Posted November 27, 2019

Suzie Sherman
This is And The Next Thing You Know. It’s a podcast about how our lives go exactly not as we planned them. I’m Suzie Sherman. I’ve been struggling with how to introduce this conversation that I had with my niece, Jenessa Schwartz, about her experience living with stage 4 colon cancer. It’s frustrating to try to add a prologue to the fear and grief and anger that I’m holding about this.

Jenessa is 37 years old. She has two kids, sassy gingers, the both of them a third grader and a first grader. She was also the “Womb for Hire,” in her own punning parlance, to two adorable surrogate kids, which is one of the menschiest things a person can do in this life. She’s a middle school language arts teacher, a musical theater aficionado, a giant nerd and beloved to her huge, dear circle of friends and family, and she’ll be on chemo or some form of treatment for her cancer for the rest of her life. Stay with us till the end and I’ll let you know how to follow Jenessa’s story. I’ll also tell you about some of the great cancer research and care organizations that Jenessa recommends. This is my conversation with the indomitable Jenessa Schwartz.

‘K, say something very loudly like project some soliloquy line or something.

Jenessa Schwartz
“I am the very model of a modern Major General. I’ve information vegetable, animal and mineral. I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical.”

Suzie Sherman
Haha, perfect. I love that you’re a thespian, this is working out so well.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha!

Okay. So just whenever?

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Jenessa Schwartz
I’m Jenessa Schwartz. I was 34 years old. And I was in the very beginning stages of a surrogate pregnancy. I had had a surrogate pregnancy, a couple years before to three. Now I can’t even remember. I had carried twins for a lovely couple. And I wanted to do it again. So friends of theirs actually asked me, while I was over at their house for dinner, and it felt like a setup after the fact. But they asked if I would be willing to do it again and do it for them. And it was, it was perfect timing. So I was in the process of that. And I was a teacher, I still teach middle school English and performing arts and yoga, most recently and…and then I came home from LA, I was being screened. I was having a health screening and they screened for every STD under the sun, as well as things like blood levels and general health. So I’d just come home from that health screening.

Suzie Sherman
The screening was because you were doing the surrogacy, so that was just the panel that you were doing.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah. Yeah. Very routine. It was just through the, the fertility clinic that they were using. So I got home from that. And the next week was Purim at school. And I remember I was at school for parent teacher conferences, and I went to the bathroom before my first meeting. And when I stood up, I saw that the toilet was completely full of blood. Just the water was red. It was not anything that should ever come out of a human. I don’t think. And that was kind of the first, the first sign.

Suzie Sherman
At work, at school.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes at work with parents in the next room, that that day I remember going to the bathroom, I don’t know, six or seven times within the space of three hours or so. And each time it was the same amount of blood.

Suzie Sherman
Oh, god, that’s so scary. That’s so scary.

Jenessa Schwartz
You know, it’s funny, it wasn’t scary. Haha. It was annoying. It was like,

Suzie Sherman
I’m projecting.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha. It was like, I am at parent teacher conferences, and I need to be my best professional self. And I have to run to the bathroom every half an hour and not only to have to run to the bathroom, but like it’s blood, which is concerning, although I wasn’t scared. And in fact, I was totally explaining it away because I had taken some cold medicine the day before, and it was one of those like really high vitamin C tablets that you take like six of in the first hour and then you take them, you know, every three hours,

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Jenessa Schwartz
And they’re kind of not real medicine. So I was like, Oh, it’s probably just…

Suzie Sherman
You just explained it away, in that way.

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, yeah, I totally explained it away. Yeah, I was just super annoyed.

Suzie Sherman
And your pee was probably a lot brighter yellow than usual…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, because of all the vitamin B 12, or whatever was in those pills. I was like, ach, I shouldn’t have taken those pills. And I have to meet with all these parents. And I just wasn’t concerned at all. I was super annoyed.

Suzie Sherman
Wow, that’s, that’s really amazing to me. And I know, I think we’ll probably talk more about sort of the symptoms all along and how you explained them away and how we tend to do that.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep.

Suzie Sherman
But what made you take the blood seriously?

Jenessa Schwartz
My friend Jamie, she, we share a classroom. And so and then in between conferences, she would come in because she had conferences in a different room. So she would come into the classroom and we would chat and I must have looked shaken or something, because she asked if I was okay. And I was like, Well, I don’t feel great. And there’s blood in the toilet. There’s blood in my stool. And she goes, What?

And I said, Oh, you know, it’s probably nothing. She goes, no, it’s not nothing. You don’t have blood in your stool for nothing. You need to call your doctor. So I call my doctor. I never call my doctor, ever. Like, I never go to the doctor for anything.

Suzie Sherman
Had you ever had any blood? You know, when you wiped from using the bathroom? Just maybe a hemorrhoid or something like that? That…

Jenessa Schwartz
Once a long, long time ago college, but never, never since then.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, this was really extreme. And you were still like, Oh, no, like, why would I do that?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah. Uh huh. I mean, I’ve had some medical things like the surrogate pregnancy, for example, was pretty high level medical stuff happening, and so especially the birth itself was slightly complicated. And so, I think I was just used to doctors, used to needles, used to kind of weird things happening to my body that were outside of my control. I was used to feeling like crap most of the time, because of being pregnant with my own children. You know, being pregnant, being a new mom, breastfeeding, and then getting pregnant really quickly again after that, and then breastfeeding, and then not being pregnant for a little bit, but having two very young children, and then being pregnant with twins and having it be a complicated pregnancy. It was like, you know, since basically since 2009, I’ve been pregnant or breastfeeding and have small children and working full time and dealing with life. And so I was just been I’ve been tired and nauseous basically, for the last 10 years.

Suzie Sherman
For a decade.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Did you say how old Ramona and Solly were? At this time?

Jenessa Schwartz
At this time, Ramona was six. And Solly was four. Is that right? Yep.

Suzie Sherman
And the surrogacy that you had done to deliver the twins had happened when? So we’re talking…

Jenessa Schwartz
Two years before that.

Suzie Sherman
Okay, so we’re talking about when you found blood in your stool and all over the toilet bowl constantly that day, that was 2017?

Jenessa Schwartz
2017 it was March.

Suzie Sherman
And 2015 was when you had the surrogate twins.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes.

Suzie Sherman
So you went to the doctor.

Jenessa Schwartz
I did go to the doctor.

Suzie Sherman
Was anyone with you?

Jenessa Schwartz
No. I was by myself. It was a few weeks later. Well, actually, I don’t remember the timeline anymore. It must have been a at least a week later. I mentioned that it was Purim because I was doing two things with friends of mine who do the Purim spiel for one of the local synagogues, which is like a little skit play that you do for the holiday, the Jewish holiday, Purim, and I was in that, plus I was their kind of assistant for their performing arts class and so I had two performances coming up in the next week or so. And I remember saying to them, I’m having some unexplained bleeding. So if I, if I have to miss rehearsal or a show, I’m really sorry, I just wanted to let you know. And I and I remember the look of panic on their faces. But of course, they’re, they’re lovely. So they, you know, they were fine about it. But um, so I remember it was Purim. And I went to the doctor, and I told him what was happening. And I gave him the same explanation I gave you about these weird vitamins that I had taken. And he was like, Yeah, you’re right. It’s It was probably a one time thing, but just to be safe. I’m going to give you a rectal exam. It was my very first rectal exam. I have to say it’s more pleasant than a pap smear. And he didn’t see any…he didn’t feel…what he was feeling for where hemorrhoids. He didn’t feel anything. There was a little bit of residue blood. I hadn’t had any blood after that day. So, he said that he was gonna refer me for a colonoscopy, which I balked at. I was like, that’s ridiculous, right? In my, in my experience colonoscopies were for old people, you know, I had no no knowledge of why people would get a colonoscopy or how common they actually are. And I was so pissed at myself for going to the doctor. I was like, fuck if I had just ignored it and not gone to the doctor, I wouldn’t have to do stupid colonoscopy. I was so mad.

Suzie Sherman
Were you thinking about what it might have cost out of pocket and stuff like that? Or just…

Jenessa Schwartz
I wasn’t too worried…

Suzie Sherman
…just the bother of it, or like the inconvenience of it…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…the discomfort of it.

Jenessa Schwartz
I mean, all I knew about a colonoscopy was the prep that you had to do for it. That’s all I’d really heard about it. And that did not sound pleasant or like something I ever wanted to do. Um, he said that it’s Kaiser. I have to say I commend Kaiser because a lot of people that I know, were completely dismissed by their primary care physicians when they had the same symptoms that I did. They just wrote it off and said, you’re young, you’re healthy. There’s no need to worry, you know, come back if it happens again.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
But to his credit, he said, you know, just to be safe, and he said these exact words to me, he said, I can’t promise it’s not colon cancer, haha. But let’s just get a colonoscopy just to be safe.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
I mean, he didn’t really put in that fake laugh, but it was an implied, you know, it was an implied, like, we know it’s not gonna be colon cancer, but let’s, let’s just be safe about it. So…

Suzie Sherman
Right. It’s probably somewhere in a “soothing things doctors should say” script,

Jenessa Schwartz
Right. “It’s probably not cancer.” Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm. So it was cancer.

Jenessa Schwartz
It was.

Suzie Sherman
It was stage 4 colon cancer.

Jenessa Schwartz
Indeed.

Suzie Sherman
What was the actual like, technical language of the diagnosis? Do you remember from that early stage when you first were diagnosed?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah. So, when I was first diagnosed, it was stage 4 colon cancer, with mets to my liver and my peritoneum. which I learned very quickly is the tissue that covers your internal organs. They it’s kind of the the lining in your abdomen. And it keeps your organs kind of nice and slippery and not sticking to each other. And so that was my initial diagnosis. I had a tumor. A big tumor in my colon was about seven centimeters, a tumor in my liver. And then they saw about four spots in other places not on organs, but just kind of in my abdomen. And those were the ones in my peritoneum.

Suzie Sherman
Um-hm. Were you with anyone when you actually receive the news that you have cancer?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes, Mike was with me. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Mike, your husband at the time.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep.

