Cancer treatment takes time. It involves seemingly endless time spent in waiting rooms, hours and hours spent in treatment and then hours of recovery. One’s treatment may take them to a hospital, which is a clinical space. “Grey, windowless spaces,” as Bhairavi’s mother used to call them.

Harshly-lit hospital rooms, cramped, crowded and noisy waiting rooms are spaces that leave often leave patients and their family’s feeling overwhelmed, fearful, anxious. Bhairavi believes it doesn’t have to be that way.

In this episode of Burning Questions she talks about healing spaces, both physical and virtual through conversations with Dame Laura Lee, the Chief Executive of Maggie’s, Dr Carmen Loiselle, a researcher of psychosocial oncology and nursing and Sujayanti Dasgupta, an healthcare architect she worked with on the Solis Health Cancer Support Centre. And finally, Bhairavi and her father look back at how her mum’s cancer journey and how it changed them both forever.

Burning Questions is produced by Solis Health.

For more information visit https://solis.health . Follow us on Twitter @Solisforyou and on Instagram @solis.health and LinkedIn @Solis Health. You can send in your questions and comments to burningquestions@solis.health.

A cancer diagnosis can feel life shattering as things spin out of control. But it is possible to slowly take back control and recreate and reshape one’s life, piece by piece. When you don’t let cancer control your life, you gain a sense of agency and ultimately, there is something liberating about this.

In this episode, Bhairavi Madhusudhan Shibulal examines the realities of survivorship and what life - and sometimes loss- after cancer means to patients and caregivers.

It’s important to humanize cancer, the people coping with the disease, as well as those treating the disease.

Listen in as an oncologist shares his own experience of how healthcare professionals balance the incredible demands of their profession - the highs, lows and everything in between - with their own emotions, indeed their own humanity, so that they are able to deliver the best possible care.

Thanks to Aashna Suvarna, Chinmayi Arakali, Bennita Ganesh, Kaveri Ganapathy Ahuja, Amrita Rao and Oona Yadav for sharing their stories. Thanks to Dr Vijay Agarwal for sharing his perspectives with us.

Burning Questions is produced by Solis Health.

For more information visit https://solis.health . Follow us on Twitter @Solisforyou and on Instagram @solis.health and LinkedIn @Solis Health. You can send in your questions and comments to burningquestions@solis.health.

Hope is often what keeps cancer patients and their family’s going. But it can be hard to process the grief, hurt, anger, pain, and despair that comes with a cancer diagnosis and treatment journey. And when the worst happens - how do you live with the loss?

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations centred around death, loss and grieving. We advise listener discretion.

In this episode of Burning Questions, Bhairavi takes an in-depth look at grief, coping with loss and afterwards. How can one come to terms with the idea that life is still worth living after losing a loved one to cancer? Bhairavi listens to former caregivers Amrita Rao and Oona Yadav as they reflect on their respective cancer journeys. She also continues her conversations with Andrew Anderson, a former oncology nurse and Centre Head of Maggie’s in Edinburgh and Dr. Paul Salins, the Medical Director of the Mazumdar Shaw Medical Centre at Narayana Health in Bangalore. 

Burning Questions is produced by Solis Health.

For more information visit https://solis.health . Follow us on Twitter @Solisforyou and on Instagram @solis.health and LinkedIn @Solis Health. You can send in your questions and comments to burningquestions@solis.health.