1. So doc, it’s Cancer? is a podcast dedicated to being a “how-to” manual for cancer patients and their friends and families. Each month we will work through different elements of the overall problem, “from soup to nuts” as they say, beginning at the beginning such as the the basics of what cancer is, who may be at risk, who is involved in the treatments, why treatments differ so much from one cancer to another, or even within the same type of cancer? The podcast will work through to the various possible outcomes, and quality of life.
2. Why? Need for physician-led podcast series that is patient centric. It helps to have a chat with your physician, only, that chat is usually short, emotional, hard to remember, and often only a beginning. 
3. Hosts: Paul Roach - Surgical Oncology; Courtney Coke - Radiation Oncology; Pete Schlegel - Medical Oncology; Mike Riordan - Graphic Designer

Paul Roach:

One, boom, we're recording. Isn't that

courtney:

Hey

Paul Roach:

magical?

courtney:

Doc, how are you doing?

Paul Roach:

Good, how are you?

courtney:

doing great. I'm doing great.

Paul Roach:

Awesome.

courtney:

Thanks for organizing this, Paul.

Paul Roach:

Thank you. I'm really excited about the podcast.

courtney:

So am I, so am I. So our podcast is called.

Paul Roach:

So doc, it's cancer?

courtney:

Yes, that is a very interesting topic, very important topic for a lot of people, and I'm glad we're here to provide some information for them.

Paul Roach:

Courtney, why did you come up with that title? That was a good title.

courtney:

because I didn't want to put any expletives in there and I thought that

Paul Roach:

Hey,

courtney:

was a,

Paul Roach:

yeah. This is a clean show.

courtney:

yeah,

Paul Roach:

It's a

courtney:

it's

Paul Roach:

clean

courtney:

a clean

Paul Roach:

show.

courtney:

show.

Paul Roach:

I like it.

courtney:

Because patients are usually in disbelief and they have so many questions. And I think we can start with questions and then answer the questions the best that we can.

Paul Roach:

It's a shocker. It's a

courtney:

Yeah.

Paul Roach:

shocker every time.

courtney:

every single time. I mean, you're upending people's lives, right?

Paul Roach:

I remember in med school, seeing my first heart attack patient.

courtney:

Right.

Paul Roach:

And he was a, let's say about a 40 year old, um, male, uh, overweight and red faced. And he was having a full on heart attack, elevated

courtney:

Mm-hmm.

Paul Roach:

EKG, T waves. And the look on his face, I never forgot it. It was of such surprise

courtney:

Mm-hmm.

Paul Roach:

and shock. And, you know, I think the same thing happens anytime. we have to inform somebody that they've got cancer.

courtney:

Paul Roach:

Well, I think I couldn't agree more. And I think that the goal of this podcast is to do what we can as cancer specialists, to work with our audience, all you listeners, and answer your questions, if you wanna write us questions, and also bring up subjects and try to discuss these issues, which when they happen, it all goes so fast. And... in the clinic, in that visit, and it's hard to remember everything. And here we can take the time and do a deeper dive, and like you said, we can walk people through every phase of this whole thing.

courtney:

Yes, and myself as a radiation oncologist, that is my area of expertise, treating patients with cancerous radiation. I'm very happy to answer any questions and give the perspective from the radiation oncology standpoint. And you, my friend and colleague, Paul, you are a surgical oncologist.

Paul Roach:

Yes, sir. And so for the audience, this is Courtney Koch, a radiation oncologist and Paul Roach, a surgical oncologist, and we're starting a new podcast, So Doc, It's Cancer. And here we are, we will be joined later with a medical oncologist, Peter Schlegel, and a friend of ours who knows very, just the basic things about cancer. He's not in medicine at all. but he's someone who will keep us honest and on track and keep us from talking just to one another.

courtney:

So medical oncology, chemotherapy, surgical oncologists, surgery, removing the lesion, radiation oncology, giving radiation treatments. And I think sometimes all those names are not even familiar to people. So

Paul Roach:

Yeah.

courtney:

we say, for example, we have a 55-year-old woman who finds a lump in her breast. Maybe we can talk about the steps that a patient would go through and put in our areas of expertise into that experience. she would maybe see a primary care physician and that primary care physician does a mammogram through the radiologist, for example. They see that it's something suspicious. They refer them to you, the surgical oncologist,

Paul Roach:

Right.

courtney:

right?