Suzie Sherman
Just you and Mike. Not your mom…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, just us. Yeah, we weren’t expecting that news. I mean, you know, it’s funny…

Suzie Sherman
Of course you weren’t.

Jenessa Schwartz
…I look back on it now, and I should have been because, when I had the colonoscopy, she actually the doctor couldn’t complete it. So what I remember from the colonoscopy was doing the prep, and it was just as terrible as I had imagined. And I went in. The Twilight sleep they give you is actually quite lovely. And I remember thinking to myself, like, Oh, this is nice. I just kinda closed my eyes and it doesn’t hurt. It was fine. And then all of the sudden there was this panic in the room. And there were there was a nurse and there was a tech and there was the doctor. And I remember the nurse kind of shaking me awake. And the doctor just saying things at me but I was still under anesthesia. I had no clear idea of what she was saying to me. And then the next thing I knew, I was being wheeled down to the CT that to get a CAT scan. And I Quelise, my cousin, your niece…

Suzie Sherman
My other niece…

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha, was with me she was one who took me to my appointment. And I don’t really remember talking to her, but I remember the doctor saying to me things like “tumor” and “perforated bowel” and these words that weren’t really entering my consciousness. I mean, I would, I haven’t really had a conversation with Quelise about what she was understanding at that point. Which I should have a conversation with her about that. So I go down to CT and I get a scan and they send me home. And that was it. And then…

Suzie Sherman
With no intervention, even though they said that there was a perforation of your bowel, for instance…

Jenessa Schwartz
No, they knew there wasn’t…

Suzie Sherman
Okay.

Jenessa Schwartz
So she was worried there had been…

Suzie Sherman
Okay.

Jenessa Schwartz
…because of how large the tumor was and how she tried to get the camera around it, but she couldn’t. And so she kind of scraped the wall of my bowel. And so she was afraid that she maybe had made a cut or something. But she also, you know, needed to get the CT to get an image of the of the tumor and to look elsewhere in my abdomen.

Suzie Sherman
So when they sent you home after you had the CT scan, it was clear from what was going on that they’d encountered a tumor.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes.

Suzie Sherman
But…did…but there was no sort of speech to leave you off with?

Jenessa Schwartz
No…

Suzie Sherman
It was just like…

Jenessa Schwartz
Not that I remember again, I was…

Suzie Sherman
“We’ll be in touch soon….

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, it was…

Suzie Sherman
…about the results.”

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, it was…they may have said something, but again, I was under anesthesia I had I really had no idea. All I knew was was “tumor.” And I knew nothing, then. And now, you know, looking back on it, now, knowing everything that I know, it should have been so obvious that it was cancer, but I knew nothing. I had no experience with colon cancer.

Suzie Sherman
And you were 34.

Jenessa Schwartz
And I was 34, it was like, what the hell?

Suzie Sherman
It was completely out of nowhere. It’s not anywhere in your consciousness.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Jenessa Schwartz
And, so I got home, Jamie brought me mashed potatoes from Whole Foods, which it turns out is the only food I can eat after colonoscopy, or after chemo, actually, it’s a, it’s the go-to food, mashed potatoes from Whole Foods. And I remember telling her and Mike, but you know, what had happened and everybody was just as kind of flabbergasted as I was. We, nobody had any idea what was happening. And then I got a phone call from Kaiser with an appointment for the next day to see a surgeon, which was also scary because nobody had mentioned surgery to me. So the fact that I was making this random appointment with the surgeon. I, you know, it’s like well, I having surgery? What? What is even happening? I don’t even think that really, that I thought about it that much because it was just so outside of my realm of consciousness that I didn’t even really think about the fact that it was a surgeon that I was seeing. I think I had a brief like what the fuck moment but I didn’t really think about it until later.

Suzie Sherman
There…I’m, I’m getting a sense of, as you’re retelling some of the details of this very early part of your experience with getting diagnosed, that there must have been, uh, it was just like a whirlwind.

Jenessa Schwartz
Um-hm.

Suzie Sherman
It was like a hurricane hit you and there isn’t really a way to even parse out all the details in a coherent…

Jenessa Schwartz
No

Suzie Sherman
…narrative, in a sense. I mean, they’re you’re being completely coherent.

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, thank you!

Suzie Sherman
Of course, why, you’re quite coherent.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
But I can imagine, it just, it was like being smacked on the side of the head and you just going from one thing to another, where suddenly it’s mandatory that you’re meeting with a surgeon, it’s like why on earth would this even be happening?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, it was a Thursday. The next day was a Friday. Hehe, as happens after a Thursday, and yeah, I went in to see the surgeon who is a friend of yours, old friend of yours, Elliott Brill, haha!

Suzie Sherman
Haha, that’s right.

Both
Haha!

Jenessa Schwartz
I forgot…

Suzie Sherman
Elliot Brill was one of my campers at Camp Shalom, back in the 80s.

Jenessa Schwartz
I forget how he made that connection, actually, how we realized that.

Suzie Sherman
Because you saw that I was connected to him on Facebook, I think.

Jenessa Schwartz
Maybe. Or I think maybe he looked familiar, or his name sounded familiar, and we just kind of played Jewish geography until we figured it out.

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Jenessa Schwartz
But he came in the room. And one of the first things he said to me was, “I’m gonna be the person that you’re gonna remember told you that you have cancer. I’m gonna be that doctor.” And he showed me my CT scans, and he pointed to the tumors. And he explained where they were, and he said that I needed further testing, I needed to get a PET scan and some blood tests, but that it was almost certainly stage 4 colon cancer. And still at that point, I was like, “Or not.” Haha. “Or it’s something else.” Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Do you? Did you say that out loud, you think?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
“Or it’s just something else.”

Jenessa Schwartz
Or, right. Um. I said, “Is there anything else it could be? And he said, he said, “No, that’s what it is on the scan.” I said, “Oh, or something else.” Haha. Right. Like I was still explaining it away. I was like, oh, could be any number of things. It couldn’t be any number of things. It was, it was one thing. But that’s, yeah. He was, he is, he is gonna be always that person who I remember. He was very nice, very nice guy.

Suzie Sherman
Sounds like, you’re remembering it, that he delivered it in a very matter of fact, way, it sounds like.

Jenessa Schwartz
He did. He was very matter of fact, very kind, really good bedside manner. I mean, he was he seems like, I haven’t had the pleasure of him being my doctor ever because it turns out I didn’t need surgery right away. The tumor was so big and it was obstructing my bowel so much that they thought there was no way I wouldn’t need surgery right away. So sometimes when you’re diagnosed with colon cancer, you have emergency surgery, you know, you go in with a with a bowel obstruction, and then you’re in surgery.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
And and then when you wake up from surgery, they tell you you have colon cancer, and sometimes not. Sometimes they find a tumor and you do chemo and then you do surgery. So, they, everybody who saw my scans was sure that I would need surgery right away. But I had been having bowel movements, and I’d been fine and I haven’t and I hadn’t had an obstruction. So they wanted to do chemo first. To try to shrink everything first before even considering surgery. So I haven’t seen him since.

Suzie Sherman
Um-hm. What, what goes on next, in terms of telling family and friends and sort of coming to believe that you had stage 4 cancer, before any of the really intense treatment started happening? Or, maybe you’re already on chemo, but like, you haven’t gotten to some of the major surgeries and stuff that was happening. So, in that first stage, what was it like telling people and coming to understand it?

Jenessa Schwartz
My biggest fear was that I would tell people, and then it wouldn’t be cancer. I remember, like, not wanting to talk to anybody that weekend because I wasn’t having tests until the next day. Wait, no, see, I can’t, you’re right. It’s, I can’t tell it coherently because I don’t even remember the details. Oh, I remember I had an appointment with the oncologist on Monday. That was gonna be definitive. In my head that was like, I’m gonna meet with the oncologist and he’s gonna say, you know, “I’m sorry for all of this. Here’s what it actually is.”

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Jenessa Schwartz
Um, so I remember that I felt like I had to tell the dads, all four of them. So, first I called the first dads because one of them, Gil, is a doctor.

Suzie Sherman
You mean your…

Jenessa Schwartz
My surro-dads Yeah…

Suzie Sherman
So, you mean the dads you did the surrogacy for.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So, the the dads who you actually carried twins for.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah. So Gil’s a doctor. So I called him and I said, “Hey, this is happening. How bad is it?” And he said, he said, it’s not good. It’s, that’s pretty bad. And he kind of talked me through what it all meant. He asked to see my reports. So I emailed him my reports and he kind of talked me through it a little bit. And then I asked him if I should tell the other dads at this point or if I should wait and he, he said that I should probably talk to them. And so I texted them and asked if I could FaceTime and I remember sitting in my bed, my, the house where I was living at the time had terrible Wi-Fi and the only spot really where it was good was in my bed. So as I didn’t want I didn’t want any like, frozen weirdness during FaceTime for this conversation. So, I remember sitting in my bed FaceTiming with them, and telling them and they were, of course super loving and understanding and it was it, I dunno, it felt like such a loss for me. I…I’d been really looking forward to this pregnancy and, you know, becoming part of their family the way I’d become part of Gil and Tomer’s family and it just, it was like, I think it was the first kind of like mourning that I had to do was this, the loss of this…

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Jenessa Schwartz
…surrogate pregnancy. But in the back of my head, I was still so afraid that I would have to call them back on Monday and be like, just kidding. I’m so sorry to put you through that. And the few people who I kind of expressed that fear to were like, that would be the best, that would be the best thing that could happen is if you said like…

Suzie Sherman
False alarm!

Jenessa Schwartz
…this was a mistake, right?

Suzie Sherman
Do you have a sense of if you can go a little bit deeper, just into that feeling like, what, what was your fear about worrying people for no reason?

Jenessa Schwartz
I don’t know…

Suzie Sherman
What would’ve been so horrible about that?

