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111: Cancer Recovery Isn’t a Straight Line: A Conversation …
How do you navigate life after cancer when everything feels different? Join me for a raw discussion that dives deep into the emotional and …
March 6, 2025
111: Cancer Recovery Isn’t a Straight Line: A Conversation on Expectations with Shari Todd
How do you navigate life after cancer when everything feels different?
Join me for a raw discussion that dives deep into the emotional and physical realities of cancer recovery. In this episode, Shari Todd and I share similarities in our vulnerable journeys through cancer diagnosis, treatment, and what life looks like on the other side.
And what it took for us to get there.
You will hear a candid conversation about the weight of expectations, mental health struggles, and the often-overlooked challenges faced during recovery and the complexities of an induced menopause.
We unpack the power of radical acceptance, the coaches that support us with this and the crucial role of community support in healing.
Shari’s insights reflect her experience of resilience and adaptability that resonates beyond her personal story, advocating for shared experiences among women facing similar challenges.
Join the conversation and break the silence around these essential topics.
Remember to subscribe, share, and leave a review! Your feedback helps me support others on their journeys.
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Transcript
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Welcome to the Dear Menopause podcast.
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I'm Sonya Lovell, your host Now.
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I've been bringing you conversations with amazing menopause experts for over two years now.
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If you have missed any of those conversations, now's the time to go back and listen, and you can always share them with anyone you think needs to hear them.
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This way, more people can find these amazing conversations, needs to hear them.
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This way, more people can find these amazing conversations.
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Welcome to this week's episode.
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I am joined today by a very special guest who is joining me all the way from the US of A Shari Todd.
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Shari shared a very emotional and vulnerable video on her Instagram about her experience of recovery after cancer and I was really encouraged to reach out and say, hey, I love what you said.
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I think there's a podcast episode in this and she, very generously, has agreed to join us today.
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So, Shari, welcome to the Dear Menopause podcast.
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Thank you so much.
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I'm so happy to be here.
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It's always really wonderful when I can talk to somebody else and hopefully share some things that can make people feel less alone in the journey.
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Some of the things I go through feel less wasted to me if the things we learn can be shared with others, and I love that you provide a space for that.
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So thank you so much.
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I do also want to give a shout out to the two amazing ladies who run the business, but also the Instagram account called Tactic Nutrition, which was how I came across your video, to start with Alex and Meredith.
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I highly recommend you go and give them a follow, sherry.
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Introduce yourself to us, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're coming from Absolutely so.
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I live in Southern California.
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Let's see.
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I have two sons, 30 and 21, and a really adorable grandson who's 10 months old and a husband, and basically I love all things outdoors.
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I've been an athlete my entire adult life and I love cycling, hiking, running, lifting weights, you name it.
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I love it.
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One of the things that we were going to talk about and explore a little bit is your recovery from cancer, so are you happy to share with us where that started for you?
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Yeah.
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So I had a math that I detected on self-exam gosh a long time ago, probably in 2013.
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And then it was grew a little bit and so it was biopsied and imaged and determined to be benign.
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But then, right around COVID, it started growing like exponentially and, of course, was really difficult to get imaging, was really difficult to get medical appointments.
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So it took me quite a while to get this taken care of and since it had been biopsied previously, nobody wanted to take it out.
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And since it had been biopsy previously, nobody wanted to take it out.
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They felt it was cosmetic, but it was really large Like by the time it was removed, it was like the size of a golf ball.
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Well, and this was in your breast.
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It was yeah, yeah.
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So I ended up having a general surgeon do a lumpectomy.
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It ended up being cancer.
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So I was then referred to an oncologist.
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I had this was in January of 2022.
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So then had a partial mastectomy followed by five months of chemotherapy and 35 treatments of radiation.
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Started on endocrine therapy, tamoxifen yeah, ovarian suppression as well developed uterine growths from the tamoxifen, so wound up with a subsequent, uh, radical hysterectomy.