Paul Roach:

Yeah, they'll get the mammogram and they'll see a suspicious lump. They may biopsy that lump at the time with a needle biopsy. That goes to the pathologist, the physician in the laboratory, who'll look at it under the microscope and they'll send the results to me and the patient and then I get to meet them and we go over the whole story. We get to meet each other. I find out where she is and most breast cancer is females by... a large majority, where she is in her life, what's going on, how long this thing has been known, or sometimes it's just the screening mammogram that identifies something and she didn't even know there was a lump. And then we will talk for 30, 45, or even 60 minutes about what this whole thing means and how... the workup is going to have to go and what the treatment process is going to be. Then I'll take the lump out and when we get the pathology back, I'll send them back over to you Courtney. And what happens over there?

courtney:

Paul Roach:

Right. And then we'll all follow up this patient, the medical oncologist, the surgical and the radiation oncologist over time until such period that the patient is essentially rendered cancer free and they move out of our lives for maybe forever.

courtney:

And that is a great day, Paul. That

Paul Roach:

It is

courtney:

is

Paul Roach:

a great

courtney:

a

Paul Roach:

day.

courtney:

great day,

Paul Roach:

It is a great

courtney:

great

Paul Roach:

day.

courtney:

day when you can say to the patient, you know, you're cured, or you don't need to see me anymore. We're gonna discharge your care back to your primary care position and put this behind you now.

Paul Roach:

And then what we'll do with this podcast is we'll take all the different types of cancers that we can bring forth and discuss, whether it's her breast cancer or skin cancer or lung cancer, whatever it is, there's perhaps a thousand different diseases and we'd like to bring them forth and present the cases, discuss what's involved in detail, the sort of detail that maybe you weren't able to do during your clinic visit or maybe you did talk about it, but it was such a shock you forgot. And for those people who are around the cancer patient, they all want to learn as well. Not everyone can be in the clinic office. And we'll move forward with that and have a feedback mechanism where people can write us letters and we can bring those up. And so Courtney, why don't we go into what the format for this podcast is going to contain? What do you think?

courtney:

Okay, sure.

Paul Roach:

All right, well, every episode, we'll do one episode a month. I'll begin with just the front end sort of hello and introductions of who's going to be on the show today and what we'll be talking about. And then the first thing will be a case of the day, just as we sort of went over, but maybe in a little bit detail, and then we'll move straight from the case to the lesson of the day. And that's where we'll, the three of us as cancer specialists and Mike as, as a citizen of the world. we'll be able to try to explain to the listening audience what really, what is cancer and what is that cancer and how does it behave and what kind of workup does it require and what can people expect and what kind of work is involved in trying to cure it. The next aspect of the format would be cancer questions. Perhaps we'll. be able to spend a few minutes or so answering any questions that people have written us regarding any subject that has to do with cancer. And

courtney:

And I think Paul,

Paul Roach:

yes, sir.

courtney:

we also talked about, which I love that idea, doing cancer interviews. So

Paul Roach:

Yeah.

courtney:

either interviews from other specialists, interviews from patients, to bring a personal aspect to this, to individualize, personalize the experience that we see every day in our professional lives, but to bring that to you. There'll be an option to at cancer news, which would be what research.

Paul Roach:

Yeah, I think so. You know, there's always new things coming in this field. It's one of the things that makes it remarkable. And, you know, for instance, just last week, news broke of a only 12-person study at Memorial Sloan Kettering on rectal cancer, which, in which a subset of rectal cancer patients, those with high microsatellite instability, were treated with a type of medicine called PD-1 inhibitor and all 12, even though they were locally advanced, it melted away completely. There was absolutely no residual disease from this one pill. And this is early and it's exciting and promising and it needs more study, but it's a real game changer if these results are sustained in further trials. And so I thought, you know, we might be able to... Find some cancer news related to whatever the topic of the day was and share that with the audience as well.

courtney:

Absolutely, and that allows your audience, it's equipping you with some tools with which to maybe speak with your physicians and to know which questions to ask. And even if you ask the question, are there any research opportunities or research that would be applicable to my cancer? I think that is a very important tool and perspective that we can give you. This is awesome, Paul. This is awesome.

Paul Roach:

I'm really looking forward to this

courtney:

Yeah.

Paul Roach:

and it'll be even more fun when we get Mike and Pete on board. But Courtney, as we're closing this first introductory episode up, I'd like to ask you, what do you think is the reason that somebody might want to listen to this podcast? And what would make our podcast unique compared to the others?

courtney:

I think a lot of people that have been diagnosed with cancer are either, I think, one feel alone in that no one can really relate to the diagnosis. And I also think, number one, number two, I think information is power.

Paul Roach:

Yes,

courtney:

It allows you to

Paul Roach:

yeah.

courtney:

make decisions for yourself in a very informed way and to move through the different stages of your diagnosis and treatment in a way. that you feel as if you're empowered to do that. And I think that is a very important place to be as you go through this very, and sometimes we're lost for words, difficult, vulnerable, unusual stage in your life. And it's by being and talking with specialists as ourselves that we can give you some of the information, powerful information to equip yourselves with.

Paul Roach:

All right, well, I think I could never have answered that better than you did right there. This is great. Alright, well with this we'll sign off.