Jenessa Schwartz
I don’t know. Maybe making people think about me, I don’t know. Like, like being the center of attention, and then it just felt, it would feel very overly dramatic and I don’t know. Just irresponsible to make people hear that news and then take it back. And that happened not too long ago. Before my current recurrence, I had a scare, a recurrence scare, that I was very public about. And I wrote a blog post about it. And I posted on Facebook, and there was this outpouring of love and support. And then it turned out to be at that point, a false alarm. And so I had to take it back. And it was kind of my worst fear realized from that from that long ago, first diagnosis, and it felt just as terrible as I thought it would feel that time. It was, even though it was really good news, it still it felt really shitty, that I had to say, like, hey, guess what, guys? False alarm, haha.

Suzie Sherman
Um-hm.

Jenessa Schwartz
Looking back now, sitting where I am now, going through treatment again. You know, I only wish that I could do that again, today.

Suzie Sherman
Of course. Yeah. And it was exactly as people said: it’s the best possible news if it was a false alarm.

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
Right. I remember also just, I mean, now that we’re jumping forward a little bit, on this on this, on this current recurrence of the metastasis that you’re experiencing, your text to the family short list was “Sorry, guys, it’s back.”

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I think I’m, you definitely said “sorry, guys.” I don’t remember exactly how you worded it, but there is a sense of disappointing people…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…worrying people, like causing, causing stress.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So regardless, if it’s, if it’s false, positive…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…or if it’s real positive.

Jenessa Schwartz
I remember, um, talking with my, one of my bosses, my, the rabbi at my school, and I had made some post, it was during my period of NED (of No Evidence of Disease) when I was kind of treatment free and putting it all behind me for a little bit, and I had made a post about, I forget why, I think I had done something fun. And it felt kind of like a fuck you to cancer. And so I had posted some, you know, fun carefree post. And I think I ended with something like, “I may have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me.” Because I like to be pithy. And she comes into my classroom and she says, “Can I just, I need to ask you something. What do you mean you have cancer, I thought that, I thought that it was gone.” And I had to explain to her that I have stage 4 cancer and stage 4 colon cancer never goes away. And that there’s no such thing as a cure for stage 4 colon cancer. And you can be no evidence of disease, but that simply means that it’s not visible. It doesn’t mean that it’s not there. And the look on her face when I said that, it was so clear that she thought that I was in the clear, and that I was going to enjoy a long period of health. And then seeing her face register that that wasn’t true, it was like, like I hated, I hated that. I hated watching her go through that. And that’s how I feel whenever I have to, like, talk to you guys, or whenever I have, whenever I have to send a text that sucks it just like, it’s one of the worst parts of, just, just knowing that everyone is going through this with me and that I can’t really protect anybody from how they’re feeling about it. It just sucks.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. It’s sort of a, it’s a two-way street on that, we can’t protect how you’re feeling. It’s hard for us to really know what you’re experiencing…

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
…and feeling because it’s not happening to us. You can’t protect us from all of the anxiety and stress and anticipatory grief and all the things that are going on. So it’s, we’re all together in this, and also each of us is alone…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…in this in a way, right? Like life, I guess.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
So, we’re still back in 2017. What, what was it like talking to the kids at this early stage? So, they’re real young.

Jenessa Schwartz
They’re real young.

Suzie Sherman
So they’re four and six.

Jenessa Schwartz
It was actually…

Suzie Sherman
Is that right? You said four and six.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, four and six. It was super easy. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
At that point.

Jenessa Schwartz
It was, yeah. Actually, the kids have been the easiest part. I mean, not not emotionally, and not like thinking about the future. But as far as like the practicalities and the, their reaction to all of this has been absolutely, by far the easiest because they…

Suzie Sherman
So far.

Jenessa Schwartz
They, so far, they don’t have any baggage. They don’t, they don’t have any past experience with cancer. They don’t know what any of it means. And so they just they will just take what I give them at face value and I’ve always been very straightforward and honest with them. So Mike and I took them out to breakfast. To Bills, haha.

Suzie Sherman
Local plug, local diner plug.

Jenessa Schwartz
Bills Café, Rose Garden. Um, they got pancakes. And and I said, “Hey guys, so I have this disease, and it’s called cancer. And it means that I’m gonna have to take medicine that’s gonna make me feel really yucky. But I’ll feel yucky for a few days, and then I’ll feel better for for a week or so. And then I have to do it again.” And they were like, “Okay.”

Both
Haha!

Jenessa Schwartz
And that was it. I mean, it was…

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Jenessa Schwartz
We had kind of built it up to this like “conversation” where we had to sit them down and have a “conversation” but it it wasn’t, it was just like, Hey, this is this is gonna be happening. Okay. And for the beg…in the beginning, that’s just what it was, it was. I felt yucky for a few days and I’d be in bed and they’d play in the other room and it didn’t really, at that point, it didn’t really affect their day to day.

Suzie Sherman
And, just, at their developmental level at that time, that’s all they could take in probably, too.

Jenessa Schwartz
Right. Yeah, we don’t we didn’t. There was, there was no reason to explain any further. As they’ve gotten older they’ve, they’ve obviously asked questions and they know a lot more about cancer now and, I’m not sure that still to this day that they understand the gravity of it. They know that people die from cancer. Ramona has been going to a summer camp two years in a row now called Camp Kesem, which is one of, one of if not the most amazing organization in the world. It is a week long summer camp for kids whose parents have cancer ,or had cancer, and it is free to families which is incredible and it is just the sweetest, simplest, most traditional sleepaway camp. It’s all friendship bracelets and talent shows, and songs,and cafeterias. And there’s one day where they talk about what brings them to Camp Kesem. And it’s called the Roots Ceremony. And they do it by age group and cabins. And they sit in a circle, and they light candles, and they exchange bracelets, and then anyone who wants to speak can speak, and usually in the younger groups, the counselors speak first, because all of the counselors are there also because of their history with cancer. So the counselors would share, and then the kids would share, and some of the kids there, their parents have died from cancer. And so Ramona is aware now that people die from cancer. And I remember her coming home from Kesem, the first year and I was terrified that she would, you know, the first thing she’d say to me is like, “Are you gonna die from cancer?” And then what would I say to that, because I don’t want to lie to her, but I also you know, obviously not gonna say like, “Yes, I am.” Right, I’d have to figure out how to have that conversation.

Suzie Sherman
Um-hm.

Jenessa Schwartz
But instead, the first thing she said to me was, “I have a best friend named Zoe, and her mom has balloons for boobs.” Haha!

Suzie Sherman
Haha! That seems very apt. Very appropriate, um-hm.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes. Um, and I don’t remember why I started talking about Camp Kesem. Oh, the kids. Yeah. So they’ve, you know, since they started asking questions, I remember not too long ago, a couple months ago, Ramona asked me how people die. And I said, I said, “Well, what do you mean?” And she said, “Well, what makes, what makes your body die?” And I was like, “well, that’s a that’s a really interesting question.” So we talked about the difference between organs that you need and organs that you don’t need, because she’s aware of that I had this big surgery where they took out a whole bunch of insides. And so I explained to her that you know, they took out my appendix, which you don’t need to live. And they took out my ovaries and my uterus, which you don’t need to live, but they only took out a chunk of my liver, because you need a liver to live so they couldn’t take out the whole thing. And so we started talking about how people die. And I basically just explained that people die when one of your organs that you need to live stops working. And once that happens, usually your heart stops working. And then once your heart stops beating, then then you die. And again, she took it all very, she was very like scientific about it. She was asking a lot of really good questions about the human body. Solly even joined in on this conversation. And it was a really good conversation. I feel like it was a really good start to the conversations that we might have to have. Hopefully not soon, but perhaps. And then she asked me what happens after you die. And so then it turned into a theological question, a theological conversation, which was also pretty amazing. And it just reaffirmed my belief of just how amazing kids are, and how intuitive and smart and how honesty is, you know, haha, it’s the best policy…

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
…again to be pithy.

Suzie Sherman
Or at least developmentally appropriate…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…honesty…

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
And I think you and Mike and Trevor and the whole family have all been really good with the kids, about just answering questions…

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…honestly

Jenessa Schwartz
And not giving them more information than they need but also not lying, and not withholding information that there’s no reason to withhold.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh, uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
They’re fascinated with my port. So I have a port installed in my right chest that’s connected to my, to an artery that goes directly into my heart, so that all of my medication goes through there and it just gets pumped directly through my body. And they call it my Lego piece. And they’re they’re fascinated with it, they love to touch it. And they love to ask questions about it. Last night, Ramona was asking me how I sleep with my chemo pump in, and how the needle doesn’t hurt when it’s inside. And so I was explaining how the port works. So there’s like little things like that, that kind of keep coming up consistently where they’re just kind of asking more specific questions about it all.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, it’s, I’m not surprised at how engaged they are with some of those details. And it’s a way for them to understand at sort of incremental levels, you know, aspects of your experience.

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
So, after you were on chemo for, for a while, the treatment options began to open up and some really important and really scary things happen…

Both
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
…with your treatment. I again, I might be projecting. As a family member, I can say with some certainty, we were all terrified about some of the realities of what your treatment was going to look like. But tell me, tell me first, what was unique about your diagnosis? Obviously, your age was a really unique factor. Most people who get, you know, have stage 3 and stage 4 colon cancer are in their 60s or 70s. Right?

Jenessa Schwartz
Not anymore. I have to…

Both
That was our, understanding…

Suzie Sherman
But that was a seemingly unique thing.

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
But, but any other, any of the other sort of unique things about your, your diagnosis or your, you know, the progression or the genetic indicators that you had that set you up for the kind of treatment that you were going to be undergoing?

Jenessa Schwartz
Right. So, actually one of the unique things was that I had no genetic markers, I have no mutations, which means that a lot of the immunotherapies that are coming out that have the, you know, these like miracle stories that you read in the news these days, aren’t in the cards for me. However, I had peritoneal metastases. And there’s this new newish, you know, 15 years or so new surgical treatment called HIPEC, which stands for Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy, which is heated chemo pumped directly into your abdomen. And then it’s kind of whoosed around for about 90 minutes, and then sucked out again. So it’s a topical chemotherapy treatment for your insides

Suzie Sherman
Except internal, topical, but it’s internal

Jenessa Schwartz
Topical for your internal organs.