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The following in march of 2023.
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I think, uh, that that probably that's a very, very tidy summation of what my body went through in a year and a half or a little, a little over a year.
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So yeah, it feels like that when you kind of sum it up that way, doesn't it?
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It sounds like this neat little package that you can tie a bow on and go, and this is what I experienced.
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Yeah, you know, as we both know, that it's not a neat little package in any shape or form.
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It's definitely does not look like a gift in any shape or form.
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No, absolutely agree with that.
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It's not a gift.
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So, yeah, bad analogy, sonia.
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So tell me then about what your recovery has been post all of that, because that's a lot of surgeries, it's a lot of therapy medication.
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Talk us through how, as an athlete in particular, you did kind of recover and what the timeline was like for you.
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What was the biggest hurdle that you faced?
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Biggest hurdle that I faced, if I'm completely honest, was the weight of my own expectations.
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I had this idea that I was going to be the person that, three months after treatment, was easily taking up all of the previous activities I had done.
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I expected my body to bounce back really quickly.
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I had no idea what medically induced menopause plus endocrine therapy was going to be like.
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I had gained a lot of weight I think about around maybe 20, 25 pounds through just everything.
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I mean treatment and then you know afterwards, and so I think that I expected to you know, ring a bell at the end of treatment and have this very brief transition back into my previous state and get back to that.
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Just get back to that.
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You know, and that's what I had been looking forward to all through treatment was getting back to myself, and it quickly became apparent that that was not going to happen and I I really struggled with how to deal with that.
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I've always been able to make my body do what I want it to do athletically, and I my heart rate, my resting heart rate, my working heart rate were super high.
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I would actually almost feel like I was having panic attacks when I would try to push myself.
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My joint pain was horrible, horrible, oh my gosh, and just really struggled overall with who was I going to be now as an athlete and what was going to make me special?
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Because I was very middle of the road as far as performance went.
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I was very middle of the road as far as my endurance went and it really forced me to.
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I'll never forget.
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I ran, let's see.
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I finished treatment in November.
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I had been pretty much through treatment.
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I exercised, I ran still maybe the last, like I don't know, perhaps a month I didn't run because my hemoglobin got really low.
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I was bleh yeah, and everything kind of catches up with you, doesn't it?
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From my experience, I felt like there was this lag of catch up that your body kind of played.
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Well, it's cumulative, I think after a while it just really wears on you.
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So I had been training still during treatment and I actually almost feel like the time period after treatment was worse, as far as just my body just felt so awful I'll never forget.
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So I finished radiation in November and we always rent a place with my kids on Thanksgiving and I had started Tamoxifen and we rented this like mountain cabin that had these really narrow, wonky stairs and I'll never forget my kids seeing me walk down the stairs after I'd woken up and they were like what's wrong with our mom?
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I was like I can't walk when I wake up in the morning.
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Like I did and like I can't even cling to things because my wrists hurt, and like after like 10 minutes I could walk, and like when I would start to run, I would have to like do this weird hobble type thing.
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So, and then I mean, after I had my hysterectomy, it was markedly worse for a while as well.
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So I I ran a half marathon in um, let's see, wait, maybe, yeah, in 2023.
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I mean, I've never had to walk or like to where I was like I have to walk because I'm just so marathon, and it was in Long Beach, so it was like super cool outside and it was just a horrible experience.
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Like I almost felt like I couldn't like speak after I was so exhausted.
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And so I contacted alex and I wanted her to coach me the way I've always sort of coached myself, which is like no bullshit, like let's go.
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You know, come on, push me push me no pain, no gain, Totally, totally.
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And thank God she's Alex and she didn't do that and she really, really started to open my mind to the idea that what we were going to work on first was radical acceptance and it makes me cry just thinking about it, because that really changed how I moved forward.
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I'm a very strong person, If you need me to.
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I mean, I worked full time on chemo.
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I can do really hard things, but accepting that I was never going to go back to the person I was before cancer felt too hard for me.
