Seeking Participants for Podcast About Cancer Treatment

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jgimlet
jgimlet Member Posts: 2
edited August 2015 in Chemotherapy - Before, During, and After

Hello,

I hope you won't object to my posting this request here. I did check in with the moderators of this forum who gave me permission to do so. My name is Jesse Rudoy and I am a radio/podcast producer with Gimlet Media.

Gimlet is the premier media company focused on narrative podcasts and it was founded by Alex Blumberg from This American Life.

You can read about the company in this recent NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/technology/perso...

We're starting up a new show that is tentatively called "Encounters". The idea behind the show is based on an exercise done by a Princeton sociologist. In his class, the sociologist invites two people who are at opposite ends of a particular experience to come together for an open and productive conversation about how their experiences and beliefs have effected the course of their lives. The concept for our new show is to facilitate and record these kinds of encounters.

We are interested in having a conversation about chemotherapy where a woman who went through the treatment for their cancer sits down and speaks with another woman who declined to have chemotherapy. I've been spending some time reading the threads in this forum which has given me a profound new awareness of the issues that women with breast cancer have to wrestle with on a day to day basis. It seems that many of you would be able to provide an incredible amount of insight into either side of the difficult decision of whether or not to go through chemotherapy.

I'm wondering if anyone here would be willing to participate in this conversation or would be willing to share my request with others who might?

A few more details:

The conversation would be recorded in person with the two participants (one who went through chemotherapy, one who opted not to) in our Brooklyn radio studio with our host. The conversation would not be live and it will be edited down for use on a podcast.

Because this conversation needs to be recorded in person, the participants would need to be located in or near NYC. We are hoping to record this conversation at some point in the near future.

We know this is an extremely sensitive topic and we plan to treat it as such. Our goal is to facilitate a conversation that provides insight into the experience of living with breast cancer. Please feel free to message me here or email me at jesse@gimletmedia.com if you might be interested in participating or have any questions. I hope to speak with some of you soon.

Thank you,

Jesse Rudoy

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  • muska
    muska Member Posts: 1,195
    edited August 2015

    Breast cancer is a disease, not an experience. Chemotherapy is a medical treatment for cancer that may or may not be recommended by medical professionals depending on the specifics of a particular woman's diagnosis. So I am curious: are you looking for two women of the same age, same diagnosis, same everything who were both recommended a course of chemo but one declined?

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  • jgimlet
    jgimlet Member Posts: 2
    edited August 2015

    Hey Muska,

    Thanks for the response! I think you bring up a great question that was a bit vague in my initial request. We would definitely want to speak with two women of a similar age with similar diagnoses who were recommended the same or similar treatment and and chose very different courses. Thanks for bringing that up.

    -Jesse

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  • muska
    muska Member Posts: 1,195
    edited August 2015

    Hi Jesse, thank you for this clarification. I think you might consider thinking it through a bit more and here is why. At certain disease stages chemo is more or less a given assuming one is not very old and not very sick otherwise. For example, take a look at my profile below. Chemo is always recommended to women at stage 3. There was no difficult decision in my case. I don't think it will be easy to find somebody who is stage 3 and who would argue against chemo on scientific grounds.

    Are you looking for women who are stage 1? stage 2? What age? What background?

    Generally speaking, I am not sure what may come out of this and what the purpose is. I would understand if the discussion were between professionals who would argue one way or the other based on the available research data and their own clinical experience. But having two patients debate how to treat/not to treat their cancer? Would you have a similar debate about pneumonia or diarrhea? Both can be treated with antibiotics or treated with alternative methods or not treated at all.

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