Suzie Sherman
The way I was describing it for people who were asking, and of course people in my friend community, you know, have been following your blog and following your story. The way I often have described it to people is that you were marinating in hot chemo…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes.

Suzie Sherman
…for an hour.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes, flayed, haha, and marinated. I was cut open, like sternum to pelvis. And the first part of the surgery is actually the most important part, it’s the cytoreduction, where they cut out all visible cancer. This surgery is only successful if you can remove all the cancer. So I had to hit some very specific qualifications to be, to get this treatment recommended to me. And one of them is that all of the cancer had to be resectable. So if it had been in a part of my liver that couldn’t be respected, for example, or if it had traveled to my lungs, or anywhere else like, uh, bone, they wouldn’t have done the surgery. And the level of disease has to be below a certain threshold. So I was well below that threshold, actually, I only had four spots in my abdomen, which is very low. And so they were able to remove the spot on my liver. It turns out that there was also a spot on my falciform ligament, which is a ligament on the liver. And then there were a few spots in my abdomen so they scraped, they scraped the lining of my abdomen clean. They also resected the primary tumor. So they took out about a foot and a half of colon. And they took my appendix, they took my gallbladder, my ovaries, my tubes, my uterus, a little bit of my cervix. Pretty much anything that was, that is not necessary that could potentially grow cancer in my abdomen, they took. Except my spleen. I still have my spleen, which I felt very strongly about for some reason.

Suzie Sherman
What does a spleen do? I have no idea.

Jenessa Schwartz
You know, it’s funny. I don’t know, it’s the one, because it has, it is like the one organ that has not had involvement, I do not know what my spleen does.

Suzie Sherman
You’re like, “I love my spleen, I’m so happy with my spleen!”

Jenessa Schwartz
But I love my spleen, because it’s still there, and it’s still doing what it’s supposed to be doing, which I’m sure it’s supposed to be doing something.

Suzie Sherman
Well, I’ll put it in the show notes.

Jenessa Schwartz
Okay. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
I’ll look it up, and put a definition.

Jenessa Schwartz
It’s funny, you asked me like the one question that I’m not educated about. Ask me what my, you know, what my appendix does. I actually know what the appendix does now.

Suzie Sherman
What does the appendix do? I think I know, but…

Jenessa Schwartz
The appendix holds good bacteria that repopulates your gut if it needs repopulation. So, that’s why if it gets infected, it’s so dangerous because it’s just like a sack full of bacteria. But, anyhow, so I was cut open all of that was removed, and then they put in the hot chemo. I marinated for a few hours, and they sucked it out. And then they also gave me, to allow my colon time to heal, they gave me an ileostomy. So they cut, they took a small loop of small intestine, and cut a hole in my belly and brought it out. And so I passed stool through that, into a bag, an ostomy bag, for a while, while the incision in my colon healed, so that was a, that was a whole exciting adventure unto itself having that bag.

I came through the surgery and I was clean, I had no remaining disease, although they did find disease in my ovaries, which had not been seen on any scans. So we had no idea that I had cancer in my ovaries. But they looked fishy when she was in there. And so she called down a gynecological oncologist who looked at my lady parts and said, Yeah, they should probably go. So they took them out and they tested them and they found cancer there.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh. Yeah, they took them out for good measure.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes. prophylactically. But actually, it was a quite good decision.

Suzie Sherman
I would love to hear, not love. “Love” is really…

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
…not the word for it, actually. I’m curious to hear, maybe not, you know, kind of immediately what was going on for you right after that surgery because of course, it was. I mean, you were just dead to the world. It was so exhausting and so disorienting.

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
If you want to speak a little bit to that, but I’m just curious about that next period of…

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
being in your body healing from that surgery.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, it was a bitch, man. I knew it was going to be a hard recovery. I was not prepared, not prepared, in the least. I couldn’t walk to the bathroom. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do my hair or brush my teeth or take a shower without it just being completely exhausting. I felt like, I felt like I was gonna get blown away by the wind, I lost a huge amount of weight and of weight in a really short period of time. And I couldn’t eat the ileostomy was, made it so I wasn’t really absorbing all of my nutrients. And it also, you know, my body had been through such a huge trauma that I just wasn’t eating well, I was losing weight every day, my hair was falling out even more. And I was, I guess I was depressed. I don’t know, I’ve I’ve never been in treatment for depression or anything like that. So I I’m not, you know, I’ve never had a diagnosis, but I’m sure that if I had gone to see someone at that point they would have diagnosed me with depression. It was, it was that kind of feeling where I just couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t do anything for myself. I had a home nurse, come talk me, not come talk to me, she came to change my bag, and to check on my wounds and all of that. And she, at a certain point after about two weeks, she started like some tough love. And she started saying, you know, “You have to get up and take a walk, you have to go take a shower you, you need to go eat with your family, and you need to see your kids.” I mean, she was like, ya know, she was great. Like, she definitely knew what I needed at that point. I just, I watched a lot of TV. I took a lot of Ativan. It was it was a dark, dark few weeks.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh. There’s, Oh, go ahead.

Jenessa Schwartz
Well, I just I mean, I did emerge at some point. I got better.

Suzie Sherman
For sure! I mean, the emotional overwhelm of it was one piece, but also your body was healing from this radical invasion.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
You know, I mean, I’m, I’m not a nap person, but even I took naps during the two months that I was recouping from my hand injury…

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
…several years ago, you know.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So, and that was nothing compared to, you know,

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, that wasn’t nothing. I’ve seen pictures.

Suzie Sherman
Well…

Both
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
Compared to, as you say, you know, from, you know, you know, the being flayed from, you know, your sternum to your navel, and having many of your internal organs taken out, and living with an ostomy, so your body just really needed to rest, as well.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, it did.

Suzie Sherman
But I am glad that the nurse gave you, you know, gave you that pep talk. And I remember also Cyndi, my sister, your mom, giving you a pep talk, right right after surgery, too…

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
…you know, which is you know, I remember that moment where you were just like, “I don’t think I can do this, I can’t survive this” and Cyndi is like “You, you fucking are,” basically, “going to!”

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha, Yeah, she did not give me a choice.

Suzie Sherman
“You’re going to through this.” Yeah, “There’s no other, there’s no other alternative.”

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah. And that was the other thing was that I was living with my mom, I moved out. Um, I thought it was just gonna be for a couple weeks because I, I knew that the recovery was going to be hard. And I knew that the kids, that I did not want the kids to see me in that state. I mean, I was I was, I did not look like myself, and I was covered in wounds and I had the bag, although Ramona did find the poop bag very, very fascinating, but…

Suzie Sherman
Who wouldn’t?

Jenessa Schwartz
Who wouldn’t? But the, so like, being, living with my mom for the three months that I did was a really good decision, I think, because she was here to help me with all of the trouble that I had with my ostomy and she, you know, she was she was able to mom me again, she made me food and, you know, came and sat with me at night and it was It was lovely, but it was also a little bit hard emotionally for me to kind of, to completely step out of my life. For that time. I wasn’t working, I barely saw the kids. I was also having trouble in my marriage. And so my husband and I were kind of estranged, anyway, and then to, like, not be living at home, amplified that, and then when I think back on that, that period, it was it’s like it was a completely removed from my life. Like it has nothing to do with my life before after. It was it’s just, a very strange, and because I was on so many meds, it also is kind of a little fuzzy. So I’m not even sure that I have complete memory of those few months of recovery.

Suzie Sherman
I remember during that time I was visiting a lot and we have about an hour an hour and a half distance between where I live and where most of the rest of the family lives here in the South Bay, and I live in Oakland and, so I was coming pretty much every week during that period of time and it was like, it seemed pretty much to be about being on the toilet, drinking an innocuous enough fluid that you could get down because I think, I don’t know if this if I’m conflating the experience, but I know, at least with with your probably with the first protocol of chemo you were on maybe is what I’m thinking more of like, it was really hard for you to eat and get liquid down…

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, it still is, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…because your throat really hurts. It was like I think you said it was like daggers going down your throat…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep.

Suzie Sherman
…when you tried to ingest something. It was like you being, yeah, just exhausted and fried and, and going back to the bedroom and watching reruns of Friends.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha, Friends and New Girl, haha, got me through. Lost, oh my gosh, I watched all of Lost. That’s trippy to watch on drugs.

Suzie Sherman
Had you seen it before?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, I had, uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
Different experience,though, when you’re not quite all there. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. You have a conceptualization of your life, in larger terms as “before cancer” and I think “during cancer”

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
is what, is the term you use right?

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
Before cancer and during cancer. But this period after your major surgery was like, a wasteland, between the two.

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, gosh, that’s a wonderful term. Yeah, a total wasteland. I was desperately missing work, desperately missing my kids. It’s just, I wanted, I wanted something to be normal, and nothing was normal. I mean, what became normal was getting out of the shower. The only time I could ever have my bag off was when I was in the shower. And I was horribly allergic to the adhesive of the ostomy bag.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
And so my skin was just raw, and o any amount of time that I could be without my bag was just was really, really important for healing. So I would take a shower with my bag off, and I would kind of hurry so I wouldn’t, because it was just running all the time, you know, your small intestine is just always running stuff through it. And so there was no kind of rhyme or reason to when it would be, to when my ostomy would be active and I would pass stool, so I would just kind of hurry and lay down on the bed, naked from the waist down, not even the waist, from you know, my ribs down, letting it air out, and my mom or someone, would sit next to me and just and wipe the stool as it passed through my ostomy, and I would just lay there and it was…

Suzie Sherman
Just so that you could get a break…

Jenessa Schwartz
just the…

Suzie Sherman
…from having the bag on…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…having the adhesive on your skin.

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh. And that became normal. Like that became my you know, every other day when I would shower, my normal and thinking back on it now, it sounds utterly ridiculous. But that’s kind of what I looked forward to, was that time when I could just lay there and let, and like be free of the bag.

