YouSaid · the spoken record

Caitlin Flanagan

lines on the record: 72
first: 2020-05-13
most recent: 2020-05-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You just think, I mean, if it had been five years earlier, the thought that a woman with metastatic breast cancer, with lesions, you know, big enough to be biopsied in the OR would be like not have a single one of them after three treatments of chemotherapy that was much easier than my first chemotherapy. And then, and I was tiptoeing into there's a cohort, a very small cohort of women in Dennis Laman's sort of research and work who doctors are starting to tiptoe around calling them cured, which, you know, stage four cancer, there's no cure, et cetera, et cetera. We're never going to use that word, but they have gone so long with no remission of any kind or no recurrence rather of any kind that they're starting to wonder if they're actually cured of breast cancer. And I thought I was going to be in that group.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we had actually, we had booked a night, actually, because her office is in Santa Monica, and we're far east of there. And we just said, okay, we're going to book a night in an ice hotel because if it's bad news, we'll need time to pull ourselves together before we see the kids. And if it's good news, we'll have a nice night and a nice hotel. So she walks in and said, Your tumors are gone. Like there's still traces in the blood. We have to finish this, but they were gone and they stayed gone for 11 years of durable remission, 11 years.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oncologist in his lab, Sarah Hervet's. And my last practice had said, well, we're going to section your liver and take out the part of your liver with the cancer in it. I was like, oh, that sounds really bad. She was like, not at all. She had so many treatments. She said, I think this one will be the best. We'll give you six treatments. Six, it's chemotherapy, plus the herceptin, plus some other things that were from their armamentorium. And after three treatments, we'll give you a scan and see how it's going. You know, you go for the scan after three treatments, that's terrifying. But the really terrifying part is going to find the result, you know, getting the answer.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it is marked by the overexpression of a certain kind of genetic material. All of that work is being done at UCLA. And I know you have to wait longer to be seen and it's a hassle, but that's where you need to go because this guy, Dennis Slaman, you have her two new breast cancer and he's the guy who's really hacked into that. So with this new drug herceptin and then with a armamentarium that followed that. So I got an appointment with one of these”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had it contained within just one breast or whatever the primary form of cancer was. And maybe it's even in the lymph node, which was in my case true when I first got it so that you really get warped with the chemo and all that to try to kill it from ever getting into the blood at all, although it's in a little bit starting to get a little bit. But when it breaks the fire, you know, jumps the fire break, as I say, that's when that cancer has wildly gone through the system and is attacking and finding locations to build itself in different parts of the body. And that's really serious. And in my mind, I'd always thought, and it used to be kind of a pretty soon death sentence, but someone else I know in Los Angeles, and if she's listening, she'll smile because she'll know who she is, who knows a lot about cancer. She just looked at me and said, you have to get closer to the science. You know, you have a particular kind of breast cancer. It is.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In most cancers, I think that's the way the staging works, it's certainly the way the staging works in breast cancer. Stage four in most cancers and in breast cancer just means it jumped the fire break.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's really the hero of this whole thing I happen to have great insurance through my husband's job. But it turns out that you don't always have access to everything that you could possibly have access to if you're kind of down the line in a private practice. They're kind of getting the first crack at medications that are being put out there. But they're not getting it the way the labs are. And when you're stage four, nobody's going to question what they offer you. So a wonderful nurse took me aside at that private practice and risked his job by closing the door and saying, I think you should get a second opinion because I'd really trust him and I asked him, what should I do? And he said, I think you should get a second opinion. And that was profound.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I thought this is so bad. And then a nurse in the private practice, I was in a really, I knew so little about cancer when we started all this that we just thought, you know, we asked people for names of practices. And it just, and it was a private practice, Cedar Sinai. Excellent practice. Excellent doctor. I love him to this day, but so I thought, oh, a private practice, that's got to be better than a public hospital or a teaching hospital, obviously. You know, if you pay for more for something or your insurance.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, exactly. So I had done that and I had a contract for the next book. And I felt a lot of pressure about that. But yeah, I was out there in the culture. I was doing my thing that I do and getting more and more confident in it. And then it hit me again. And it was so bad because, you know, you hear like in your lungs, you know, just like you see every bad, you guys are, I mean, We're a bit younger than I am, but we're kind of in the same range. There were. We grew up with these like really horrible TV movies of the week, and it would always be like, gosh, my elbow hurts. You've got elbow cancer. And then like the whole rest of the TV movie is the person losing their hair”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's your life? No, no, no, no. I was by then I had quit the school to become a mother. Took me a year and a half to get pregnant Had the children. And what was it? What was I doing? Well, I had just started writing. I was just writing these articles at the Atlantic. I just started as a writer and they'd given me this chance to write. They'd liked what I'd written, so I'd written more and more. And then I had written one that caused this huge sensation and I had been given this huge book deal. And I literally am getting the deal at the same week that I'm finding out. Like I'm so sick. This is back at the original diagnosis. So anyways, I got better. I published the book. There was a lot of press, a lot of negative press. But then a lot of people who really liked the book, but of course I ignored them entirely as fools”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You guys are still married. Oh my gosh, yes. He's the cancer husband of the year. I mean, he just. You really, that's one of the things about everyone's had a crisis and everybody's had a tragedy, and that's where you really find out.