Jamie DePolo: Hello, thanks for listening. I’m podcasting from the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. I'm joined by Beth Fairchild, who describes herself as an artist, activist, yogi, and terminal optimist. Beth has been living with metastatic breast cancer since 2014. She's been part of a number of advocacy organizations, but this year, she decided it was time for something new, and has started a group called Cancer Culture, which she's going to tell us about.
Beth, welcome to the podcast.
Beth Fairchild: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jamie DePolo: To give everyone a chance to know you a little bit, could you just tell us about your diagnosis, the treatments, whatever you're comfortable sharing?
Beth Fairchild: Sure, I was diagnosed de novo metastatic in May of 2014, with mets to my reproductive organs, my liver, and every single bone in my body. I had a radical hysterectomy, followed by six months of chemotherapy, and then I switched to an AI and a bisphosphonate, and I've been on those for eight years, this month, actually. So, completely stable. No evidence of active disease, and feeling pretty well considering. I do have some bone pain. I have some degenerative stuff happening from longtime use of it, but I always say it's not cancer, so I can live with that.
Jamie DePolo: Got it. So, now, you've worked with a bunch of different organizations. Tell me why being an advocate is so important.
Beth Fairchild: If I'm honest, it's pretty selfish, because I feel like as an advocate, I'm helping other people, and that is what kind of recharges me. I mean, working as an advocate, as you know, it's tiring. You come to these conferences, it's long days. But at the end of the day, when I sit back and look at the ripple effect that advocacy work has on other people, that's why I do it. It's how I'm able to recharge.
Jamie DePolo: So you started this new organization, Cancer Culture. I'm assuming it's a non-profit, but I don't know that for sure. So, tell me a little bit about it. What is it? What do you want it to do? How can people be a part of it?
Beth Fairchild: Sure. So, Cancer Culture was kind of born out of patient support. And I always say when I brought my metastatic patients to a retreat, that, you know, a lot of times when you're at home, your cancer is compartmentalized, right? Like you're working, or you're doing family stuff, and maybe you go to a face-to-face support group, or maybe you're on an online support group, but your time that you're actually talking about cancer is very finite. You know, it's compartmentalized. You protect the people around you from cancer. But when we are together at a retreat, we immerse ourselves in what I've always called cancer culture, where you can talk about anything.
You know, in the metastatic setting, we talk about death and dying very freely. There's a lot of dark humor, and no one's looking at you with, you know, pity or sympathy.
Jamie DePolo: Or side eye. “Oh, I can't believe they said that.”
Beth Fairchild: Exactly. And so, I think that that is so therapeutic to just be immersed in cancer culture and to really, you know, talk so openly and freely about it. So, we wanted to do something a little different. We, we are a social media campaign, multimedia. We use art for storytelling and emotional healing through art. So, I think that there's a lot of value in storytelling. Like we all are here with this common diagnosis, and we all have a story. And so we're helping patients as part of their living legacy, and hopefully, you know, lay people are watching and learning a bit about life with breast cancer.
Jamie DePolo: So I'm assuming there's a website that goes along with this.
Beth Fairchild: There is a website, it's cancerculture.org.
Jamie DePolo: Okay. And that’s with Cs not Ks.
Beth Fairchild: With Cs, yes. Yeah, you can go and read all about it and see some of the work that we've been doing. We're really proud of it. It's brand new. We just soft launched in October, but we're here, and we're ready to do some good work.
Jamie DePolo: Now, do you have any sort of displays or booth or anything at San Antonio this year? Or is it really just you're talking to people?
Beth Fairchild: Yeah, we're just here. I'm kind of talking to people, letting everyone know that we're here. We did create a body of work for Eisai. They have an unbranded campaign called #ThisisMBC, for metastatic breast cancer, and they have a booth on the floor that's featuring the body of work that we were able to create telling patients’ stories. So, we're here to support that effort and to support the patients who are here as part of that campaign. But we don't have a booth here this year, but we'll definitely have a presence next year.
Jamie DePolo: And for someone's listening, and they want to know how they could become involved, what should they do?
Beth Fairchild: Yeah, they can go to the website, cancerculture.org, we have a contact us form, and we'll be happy to talk to people about how they can be involved or volunteer or donate.
Jamie DePolo: Okay. Now, one last question. You mentioned that support was so important, are sort of online support groups or in-person support groups, is that going to be part of Cancer Culture, too, or is it the retreat, or is that still to come?
Beth Fairchild: Most of what we are going to do is retreats, and during the retreat, we capture the media, the photography, and the interviews. So, a lot of the support that we offer is just kind of directing people to the organizations that are already doing an amazing job of that. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. There are some great organizations that provide support, that fund research, and we're happy to direct people to those organizations, while our mission is storytelling. So, they can definitely come to our site and find links to organizations, if they're looking for support, or face-to-face meetings, or if there's anything that they want to do. They can find the support and the links on our website.
Jamie DePolo: Okay, so it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you want to do is kind of put a face on metastatic breast cancer through this art and through these interviews, and through the stories.
Beth Fairchild: That's a great way to put it. And we have a focus on metastases, but we also are all stages of breast cancer. But yeah, you know, you hear a lot of statistics around breast cancer, and oftentimes, if it doesn't affect you directly, it's out of sight, out of mind. And so the content that we create helps to put a face to the diagnosis, and people are watching the stories online, especially with the #ThisisMBC project. They follow the patient stories throughout the year and see where they're at, and get updates on the patients, and they really become emotionally invested, which in turn, makes them want to be active, whether they volunteer, whether they donate, or whether they just share out the content on their social channels. But the goal is to get people invested not only to educate them about the disease, but hopefully, to activate them to do something.
Jamie DePolo: Okay, Beth, thank you so much. It’s great to talk to you.
Beth Fairchild: Thank you. You, too.