Suzie Sherman
Have so, yeah…

Jenessa Schwartz
And have someone wipe my poo…

Suzie Sherman
And have someone care for you…

Jenessa Schwartz
…and have someone, you know, wipe the poo that was coming out of my visible intestine out of my stomach and it was, yeah, it’s ridiculous, haha.

Suzie Sherman
It’s really amazing. It’s amazing, also to even think about that, that experience that detail, and know that you got through that experience.

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
I mean, most people when they’re in good health, we so take it for granted…

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, of course.

Suzie Sherman
…that we can shit, and that we can…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep.

Suzie Sherman
…urinate, and our body is functioning properly. And our intestines are safely encased inside our abdomen.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep, haha.

Suzie Sherman
And you, you had that experience, and you survived that experience. And actually, there was a way in which that, that experience that you’re describing of being free of the ostomy bag, and having someone come and wipe the material that’s coming out of your intestines. Shit and otherwise, because it was probably, you know, pretty, pretty loose slimy stuff

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep.

…actually not, you know, kind of not fully digested stuff. So having that experience which sounds completely humiliating and horrifying when you’re in sort of a normal mode of, in relative good health, that that was actually a, a freeing…and a nurturing experience.

Yeah, it was kind of nice. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And you got through it.

Jenessa Schwartz
I did and I actually came to appreciate the ostomy. People live with ostomies their whole lives and, and it becomes just a totally normal way of living. And I know that if I ever do need a permanent ostomy, like having that experience. And finally at the end of it when I was able to get it reversed. I had kind of just gotten into a rhythm, and I could imagine living with it. And, because people, ostomies save lives, and, you know, I don’t wanna, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m, that I’m, you know, pitying or feeling sorry for people have to live with ostomies because, you know, it does become, it becomes a new normal, pooing into a bag. It was actually pretty nice not to ever have to poo in public. I mean, I was pooing in public all the time, all the time, but I never had to use a public toilet…

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
…which was very, which was actually quite nice.

Suzie Sherman
You could just make it home before dumping out the bag.

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
Basically. Uh huh. That was a relative privilege of your experience.

Both
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
But let’s just be aware of like, how fucked up…

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
…that hierarchy of privilege is when you have a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
That actually leads me to a question I was probably gonna ask later, but I’ll ask now, before I want to roll into something else is, um. You know, you do talk about your life as BC and DC before cancer and after, or I’m sorry, during cancer not after cancer…

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
Right, specifically so, um do you talk to people in your life in terms of this is fatal, this is terminal, do you, do you go there? Do you not go there? Like…

Jenessa Schwartz
I go there all the time.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Jenessa Schwartz
I have to for my own sanity, I joke about it a lot. Jamie and I in particular, talk about it a lot and just joke about it all the time. Um, I also have a lot of just really sad moments. One in particular, again, it was with my school rabbi, we have a lot of deep moments together. I was sitting at a student’s bar mitzvah, and he decided to do a non-traditional bar mitzvah up in the redwoods. And it was really beautiful and he created his own service, and we’re sitting in the woods, and I’m sitting next to her, and listening to him just lead this beautiful service and I, and I said, um, “You’ll help, you’ll help Mike and Trevor with Ramona’s bat mitzvah, right?” And again, the look on her face, I felt really bad. You know, her eyes filled with tears, my eyes filled with tears. And she said, “Of course.” And so like those moments where I think like, you know, I, you know, likely won’t be around for my kids’ bar and bat mitzvah. Although, you know, if you’d asked me that three years ago, two and a half years ago, I would have said, I definitely wouldn’t have been around. But now, you know, chugging along. So, there’s always hope. But thinking that I won’t be here for that, to make that speech. You know, the parents always stand on the stage and make this speech to their kid about what a beautiful person they’ve turned into, and how proud they are of them. And, like thinking that I wouldn’t be able to say that to my kids in that moment, is just, like, desperately sad for me. So I have those moments where I get kind of maudlin and, and sad, but mostly I like to joke, because it just gets me through. So…

Suzie Sherman
Right. It feels better to joke.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I think you have license to be maudlin, and I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t call it maudlin, because I think maudlin, you know, has a connotation that it’s sort of crocodile tears. It’s like, in a sense, not authentic or playing for the, playing for the…

Jenessa Schwartz
Right. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…sympathy, and that’s not what it is. It’s real, as you said, desperate sadness that you might not be there to see the kids grow up…

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
…and that’s, that’s the thing that we’re all really, really scared of.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, I’m scared for, for them, I don’t want them to be fucked up. You know, it’s so easy to be fucked up just from like, life, and I just, I just don’t want to be what fucks my kids up. And the guilt. I’m a Jewish mom, so I just have guilt problems, and so that they, I just feel guilty that I will likely be the reason that they act out in high school or, you know, get into drugs or…

Suzie Sherman
Have intimacy issues, haha!

Jenessa Schwartz
Have intimacy issues. Like you know, so, I just have to get over that guilt and, just try to you know, I’ve, to be cliché, this whole experience has just made me value the present moment and living in the now and carpeing the diem and all of that bullshit. But it’s not bullshit, it’s it’s real, and it’s, and it’s, it’s what makes you survive something like this is just not thinking about the bat mitzvah, but thinking about third grade, right? I got to walk Ramona for her first day of third grade, which sounds impossibly old to me…like look at, that’s like a big kid grade. That’s like real school. She gets homework. I mean, it’s like, it’s real, and so like, the fact that I’m here for that, or, you know, Solly is gonna get his siddur this year, in first grade, they, the parents make a cover for the siddur that they use at school, and I was grateful that I got to make Ramona’s, and I’m incredibly grateful that I am still around and get to make Solly’s, too. Cause I was, when I was making Ramona’s, it was right after I got diagnosed. And I was thinking like, is this the last thing I’m gonna do for her? And am I gonna be able to make Solly’s? And the fact that, like, I’m going to be able to it’s just, it’s incredible. So I just have to remember to be grateful for those moments.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
And the moments will keep coming, it’s not like there are there are only certain moments that are important in your kids’ lives, right? They happen all the time, every day.

Suzie Sherman
Right, especially when you’re not lookin.’

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
I had a moment with Ramona earlier that I’ll share with you today. And I had heard I think I was maybe in the bathroom or the other room, and I had heard Cyndi talking to Ramona about how I was going to talk to you for my podcast today.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
And I think it kind of went in one ear, out the other, she sort of got, I mean, I know Ramona’s a podcast fan.

Jenessa Schwartz
She is.

Suzie Sherman
She knows what the format means.

Jenessa Schwartz
Um hum. Haha!

Suzie Sherman
And then I was taking a moment to have a few bites of lunch before you got here, and I said “Ramona, you heard that I’m gonna be talking to your mom on my podcast today.” And she said, “Yeah,” and I was like, “What, what’s one question that you would like to ask your mom?” And she was like, “I don’t know.” But then she proceeded to talk about how she’s gonna be famous today too, because she’s gonna be playing Minecraft…

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
…on her friend’s father’s YouTube channel, so that you and she were both going to be famous today.

Jenessa Schwartz
That’s awesome. I love that she thinks that people on podcasts are famous.

Suzie Sherman
Haha! Yeah, totally. Totally.

Jenessa Schwartz
But you know, Guy Raz, if you’re listening, we’re big fans. And Mindy, Guy and Mindy. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Anyone else you want to shout out in the podverse, so I can, you know, tag them on social media?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah! Oh, our favorite podcasts are Wow In The World, Brains On, Smash Boom Best. Those are, those are the big three right now.

Suzie Sherman
That you listen to you with the kids?

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, all the time. Yeah. Story Pirates. Oh my goodness, how could I forget Story Pirates? Those are those are the four that they always ask for.

Suzie Sherman
What about your adult favorites?

Jenessa Schwartz
My adult favorites. Radiolab, of course.

The Allusionist. Ask Me Another. And Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.

Suzie Sherman
Did you know that Helen Zaltzman, the host of The Allusionist, now is co-hosting a new podcast in which she is viewing every Veronica Mars episode?

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, so I just heard about that!

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, I figured you would, that was in your wheelhouse. I love Helen Zaltzman so much she’s really an inspiration. Big time. So, here’s the question I’ve always wanted to ask you. It’s kind of along the lines of grappling with your prognosis and whether you’re gonna die or not from this, do you remember back BC, before cancer, what your relationship with with death was?

Jenessa Schwartz
I mean, theoretical.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Jenessa Schwartz
Ah, just totally theoretical. I don’t think I ever thought about my own death in any real way. Except When I would talk about things like, what I would want a funeral to be like, or…Yeah, it comes up a lot in Judaism because I mean, I teach in a Jewish setting. And so we often talk about life cycle. So it comes up and it makes you think a little bit like, what would I want my funeral to look like, and imagining people sitting shiva for me, but I don’t think I ever really thought about my own death. Ever. I think, you know, when Grandma died, I was pregnant with Ramona. And it was a very, it was a very, like, Circle of Life moment for me, especially because I decided right away to name Ramona after her. That’s really the closest I’ve been to death. You know, the person that’s been the closest to me who’s died. And it was, you know, she was a grandparent. So it wasn’t unexpected or novel in any way, except that it was happening to us and not someone else.

Suzie Sherman
It was sort of the expected order of things.

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
So something, something else really major in your life happened during this time.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And you alluded to it when you said that you and Mike were having difficulties in your relationship during the time that you were convalescing from your major surgery.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Do you remember the timing of, of all of that?

Jenessa Schwartz
Well, I mean, to be perfectly honest, we’d been having problems since Ramona was born. And I remember when I found out I was pregnant with Solly, I took that pregnancy test. I took it right when I woke up in the morning, and I walked back into the bedroom and Mike was sleeping in the bed and I just like, showed it to him and I said, things have to change, things have to get better. And so, it, you know, it’s been, we’ve been troubled in our marriage for a long time. And we, I think for you know, for as well as we communicate, mostly and like, we’re also good communicators personally, we do not communicate about, like feelings and stuff, ever. And so we never really talked about our problems, our troubles as a married couple. And so, cancer has this way of either shoring up a relationship, like making it, you know, filling in all the cracks and just ensconcing people in in this, this feeling of like, this is what’s important in life. Or it can it can make those cracks just all the more, all the more severe. And I think that’s what happened with us, is that the crisis, just, it just brought into relief the troubles that we were already having. And it got to a point where it wasn’t. I just wasn’t happy in the marriage, and I decided that me being happy in my relationship was important yeah, right? I had to make a choice. I was like, is this important in my life? Is it more important than remaining stable for the kids at this point? And I made the choice…

Suzie Sherman
Or remaining quasi-stable.

