Welcome back friends, and welcome to all the new folks! If you are new to the podcast, I’m glad you’re here! This is one of those weeks where I didn’t know ahead of time what I was going to write about, and then I happened to have a minisession with a lovely young woman struggling with fertility decisions after treatment for breast cancer. This topic has been on my list, but not made it to the top, but after speaking with her, I realized the universe was telling me “It’s time”. The discussion with the young woman was so helpful, for me and for her as well. I love to know what people are struggling with so I can tailor what I am doing, and she said the free session helped her and her husband to reframe their discussions, and her to realize that her fear of missing out on the opportunity to grow her family was actually more pressing than her fear of recurrence.

So today, I am talking about pregnancy after cancer in general, and breast cancer...

Well, hey, my best lifers and welcome back! I am going to kick today off asking you to please rate, review and subscribe on Itunes. I am really making a concerted effort to get the word out, so if you would take a minute and scroll down on Itunes under the list of podcasts, you can rate the podcast and leave a review, and I will be so grateful! If you have already done so, let me take a minute to thank you – I have read them all (ok, I admit, more than once) and they all make me so happy to be doing this much needed work! So – THANKS!

Today is a topic I am so excited to write and talk about. It is how I live my life, each and every day, and is one of the core pillars of what I believe all of us as humans with limited time in our lives should be doing. It is about not waiting to make a bucket list, and checking things off of it at least annually! To start this podcast, I spent some time researching the concept of a bucket list. From Merriam-Webster, a bucket list is a...

Well, hey friends. Hope this finds you well. We are having a winter with a LOT more snow than the last few years! I have really enjoyed some snowy walks with my dogs, along with some sledding and skiing with my kids, which has really been fun. But, it keeps snowing during the week! This leads to challenges getting to work, and school being cancelled. So funny, our family in Wyoming say that school is never cancelled for snow, but yet here in NJ, it is whenever we get more than 4-5 inches. And we have seen what happens when Texas gets snow – everything screeches to a halt. Hope all of you in that part of the US are haning in there! Interesting how things vary across the US, right? My friends in the Carolinas say that school is cancelled even if they are predicting snow! One of the things about working in oncology, man, many of my patients manage to get to treatment even in blizzards! So I do everything I can to get to work safely so that I can take care of them. I guess what I...

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer, Episode Number 38. This week we are talking about PTSD. I want to remind you that I am a doctor, but not your doctor, so run all medical issues by your primary team. If you are in crisis, and thinking about harming yourself, please call 911 or reach out to national suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255.

Hey, friends. Hope you are well. I am typing this going into Valentine’s Weekend. We are not really people who make a big deal of this. My husband and I don’t do a gift exchange or anything, but do plan a dinner together sometime close to the day (usually not on actual Valentine’s day – too crowded and limited menus and other things that make it less fun). On the actual day, we usually have some sort of fun dinner as a family with as many heart things as I can add – this year I found red heart shaped ravioli at Costco that I know my kids will love, chocolate covered strawberries, and more fun treats. I...

Working Through Negative Emotions After Cancer: The Timer Technique

If you spend your whole day worrying, you need to put some limits on your brain. Believe it or not, we can actually tell our brain what to spend its time thinking about. I created this technique for patients about 15 years ago, and this has been lifechanging for many. Today, we will learn to allow bad feelings for some part of the day, and then tell our brain that it is done with fear, worrying, obsessing, what-if-ing for the next 24 hours. This is how you do it. Get a timer, your phone, the oven timer, whatever you have. Set aside time that you can do this without interruption – if you have a crazy life like me, one option is getting to work early and sitting in the car away from everyone! This time will make you a better parent, spouse, daughter or son, friend, and colleague, so don’t feel like you are being selfish taking this time every day. Set the timer for 15 minutes. Then really allow all...

If you are new, I’m Dr. Deborah Butzbach. For 20 years, I have had the pleasure of caring for cancer patients as a radiation oncologist, and recently, I also got a life coaching certification. This is helping me care for my patients even better, and now I am branching out to share my wisdom with all cancer patients. So, welcome! If you are looking for more help, you can find it in three places: My Website,  Best Life After Cancer Podcast or my Facebook Page and private group: Best Life After Cancer MD FB Page. 

It makes sense that people have lots of negative emotions after a cancer diagnosis. The most common ones I see are grief or loss, fear or anxiety, a sense of pervasive emptiness, or guilt. Grief most commonly involves the loss of the life you thought you were going to have, now replaced by one with a new medical diagnosis, physical limitations and mental challenges. In many cases this is also grief over significant changes in your body, especially in...

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer, Episode Number 36!
Well, hey, my Best Lifers! I hope you are doing well, safe and warm and snug somewhere! We had about 16 inches of snow over the last 2 days, and I am so grateful to have the ability to work from home doing telehealth. Over the weekend, I spent a ton of time just sitting by the window Sunday watching the snow fall and the birds flutter around the feeder while I sipped a hot drink. So perfect, calm and peaceful! Sometimes I wish all days could be like that.

I have been thinking a lot about where I am and where you might be this week. And I realized that maybe I needed to give both myself and all of you a bit of tough love. I have been sliding on my food protocol, which has led to some weight gain recently, after holding steady for most of the pandemic. At the same time, I have had a number of people tell me “I just don’t know how to change where I am” or “I am overwhelmed”. So, I am devoting...

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer, Episode 35.

Hey, friends!  If you follow on my Facebook page or group, you know I got my second dose of the Pfizer Covid vaccine about 10 days ago (super excieted about that for sure!)  I am amazed that we have been able to get through 10 months with both my husband and I working in medicine, with 4 kids in at least a hybrid school program – my littlest in school full time since September – with no one in the family getting Covid.  It is a testament to the fact that masks work, and kids are capable of being responsible and masking well just like adults are.  I was tested several times over the intervening year, but my kids have not even had a cold!  I have been getting so many questions lately about Covid and the vaccine from my patients lately, and I thought this might be something that people would find really useful. I’d like to take a quick moment first to acknowledge the challenges of...

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer Podcast 34!

Well, hey, my friends, how are you today? I started this podcast a while ago, and it never came to fruition, but I am realizing it is such an issue for so many women, I really needed to just get it out and into the world. Ever have a week where things don’t go the way you planned, and it ends up with someone being angry with you? We all have had that. The worst is when you apologize several times, and they decide to stay angry. I don’t live that way, so it is foreign to me. Hard to understand and interpret. I, like many other women, am quick to label it as my fault. I try to fix it, but to no avail. Then come really great feelings like shame and fear. What will it mean if someone is angry with me? Who will they tell? What will happen? It makes me want to run and hide. As a physician, this fear sometimes comes up when a patients is angry at me. I worry if they complain, what the administration will say, what my peers...

You are listening to Best Life After Cancer Episode 33.

Well, hey, friends! Crazy times, right? Looting in the capital building, a presidential impeachment, a global pandemic coming up on a year in duration, I mean you can’t make this stuff up! Sounds like an end times sci fi movie. Lots and lots of people have a lot of worries about all of this, and for my Best Lifers, that is just the cherry on top of their cancer sundae. You know what I mean, right? For me, I worry about my all of my people, family, friends, patients, about depression and the effect of isolation as people go through treatment. So, I wanted to spend some time today talking about worry and how it affects emotional wellbeing after cancer.

So what is worry? Worry is an indulgent emotion. What does that mean? It is an emotion that doesn’t move us forward or create results in our lives. It keeps us stuck. Really, it is a habit that we get into and can’t find our way out. The reason it doesn’t...