This month's Deep & Shallow gets a little deeper than usual. Jamie the Great updates us on her oral cancer journey and the experimental treatment she’s currently undergoing for precancerous lesions in her mouth. The good news? The treatment is working. The not-so-good news? It hurts. A lot.

Jamie talks candidly about what it’s like to live with ongoing oral cancer monitoring, travel to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute every three months, undergo a painful six-week treatment, and still try to show up for work, workouts, family and everyday life when eating, sleeping and even talking hurt.

She also shares the emotional blow of learning that the doctor she trusted throughout this process is leaving Dana-Farber.

As Jamie puts it, right now she feels like she’s “doing life and not living it.”

We talk about the things that help her feel grounded and give her some sense of control, including continuing to work out, trying to follow an anti-inflammatory diet and, in breaking news finally giving up Crystal Light after drinking it since the ’90s.

And because this is Deep & Shallow, we eventually make our way from oral cancer to salmon, sending a kid off to college at UC Santa Barbara, the freedom of walking around in a bikini, New Orleans vs. San Francisco body culture. Plus we go back to our freshman-year cake decorating competition that we bombed!

In this episode we talk about:

• Jamie’s oral cancer diagnosis and ongoing precancer monitoring
• Experimental treatment for oral precancerous lesions
• The painful side effects of treatment
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and specialized oral cancer care
• Losing a trusted doctor during cancer treatment
• Trying to work, exercise and function while undergoing treatment
• Anti-inflammatory eating when your mouth hurts
• Why Jamie finally quit Crystal Light
• Sending a child off to college
• UCSB and Santa Barbara beach life
• New Orleans vs. San Francisco culture
• And our spectacularly mediocre high-school cake competition

If you’re navigating oral cancer, precancer treatment, chronic illness, cancer survivorship, caregiving or the emotional ups and downs of midlife health, we hope Jamie’s story makes you feel a little less alone.

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