Live Chat: The Courage to Choose Life on Your Terms with Dar Finkelstein
"One of my MBC friends said to me, 'You're feeling guilty about making people cry, but you've instilled in them so much joy and what they're doing, what you're seeing is them sharing the joy back to you.' And she said, 'It looks like tears, but that's their love coming back to you.'"
—Dar Finkelstein on accepting loved ones' grief
Live Chat: From Devastating Diagnosis to Distinction with Lesley Stephen MBE
Imagine this: You're a mother of four. You think you have a chest infection, but it turns out to be stage four metastatic breast cancer—in your lungs, liver, and bones. The nurse sitting across from you has tears in her eyes. You're given one, maybe two years to live. Treatment after treatment fails. Finally, your doctor says the words no one wants to hear: "You need to get your affairs in order."
So you take your kids to New York for one last family vacation.
But when you come home, there's one spot left on a clinical trial in Glasgow. You take it. And against all odds, it saves your life—for seven years.
That's the beginning of Lesley Stephen's story. Twelve years later, she's not only alive and cancer-free—she's just been honored by the British Royal Family with an MBE. Princess Anne herself presented Leslie with her medal at Windsor Castle for her extraordinary work transforming how metastatic breast cancer patients access clinical trials and cutting-edge care.
Live Chat: Shining a Light on MBC with Tami Bowling
When a life-changing diagnosis led Tami Bowling to advocacy, she fueled the movement to Light up MBC. In this episode, Tami shares her personal experience, the origins of LightUp MBC and LightUp MBC Live, and how lighting up landmarks is bringing hope, awareness, and vital research funding to the metastatic breast cancer community.
Future at Risk: Protecting Research, Protecting Lives
What if the decades of progress against cancer — the breakthroughs, the rising survival rates, the new vaccines and cutting‑edge therapies — were suddenly put in jeopardy? Five decades after the “war on cancer” began, the hard‑won momentum now faces existential threats: canceled grants and clinical trials, proposals to slash the NCI budget, and an unprecedented politicization of biomedical research funding.
Victoria Goldberg is joined by Pam Traxel, Senior Vice President at the American Cancer Society and a lifelong patient advocate.