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are just about 10 And so, on the one hand, I was like, okay, I got him through to double digits area, you know, but a kid really needs and wants his mom, especially a boy. I think 13, 14, 15, up until then, they have a very deep need for a mom because they're so behind developmentally girls at that point. Obviously, girls and mothers, et cetera, but I've noticed that boys have a deep need for mom until kind of that age. I was like, oh, I wish I'd gotten them there.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. I think so. I should have run for the hills. But anyways, I had a good remission, and I was just at that five-year point that's kind of hyped up as a significant point. And I had a huge devastating recurrence where it was in my liver. And my chest wall and my lungs. And I thought, oh my God, I'm really going to die. I'm going to leave these kids, you know.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're in a hollow the world. And so I got, so I had, so turn on stage three, and I got slammed with just this kind of chemo. I don't think they give it anymore. They've written books about it. It's called The Red Devil. I can't remember what it's taxatier, maybe. It's just a horrible, horrible, horrible experience to go through that kind of chemo. But I had the chemotherapy. I had the surgery, the lumpectomy. I had the radiation by a very charming doctor who I later heard was kind of in the early stages of dementia, but I totally dug him. So we got along great. He was always telling me how beautiful I was. And I was like, this is the best doctor I've ever seen. Like, I'm bald. I'm shriveled. I'm like.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now at the time, you're thinking of so many things that's the last thing. I remember like, oh, god damn it, because my husband called on the cell phone and saying he knew. I just heard from so and so, but I think that doctor, whom I had really gotten to know, he'd help me with another problem earlier. I think he was freaked out. And I think he was, I just think there was a lot of very human emotions going back and forth between. Him and May and I blame him. Part of the introduction to me of what it's like to have cancer, what it's like to have a really serious disease, where like suddenly you think you've seen things, I've had a cesarean section, I've been up against it. You know, you haven't been up against it till you get that really serious disease.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He just kept saying, He didn't want me to drive. I got undressed, he wanted me to see him, he wanted me to see him in his office, at which point he told me it was aggressive, very aggressive. And then he said, I don't want you to drive. And I should call your husband. And I just had this animal need to get as far away from him as I could and to contain the information as much as I could. I just thought something weird has happened in this building. I got to get out of here. I got to not have anybody know about it. And so I'm sure I shouldn't have driven. I'm sure I wasn't shocked. And then my husband called. So the guy had called my husband. And I'm not blaming the guy at all. It's just sort of interesting that you start losing your, I don't know. It's very easy to lose your sense of who you really are in this. But I'm sure the guy was right to call my husband, but I got home safely.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, and we're doing a biopsy now. And he never asked me if he could do a biopsy. Just the things that happen to you when you're really heavily medicalized. Really hard to assert your will again or to even know, like because I remember lying there thinking, well, do and I have a say in this, but I didn't say anything. And then she said, like, these needle biopsy, a little bit painful. And then he kept saying, you have to prepare yourself. You have to prepare yourself. It was a Friday, so it would take, I don't know, till the next week early to get the results of the biopsy. I guess it was Monday, but.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just thought having kids, which will be the best part of my life. And then when they're little, will be the super best part because my parents really hated having adolescent daughters. And I kind of remembered how horrible that was for them. But hey, it was no picnic for us either. So everything was fine, never been sick, never thought of myself as sick. Nobody that I knew in our family, we don't have a lot of family history, but nobody had had cancer, breast cancer. And I went for this like routine checkup mammogram. And then it was like, well, can you just wait a few minutes? We need to get another film. Oh, sure. You know, I'm not really. My ears aren't like pricking up at this. And then, oh, he wants to have a sonogram. And two of my closest friends had had to have a sonogram after their mammograms and been totally fine. So I thought, I guess that's what happens when you're in your 40s. You get the saunogram. And then right then and there, he said, yeah, you have cancer.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thank you. Well, so I was a young mom in the sweet spot of, I mean, I was 40, so not a young mom, but I had really young kids. I had twins who were four years old. Like behind my generation, I guess, I was just one of these girls who really, I didn't ever really want a career. I mean, I thought about teaching school, which I did. And I thought about writing, which I do. But I really wanted to be a mom. I really wanted to be, I wanted to be a housewife. I didn't know the dark side of it, but.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, I'll tell everybody. I bet they'll be super bored and just fast forward over this part of the podcast. But for anybody who's interested,”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I just felt embarrassed. But then after about 24 hours, as always happens when you come out of whatever closet you're in, the minute you come out of it, you're like, oh, what an incredible relief. Because I would be sort of tiptoeing around this many, many, many times in my work or in what was expected or hoped that I could do in terms of sort of making appearances places. So it just, it's always easier to just sit out there just to have told the full any relevant truth once people know it, then you're not hiding it anymore. And it had really gotten to the point that I felt like I was hiding my illness. That felt really bad.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bigger feeling was embarrassment, you know, because it's really intimate to open up your health issue. I mean, some people are really comfortable with it. And for me, it's not something, obviously, that I talk about. So it was the first wave of it was, I just felt embarrassed to have laid all this, laid this heavy trip on people or to feel that I was getting, I don't know.”
2020-05-13 · Making Sense with Sam Harris · #203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source