that we went through the, you know,
00:37:22
Speaker
the moments of, you know, of positivity and joy that, you know, that we were able to. Oh, I also want to plug some cancer music. I wrote. Oh, so I actually wrote. Is it on Spotify? It isn't. I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. Someone help her. Please. Anyone. If you if you know how to do that, we have an email. I'm sure. Yeah. We used to be married at Gmail dot com. But also I could probably just Google it and find out how to upload my own music. Yeah. But why would you want to do that?
00:37:50
Speaker
effort you don't want to put in effort so i wrote some really cool music with my brother-in-law um while i was living at his house and they are the best songs i feel like i've ever written because they were they were born out of a lot of pain and i wanted to transform that into something some art right so i think that's that we had artistic outlets that we tried to yeah art really helped us cope and i think that was one of the bullet points on our outline today like how did we cope
00:38:18
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm really glad that we had those outlets we had the short film we have I had the blog I had the music Yeah, and oh and shout out to all of our friends who made that short film for free Julie Julius and Caesar salad productions and I love all those guys did a couple of podcasts episodes with their Yeah with their production company to yes recently. Well, it's Caesar salad productions. I
00:38:45
Speaker
What's it called? Oh, his company. His company is called. Yes. Also the Julius's podcast called Shooting the Shit. It is a live stream radio show. So check that out on Wednesdays, I believe. Yeah. So we had a lot of friends involved in our journey and artistic stuff and things that we were doing to cope with everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not alone.
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, if you are going through cancer, God bless you. I definitely think that my mental health and positivity and support group, all of that played a huge factor in my healing.
00:39:28
Speaker
reach out. Don't be afraid to say when you need help or when you're going through it and you'd be surprised to see how many people want to be there for you. They just don't know how. A lot of people who are close to a loved one who is going through cancer, they just don't know what to say. They don't want to say the wrong things or they do say the wrong things and then it backfires.
00:39:51
Speaker
I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about our breast day ever stuff. But anyways, I'm just saying, don't be afraid to say, Hey, I need this. I need food. I need someone to take me out. I need someone to walk with me in the park. I need someone to help me buy clothes that are like comfy because my skin is irritated by chemo. I need someone to bring me seaweed soup, Korean seaweed soup, or yeah, to give me a hug.
00:40:17
Speaker
Um, or I need you as my spouse to show up to my chemo session. Yeah. Fine. Yeah. So that is what cancer was like. Cancer versus marriage. Cancer won that battle. Marriage did not. Cancer won. Marriage zero. Cancer won. But then you got married again. So marriage also won again. But then now you're not married anymore. So back to zero. Is that how it works?
00:40:48
Speaker
Those are different battles. Okay. All right. But that specific battle between my cancer and our marriage, cancer won that battle. Yeah, definitely. But we also in a different battle against negativity and life and positivity, we're here now to say we're winning. We're winning life right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So go to therapy. Yeah. Get yourself checked out.
00:41:17
Speaker
Go to therapy. Ask for help when you need it. And remember, it's not always about you.