Jenessa Schwartz
Right, right.

Suzie Sherman
Appearing to be stable.

Jenessa Schwartz
Appearing to be stable.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Jenessa Schwartz
And I made the choice to, to pursue happiness and to pursue love in a way that I hadn’t really felt in a while. And so I don’t know I don’t know if it was a good choice or a bad choice, but it was a choice I made, and I stand by it. So that was another big change that happened in that period of recovery, was transitioning from one relationship to another. And, and it was definitely trial by fire for a new relationship with Trevor. Because it was, you know, we jumped immediately to the “in sickness,” haha, right, we didn’t have the ” in health” come before it.

Suzie Sherman
That’s right.

Jenessa Schwartz
And it was, it was, uh, you know, we we’ve passed through that trial by fire and, and I feel happy, and like it’s it’s where I should be, and I feel like I’m a just a better person all around now, because I’m not trying to hide an unhappiness that I felt for a long time, that I had, I think I had like just squashed it down and wasn’t really feeling anything. And so now feeling happy, I feel like I’m just like a better person for my kids now. Even though people from outside might look and say like, you know, why why would you add like a divorce on top of cancer? And I think in answer to that, it’s just because I want, I want to be happy, I want to be there and be happy for them in whatever time I have left.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
And so if that means, like making this this drastic change, and this change that will be disruptive in a way but also, I think, stabilizing in the end. And I think we’ve gotten to that point where we’ve like stabilized, and we can both be happy separately. And so together, we’re there for the kids more, I think.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh, for sure.Yeah. And it’s really, you know, I think, yeah, a lot of people might make that judgment. But in reality, I think those kinds of changes happen really frequently…

Jenessa Schwartz
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…where a crisis happens and it becomes a decision point in your life where you decide, you need to do your life in a way that’s more true for yourself. It’s a really interlinked, emotional process for us, right? Where, if it’s a big crisis point in your life, of course, you need to find your true self, you need to do what makes you feel better and happier and more, more embodied. You need to, if you have a death sentence, you need to make the choice to live your final months, weeks, months, years in alignment with, you know, and you know, standing in your integrity.

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
And so of course, that’s going to mean there that might have some fallout in terms of what your current relationship is, um. And of course, because you were already having some years of struggling, but it’s really not that surprising. Even though I think culturally, people would have a lot of judgment about it.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Were you worried, you were worried about people judging you for making that decision?

Jenessa Schwartz
I was but I also didn’t give a fuck at that point. It’s like I had reached the point where I had decided to live a certain way and, and and view cancer in a certain way. And it was just like with a giant fuck you to cancer. And I think that part of that was just completely owning it, and owning my choice. And, and knowing that people would talk, especially because I, you know, I’m in a very small community, and everyone knows everyone and everyone knows everything and, and everyone talks and so I knew there’d be talk, but I also just didn’t care. I still don’t care, honestly. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Haha. Good, good. When you, you know, got through that major recovery and you had a couple of other surgeries as well. And we can talk about those or not, but you know, when you got through the major part of your recovery, and you got into that period of time that you had no evidence of disease.

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
And even maybe before that, there was definitely a, it seems like you had an experience of really finding your voice and what you wanted to say about your cancer experience, starting your blog and becoming an activist, a cancer activist, specifically, a young, you know, an advocate around the experience of, you know, what we’re finding that more and more young people are getting or are, are getting diagnosed with late stage colon cancer.

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So can you tell me about some of that process coming into your voice as a cancer? Yeah, activist, advocate.

Jenessa Schwartz
And so I found out after I was diagnosed that young people, so people under 50, are being diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at a really alarming rate. And nobody knows why. There have been lots of theories about about the environment or diet, lifestyle, what have you. Something like if you’re born after 1990 You’re like 111% more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer at some point in your life. I mean, it’s something that’s not a, that’s not a right statistic right?

Suzie Sherman
We’ll get the statistic, and put it in the show notes.

Jenessa Schwartz
But something really…

Both
alarming

Jenessa Schwartz
…like that. And I mean, it’s, it’s been called an epidemic now amongst young people, and not just under 40. And not just under 50, but actually under 40. And so when I found this out, I decided that I wanted to talk to people about listening to your body, not explaining away symptoms, and and also being open to talking about gross things. Being able to talk about things like poo and blood, without blushing without being embarrassed about it. Being able to talk about our bodies and what our bodies do, and being willing to, to go to a doctor, even if it feels like you’re being a hypochondriac or you’re being reactionary. Not being embarrassed to go to your doctor. And say, you know, I for years, I had this nausea, that would happen at nighttime. And it started happening. I remember it happening very specifically, at a point in my life where I was living in North Carolina. It was after I graduated from college, I was in my early 20s, mid 20s. And every single night, I had this nausea that just was persistent and nothing would help, and it it would just have to go to sleep and it would go away. And it’s very possible that I had cancer at that point. Because it’s it’s a slow growing cancer, and it was very advanced when it was diagnosed. So it was it’s, it’s possible that I’ve had it for more than 10 years. It is 100 percent likely that I’ve had it for more than five years. Before diagnosis. You know, every so often I’d think I should go talk to a doctor but then I would think to myself, what would I even tell the doctor? What what are even my symptoms. I’m tired and nauseous like everyone’s tired and nauseous.

Suzie Sherman
Really?

Jenessa Schwartz
I mean, I guess because I was always tired and nauseous. I thought that everyone else was always tired and nauseous.

Suzie Sherman
Tired seems like a definite common problem in late stage capitalism. We’re all tired.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha, true.

Suzie Sherman
Nausea, not as much…

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…at least to my experience.

Jenessa Schwartz
So, so be I think, because I’ve just been living with it for so long. It just feels like that’s like a normal state of being is just feeling gross all the time. And I explained it away for you know, in my 20s I explained it away, just, you know, I don’t know, I didn’t get enough sleep. And then once I was pregnant, it was because I was pregnant. And then when I had a baby, it was because I was never sleeping because I had a baby and then I was pregnant again, and then breastfeeding and then pregnant again. And so I just always found a reason to explain it away. So I decided that everyone needs to know that you are the best advocate for yourself, you know your body and you know what it should feel like and if something doesn’t feel right, talk to your doctor, even if you feel like an idiot, you know, years ago, I should have gone to the doctor and said, I feel like shit all the time. Can you do some blood tests like, and I just didn’t because I didn’t want to be a bother or I thought I would sound like a hypochondriac and…

Suzie Sherman
Well, and also I want to say structurally we live in a society where it’s everyone for your for yourself. And if you have healthcare, you’re lucky and that’s great, but not everyone deserves healthcare and this whole notion of that we don’t, we don’t take we don’t take care of our people. And we should have cradle to grave healthcare and it should be easier to go to a doctor…

Jenessa Schwartz
Absolutely.

Suzie Sherman
…and it should be accessible to go to a doctor. So even though you had access I think that mentality seeps into our consciousness.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Right. Where it…

Jenessa Schwartz
Like don’t abuse the system, right? You have a doctor but don’t you don’t have to go to the doctor for every little cough.

Suzie Sherman
Or it costs out of pocket to go…

Jenessa Schwartz
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…go anyway

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…because even if you have coverage, it still costs…

Jenessa Schwartz
Exactly.

Suzie Sherman
…a co-payment or you know, whatever. And if you’re running into tests like Oh god, this could be thousands dollars, I don’t want to bother, it’s probably nothing.

Jenessa Schwartz
And so many people have to fight for the tests that they need. So I mentioned that colonoscopies are, are not always indicated for people my age, even with this epidemic of colon cancer, and so, so many people my age will go to a doctor with symptoms like blood in the stool or persistent constipation or persistent diarrhea. And their doctors will go get they’ll get diagnosed with like colitis or

Suzie Sherman
IBS.

Jenessa Schwartz
IBS. Or told to change their diet, to cut out alcohol or what have you. And they won’t jump straight to a colonoscopy. But a colonoscopy is what’s needed. It is the only screen, it is the only cancer screening that can actually be curative. If you have a cancerous polyp, it can be removed during the colonoscopy during the screening and you will be cured.

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Jenessa Schwartz
It’s amazing. It’s the only cancer screening that is cure that could be curative.

Suzie Sherman
Right. It really is. I, you know, your experience with colon cancer inspired me to get a colonoscopy. I think some other people in the family have done so.

Jenessa Schwartz
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
So in 20, I think it was in 20, act…it was the summer of 2017, I got a colonoscopy, and I’m 10 years older than you, I have a more sedentary lifestyle. I eat a lot of red meat, I have a lot of, I have a lot more risk factors. And this is a testament to , the randomness and the sheer unfairness of this. But it wasn’t surprising that I had two polyps that were adenomas, so officially precancerous polyps that were removed during my colonoscopy

Jenessa Schwartz
Thank god!

Suzie Sherman
So they aren’t in my body

Jenessa Schwartz
Yep.

Suzie Sherman
anymore, right? So your experience allowed me to screen for and cure a pre, essentially a precancerous condition.

Jenessa Schwartz
and now that you’ve had polyps removed, you’re gonna have colonoscopies more often. So you’re you’re always going to catch it before it happens.

Suzie Sherman
Well, there’s still their recommendation for me was still only every five years.

