Episode Summary
Navigating chronic illness is a challenge. Doing so without healthcare coverage heaps on more stress. Watching your parents go through this kind of challenge — Well, memoirist Nicole Chung wrote a whole book about the complexity involved. Mayo Clinic's Dr. Brenda Ernst joins Nicole to talk about the challenges and identity shifts that occur between parents and children when parents get sick.
Episode Notes
We talked with:
- Nicole Chung is the author of “A Living Remedy” and “All You Can Ever Know.” “A Living Remedy” was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and has already been named a Best Book of 2023 by Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, USA Today, and Booklist, among others. Chung’s 2018 debut, the national bestseller “All You Can Ever Know,” landed on over 20 Best of the Year lists and has been translated into several languages.
- Brenda Ernst, M.D., is a hematologist and oncologist at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Phoenix, Arizona. She cares for patients with various types of malignant cancers, especially breast and ovarian cancer. After earning her medical degree at St. George's University School of Medicine in Bay Shore, New York, Dr. Ernst completed an internal medicine residency at the Orlando Regional Medical Center and a fellowship in hematology/oncology at the Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she was Chief Fellow.
We talked about:
In this episode, Dr. Millstine and her guests discuss:
- The high cost of illness — and healthcare. When Nicole’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, Nicole was of course most worried about her mother’s life. Only later did she realize the financial fallout: insurmountable medical debt.
- When care comes too late. Many people struggling with money and healthcare coverage put off receiving earlier treatment or preventive care. Nicole’s father didn’t receive crucial treatment until the last possible moment in his diabetes, and he needed to be on dialysis. What would her parent’s lives have looked like if he had access to treatment years before?
- The tricky nature of caretaking for your caretakers. It’s a struggle to try to help parents, especially when parents want to protect their children from their hardships. Dr. Ernst says that it can be hard to ask for help if your identity is “the caretaker” or “the parent.” When we come up against a crisis, we want to reassure ourselves that we are who we have always been, but crisis changes us and our roles.
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- Purchase “A Living Remedy.”
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