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
So whether that’s adequate or not, I don’t know. It is slow growing, but…

Jenessa Schwartz
The trick is that if now if you do experience symptoms, you just tell them, I need a colonoscopy, I had polyps removed and I’m having symptoms and then you’ll get one…I’ve told people to lie to get a colonoscopy. I mean, if your doctor won’t give you a colonoscopy, just lie and say you have blood in your stool, because it’s so it’s so important doctors for whatever reason, are they you know, people say that it’s an invasive procedure. That there’s a risk of bowel perforation and such, but the benefits so outweighs the risk, you know, they should just be. It should just be practice that you know you have certain symptoms, you get a colonoscopy no matter your age or risk factors. And so that’s that’s what I’ve been pushing for. And actually the I mean, not because of me, lord knows, but the recommendation age has been lowered since I’ve been diagnosed. So now, the American Cancer Society recommends colonoscopy starting at 45…

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Jenessa Schwartz
…which is not young enough, but you know, baby steps,

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Jenessa Schwartz
So now, if you’re 45, it’s just like, you can just like you go in for a mammogram when you’re 40. You can go in for your colonoscopy for 45.

Suzie Sherman
And lord knows my listening audience is going to skew middle age. So that means y’all go out, go out and tell your doctor you need a colonoscopy.

Jenessa Schwartz
And the prep has improved just in the two and a half years since I first did my prep. There are now lots of options for preps and so you can choose if you like there’s one that tastes better but it’s a huge volume, versus one that’s not quite as tasty, but it’s a lower volume. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things you can do now, for the colon prep, so

Suzie Sherman
I wouldn’t say any of the prep, any of the prep is tasty. Haha.

Jenessa Schwartz
None of them taste good, although so I can’t handle my body for whatever reason can handle the like pre mixed stuff. So I use just tons of Miralax and Gatorade. But my plan for the next one is to make a tray of jello shots of Miralax jello shots and take it that way. So if anyone wants to join me in that adventure.

Suzie Sherman
And that’s alright? Gelatin is okay, for that process?

Jenessa Schwartz
Yeah, clear liquid, as long as it’s not red.

Suzie Sherman
Haha, that’s great.

Jenessa Schwartz
Miralax jello shots.

Suzie Sherman
Love it. Yeah. How do you make sense of, this is uh, you may not be able to answer, this is an abstract question, whatever, it might be a shit question.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
How do you make sense of the periods of time that you’re no evidence of disease versus the times that you’ve got a metastasis or you are you’re in treatment? Is there, I don’t know. Do you find a rhyme or reason to it? Do you feel like it’s completely random, what’s your internal experience kind of navigating those waves?

Jenessa Schwartz
That’s not a shit question. Um, I have only had one period of NED. And it was a long period, it was nine months, which is longer than a lot of people get, although not as long as some people get. There’s a woman I know who had the HIPEC procedure that I had when it was really experimental. And she has been NED since, for about 16 years…

Suzie Sherman
That’s amazing.

Jenessa Schwartz
…which is amazing. So nine months is a pretty good run for someone with my diagnosis. Nine years, did I say nine years, I meant nine months, nine months…

Suzie Sherman
No, you said nine months.

Jenessa Schwartz
OK, Nine months is a pretty good run for someone with my diagnosis. And I just wish that I had done more. In that time. I did a lot. I mean, I moved to a new house. And you know, I did a lot of traveling and I saw a lot of theater and I worked almost an entire year with no treatment, which was incredible.

Suzie Sherman
You had some “in health” time with your new partner.

Jenessa Schwartz
I did, we had, yes, we had some lovely in health time, and we got a dog and I mean, you know, all sorts of things. So I did live that year. But I will, you know, I’m always gonna wish that I had done more.

Suzie Sherman
We all, we all do.

Jenessa Schwartz
But we all have those regrets. I don’t think that’s something that’s unique to, to me or to people with cancer. And I, I’m really angry that it came back. It’s, you know, at the fear of sounding like a petulant child. It’s just not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong, you know, I didn’t start smoking or anything. So it just feels just horribly unfair. But it is what it is. And now I just have to get back into the in treatment mindset. And I’m finding that really hard right now because I just started a new school year, and it’s going amazing, that, it just seems magical, it just I don’t know why, but this, the beginning of the school year has been the best of my professional career. And it just sucks that I have to miss every other Friday for chemo. And that the beginning of that next week, I feel like shit for three days. And the kids, and the kids feel it and they see it and that’s not fair to them. So I just, you know, I have to get back into the, this is life right now and just gotta push through and live with it.

Suzie Sherman
I’m really happy to hear that you feel like this school year is magical and like, really that you’re at the top of your game. Because, you know, you’re such a dynamic, obviously great teacher. I haven’t sat in on any of your classes.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
But I know this to be true. And and when you say it’s not fair to the kids, you know, to some degree, yeah, but I mean, this entire situation is definitely abjectly unfair to you. But you’re also giving the kids this real, lived experience of knowing you closely, and, and seeing some of what you’re going through with cancer.

Jenessa Schwartz
You know, I was…

Suzie Sherman
I think that’s an amazing experience that actually is a, is a gift to them to be able to be present with you during those ebbs.

Jenessa Schwartz
I was thinking about that the other day actually, about how people are so uncomfortable around ill people, around sick people. And nobody, so many people want to know how I’m doing, but they won’t just like, text me because they don’t want to bother me. And so they end up texting Jamie, and her response is always ask her, right, you could always ask her how she’s doing. And I think that I am giving my students, and my children, my own children, the experience of knowing a sick person intimately and well. So that hopefully as they grow up, they’ll be people who will be comfortable around sick people, and will know how to talk to them and will know that ,like, we’re just people, and there’s nothing special about us, right? We like having conversations, we like when people ask us how we’re doing. We are usually pretty open with information about our health and that, we like answering questions. You know, we like when people are thinking about us and bring us Fritos, which is what I like people to do for me.

Suzie Sherman
Haha.

Jenessa Schwartz
And I do feel like I’m kind of giving them that gift of learning how to be around people who are not well.

Suzie Sherman
Do you get sick of talking about it?

Jenessa Schwartz
Sometimes, but no, not really. I don’t I think it’s really important. I talk about my digestive system a lot. And, haha, and maybe other people get sick of me talking about it. But I think it’s really important, and I’ve also been really open with my students about the issues that I have with my body, and what our what our internal organs do, and you know what is actually happening inside of us and I, I love talking about it. It’s super gross and super fun. And it kind of makes me wish that I had gone to medical school. But, but you know, I’m incredibly grateful that I’m a teacher. I would not change that for the world. But I love talking about gross insides.

Both
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Tell me about your blog.

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, oh, thank you for asking. My blog is called not full stop dot wordpress dot com. Well, that’s not what it’s called. It’s called Semi Colon, Not Full Stop. Because I love making punctuation puns. I feel like this part of my life has been that semi colon. It’s that kind of that, that pause between parts of a sentence and it is not a full stop. I did not stop living. I had to take a pause. I had to step out of my life for a little bit. But I but I did keep going. So, in it I just talk about life with cancer, talk about mothering with cancer and teaching with cancer and being a partner and a friend with cancer. And you should read it.

Suzie Sherman
Well, I read it, haha.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha. All your listeners should read it. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. Jenessa is a really great writer really, you know, can can wield both the gallows humor and the actual cringe-worthy optimism…

Both
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
…that you may, that you may or may not relate to. But she’s living her life boldly in her blog and in her life, so definitely check it out. Semi Colon Not Full Stop.

Jenessa Schwartz
You should also need my other blog.

Suzie Sherman
Your blog about surrogacy!

Jenessa Schwartz
Which I which I don’t update anymore, but if you’re interested in the surrogacy, the surrogacy, I have a blog called Womb For Hire. Because again, puns. And it’s, it’s about that first surrogate pregnancy. And it’s it was quite an experience. And I learned all about the human reproductive system, which I thought I knew everything about. But turns out, there’s a lot I didn’t know.

Suzie Sherman
I will definitely post both blogs in the show notes as well as some of the coverage that you got about the surrogacy, because, you know, you’re kind of a famous person.

Jenessa Schwartz
Um, no.

Suzie Sherman
We’re gonna make you more famous.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes. I mean, my dream is internet fame. So if you can make that happen…

Suzie Sherman
You say that a lot and we’ve kind of casually joked about that a lot, but I’m curious what it actually means to you.

Jenessa Schwartz
I want something to go viral. Like I want you know, how everyone sees the same articles, posts, you know, passed around on Facebook, I want to be one of those articles, right? I want to like put make a blog post and then have everyone read it and it just show up on everybody’s feed…

Suzie Sherman
Everyone!

Jenessa Schwartz
…and not and not just the like, 200 people that I know but you know, strangers. That’d be nice.

Suzie Sherman
You’ve had a couple of strangers recognize you in public. From your blog, right?

Jenessa Schwartz
So. It was the weirdest thing. It happened twice in one week. I was at the movie theater, and I was buying concessions, and this woman that I do not know leaned over and said, “I read your blog. I think you’re really brave.” Haha.

And the fact that it had happened just days apart was kind of mind blowing. But fun.

And I looked at her. Cause I thought maybe I knew her or that she was in the Jewish community or something. But no, she was this stranger. And she recognized me for my blog. And then the second time was a little less weird because it was at Kaiser and it was another cancer patient who I knew, like a friend of a friend who also has colon cancer, but I don’t know her. And she saw me walk over I was getting a CT scan and she saw me walk over and she goes you’re Jenessa. I’ve been wanting to meet you. Haha.

Both
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
We’ll see if we can boost your visibility.

Jenessa Schwartz
Why thank you.

Suzie Sherman
So we’ll wrap up pretty soon; I think this feels good. Is there anything that you expected me to ask? wanted me to ask? wanted to share with our audience about your experience?

Jenessa Schwartz
No, I think you were pretty thorough.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha, I mean, I definitely talked about things that I hadn’t thought about in a long time or ever. So thank you for that. Felt very therapeutic. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Oh, good. Yeah, you know, I, you know, one of the reasons I mean, I, I do I should say, I have to say, your experience with cancer is one of the big was one of the big reasons why I started the podcast. Not the only reason, you know, this is a, you know, one thing in a continuing series of creative projects that may or may not, you know, lift off or be grounded on launch, just like a lot of stuff in my life, a lot of creative aspirations that I’ve had in my life. So it’s part of that continuum in my life but arriving at a topic that felt specific enough but broad enough that people could share their stories with me and that I could just developed a develop a kind of a rhythm of a verbal repartée with people to talk about meaningful things in our lives. It really felt, your story fell right into what I had been thinking of, and when I was formulating, you know, what I wanted to do for a podcast project. And I had started you know, I had kind of a couple month period where I was brainstorming about podcast topics and, or themes and titles and stuff like that. And I went through a lot of different iterations of that, but but but when I landed on And The Next Thing You Know, your experience with Wow, life can really turn on a dime

Jenessa Schwartz
Hm.

Suzie Sherman
…and your story is, unfortunately, extremely dramatic. And, and, and it’s and it’s a crisis. And it’s and it’s very real. But our lives turn on a dime all the time. And it can be really subtle, even trivial experiences that chang the course of our lives. But I think it’s really relatable.

Jenessa Schwartz
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
So just your story falls kind of squarely into that. The formulation for my podcast, so I’m really happy to talk to you…

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, haha.

Suzie Sherman
for that reason, just because I think it’s, yeah, like, your, your process and the grace that you’ve exemplified, has been, you know, kind of hooked into to this creative process for for me in a really generative way. So thank you.

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, you’re welcome. I mean, cancer is…

Suzie Sherman
Thanks for getting cancer Ness!

Jenessa Schwartz
No problem.

Suzie Sherman
Oy, Jesus Christ.

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes. The the cancer is definitely the like, the biggest motherfucking banana peel. I think that there ever could be.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, yeah. Um, but, but also I’ll say sort of maybe in a more personal way. I’m glad to have this conversation with you because we see each other at family gatherings and our family is big and loud and chaotic. And there’s kids running around, and there’s lots of stimulation, and there’s just, you know, social dynamics in our family that like, it doesn’t, it’s hard to really connect and check in with you and you’re always really forthcoming about just kind of the daily grind of what’s going on what’s going on with your treatment and in general, how you’re feeling and you’re always pretty frank about how you’re feeling, which I really appreciate. But, as you were alluding to before, as someone in your life. It’s It is sometimes hard to just check in and kind of have a real moment especially when all of this chaos is swirling around us…

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
…at a family gathering. So it’s really good to just check in with you and talk to you about your process with all this and some of your feelings about…

Jenessa Schwartz
Thanks.

Suzie Sherman
…this. Yeah. To just have a chance to have a deeper, a deeper dive. What’s one totally trivial thing that you’re obsessed with?

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh. Downton Abbey. I’m, I am newly obsessed. Because the movie’s coming out. I was sitting in a movie with the kids, I think like Secret Life of Pets 2, or something. And they played a preview for the movie and I just started crying. And I don’t cry. And I just started crying at the preview for Downton Abbey. And I’m so excited for the movie so we’re rewatch, rewatching the series right now.

Suzie Sherman
You cried because of the emotional content of the…

Jenessa Schwartz
The music. Yeah, the theme music started playing, and I just, it was like this visceral emotional reaction. It was amazing. I’m very excited.

Suzie Sherman
I’m really excited for you. That’s awesome.

Jenessa Schwartz
Haha, thank you!

Suzie Sherman
I think, you know, kind of along the lines of like, do you get sick of talking about this? Which, your answer was no, which is really awesome. Like, you know, you have, you take the opportunity to talk about this and as part of your experience that’s engaging for you, and also, it helps people talk about this. But, like, living with terminal cancer is such a big deal. And it’s so serious…

Jenessa Schwartz
Uh huh.

Suzie Sherman
…that I, I often wonder like, can your life be about just the simple enjoyment of something trivial anymore?

Jenessa Schwartz
It can. Yeah. reading Harry Potter with my kids. pure joy. Last night at Ramona’s Harry Potter birthday Shabbat, when she, I don’t know if you noticed, but after we’d finished our family trivia, she just said keep asking me questions. And so Trevor and I just kept asking her question after question after question. She could answer all of them.

Suzie Sherman
About the Potterverse?

Jenessa Schwartz
About the Potterverse, and just just her commitment to it and like her nerding out about it so hard, it just, it just fills me with pure joy. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Thanks. You’re a dream interviewee.

Jenessa Schwartz
Oh, oh. Thanks.

Suzie Sherman
You’ve got the mic experience…

Jenessa Schwartz
Yes.

Suzie Sherman
…the presence.

Jenessa Schwartz
Thank you.

Suzie Sherman
And scene.

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Jenessa. It’s been really beautiful and a really heavy thing to work on this episode and to sit in the editing room for hours with my conversation with her, probably for obvious reasons. In both this episode, and in my conversation with Keith back in episode number two, I made pains to emphasize how important and transformative Jenessa’s experience with cancer has been for me and for my family. There isn’t really a way to overstate how grateful I am that we will get to spend this Thanksgiving together. In fact, I get to stay in Jenessa and Trevor’s guest suite this weekend, which is super deluxe.

You should follow Jenessa’s story. She’s just so brilliant and lovely. Her blog about her experience with cancer is called My Colon Cancer, Semi Colon Not Full Stop, and you can find it at notfullstop.wordpress.com. Her blog about her surrogate pregnancy and becoming part of Gil and Tomer’s family, which you heard a bit about in the episode, is called Womb For Hire. And you’ll find those writings at wombforhire, all spelled out, not not the number “4,” the word “for” f-o-r, so wombforhire.wordpress.com. Jenessa’s recommended organizations to support are Camp Kesem and the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. Find Camp Kesem at campkesem.org. That’s spelled Camp K E S E M. You can find a ton of great information at the Colorectal Cancer Alliance’s website about screenings, symptoms, care resources, current research, and ways to get involved. That website is ccalliance.org.

If you want to make a contribution and honor of Jenessa CCA has a fundraising page called a Blue Star Tribute. You can help us get passed the $10,000 mark at fundraise.ccalliance.org/blue-star-tributes/teamjenessa. That’s a really long URL, and I’m linking all of these, all these sites in the show notes, so read the damn show notes. You can read the show notes at our website at nextthingpodcast.com, you can read the show notes in your podcast app. Some apps have a little button that you can press to read the show notes or you can just scroll down when you’re on the episode, and you’ll find the show notes there. So all these links will be in the show notes. A major bonus if you donate to Jenessa’s Blue Star Tribute page is that you get a Team Jenessa wristband which is a super duper cool thing, and if you donate there, just shoot me an email and I’ll make sure you get a Team Jenessa wristband.

The take-home message in talking to Jenessa about her cancer experience is: get a damn colonoscopy. If you’re 45 or older, tell your doctor you want a colonoscopy. If you’re any age, and having any symptoms, like changes in your bowel activity, abdominal discomfort, blood in your stool, if you’re fatigued, go talk to your doctor. Tell your doctor you want a colonoscopy. If anyone in your immedicate family has had colon cancer or polyps, tell your doctor you want a fucking colonoscopy.

Now let’s get onto some podcast housekeeping. I will be taking a break to produce more episodes over the holidays, and you know, just to enjoy the holidays. And actually I’m also moving from Oakland to Berkeley. So there’s that too. I’m pretty busy over the next several weeks, so new episodes will drop shortly after the New Year. Meanwhile, there are so many ways that I want you to get involved with the show. You don’t have to wait for the next new episode to shoot me an email at nextthingpod@gmail.com. Tell me your And The Next Thing You Know story, support us at Patreon, or chat us up on the social medias. Tell your friends and family and all your social networks about this podcast. I command you to go forth and spread the word with the hashtag #nextthingpod. Leave some stars and ratings at iTunes. And I’m so grateful for everyone who’s already done that. I think we’ve got 20 five-star ratings on iTunes, because you all are wonderful and sweet and supportive. And we’ve got at least one actual written review on iTunes as well. I’ve got several written reviews also on the Facebook page. So thanks everyone for chipping in and telling us what you think about the podcast. Become a patron of the show at patreon.com/nextthingpod. That’s patreon dot com slash next thing pod. That’s where you get to give me a few bucks a month, and I will give you some sporadic bonus content. There’s actually some really great geeky golden outtakes from my conversation with Jenessa that I will be posting on Patreon in short order. So get on that. Remember, there’s going to be stuff going on in the next several weeks. I’m just not gonna post any full length episodes, but there’s a lot of activity and buzz around And The Next Thing You Know, so you need to jump on this. Come on over to the Facebook page and leave a comment and connect with other fans of the show. It’s a sweet community of folks, and it’s just getting off the ground. That’s at facebook dot com slash next thing pod. Facebook.com/nextthingpod, that is the Facebook community for the podcast. And if you have an And The Next Thing You Know story, send it to us already. I’m serious about this. I really want more voices on the show. I’m excited to talk to people that I don’t actually know in person for the show. And I’m looking for lots of different kinds of stories. So pick a random event in your life, that changed absolutely everything. That’s a lot of pressure. Pick a random event in your life that changed even just a small thing or set, set off a chain reaction of small changes in your life. Record a short voice memo on your phone and email it to nextthingpod@gmail.com. I want to hear your stories.

Find me at soozenextthing on Twitter and Instagram. I actually suck at Instagram. I have absolutely no idea how to utilize it for the show. So if you have any ideas about how to make a better Instagram, email them to me because I’m that kind of useless old Gen Xer. And speaking of middle aged curmudgeons, I want to give a shout out to my friends Noah Tarnow and Bill Scurry over at their podcast, I Don’t Get it: The Get Off My Lawn Cast. Noah and Bill are like the Siskel and Ebert of the millennial era reviewing Gen Z cultural tropes, and rating them on their patented Fallonian scale, which essentially means is TikTok worse than Jimmy Fallon. That’s basically the research question that they’ve got going. So get over there to their podcast, it’s called I Don’t Get It with Noah Tarnow and Bill Scurry.

Alright, we’re in the home stretch. The banana peel is by Max Ronnersjö, music is by Jon Schwartz, who by the way is Jenessa Schwartz’s brother. Thanks, everybody. We’ll talk soon, barring the possibility that I might not finish recording this extravagantly long outro by New Year’s Day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai and edited by me.