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It just felt too hard.
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And Alex really helped me accept that and I remember one time she asked me when I was complaining about my pace.
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She said you know.
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Okay, I'm going to ask you a question what if you never, ever ran faster than this, ever?
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Like you just didn't, you never were able to, would you still run?
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And I was like well, I mean, I am going to run faster, you know.
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But it really made me think about my why, behind the reasons that I do things and I think and I don't know if it was like this for you I'm a really positive person, I'm a solutions oriented person, I am an actions oriented person, but probably the three to six months after I ended treatment were some of the darkest days of my life.
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I just felt like my life was over.
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I felt like I had nothing to hope for.
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I felt like I had been screwed and I felt like that I had invested all of my life in being healthy, being this fit person that really learned about health, ate really nutritious meals, I mean all of this and now I was left with this super broken body that didn't do what I wanted it to do and I just felt really stuck and hopeless and dark and I didn't have the tools to handle that.
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I had to get help.
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I hired a trauma therapist and I hired Alex and best move ever Best move ever.
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I don't know, Did you have that experience as well?
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Oh my gosh, you would have seen me.
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I was just sitting here nodding along and absolutely my own experience resonates very, very deeply with exactly what you experienced.
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I refer to my life almost in two different chapters.
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I have life before cancer and I have life after cancer, and the acceptance that my life and my body and my quality of life after cancer is very different to what it was before took a long, long time, and I have an incredibly vivid memory of sitting on the couch next to my husband and this is probably in those three to six months post everything finishing hysterically sobbing because I was so angry at my body.
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I think the words that I used were I did not make this happen, but I have to fix it.
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And that's so unfair because, like you, I mean, I had been a personal trainer for 12 or so years.
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At that point in time, I was super fit, I was super healthy, I was really happy.
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My feeling at that point in time I was super fit, I was super healthy, I was really happy.
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My feeling at that point in time was that my body had let me down, my body had betrayed me.
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I was really angry at my body for doing that and that I was the one left to pick up the pieces to make it better.
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That was hard, it was really hard, and I think one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation with you is because it's so important for women to hear these stories, because they do see you get on with your life and you get people reach out to you and go how do I thrive after cancer?
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You're doing such an amazing job and I speak and I have this podcast and I do amazing things, but it all came as a result of having to push through all that darkness and that really hard stuff.
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And you're right, we can do hard things and we do do hard things, but the hard things are still really hard.
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I think the things that helped me the most were definitely, basically, the fact that I had trauma that I needed to deal with.
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I had counseling and I worked with a kinesiologist and we worked specifically on clearing trauma energy out of my body, and that was a huge turning point for me.
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So, yeah, I absolutely resonate with everything that you've just described.
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Yeah, it's interesting.
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I was thinking when you were saying how about your anger and feeling like your body had betrayed you?
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You know there's also a lot of messaging from people on social media and you know you do a deep dive into social media cancer doctors and patients and when you, when you get cancer, because you just want to feel like you want to know everything at least I did and there's so much messaging about you know, don't do this, it causes cancer.
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Don't do this, it causes cancer.
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And I mean I coupled in that time I had this paralyzing terror that I was going to do something to make my cancer come back.
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I was going to eat, you know, a ham sandwich, or you know have a sip of wine, or you know do something.
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And and I think that's why you know there's do you follow Dr Taplinsky on Instagram?
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Eleanor.
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Taplinsky, she's lovely and she I really feel like there's people like her and Helen Beely I love to.
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She's a physio and she had cancer and I think she's in Australia as well, yeah, yeah, I think I started to recognize really early on that everybody in the cancer space was not for me, and I think that was a really good line to draw, because you do have these feelings of like why did I get cancer?
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Why the hell did I get cancer?
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I got asked once in an online appointment.
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So we're in a situation like this with a naturopathic health practitioner that I'd gone to to help me with I was having really bad menopausal problems and of course you know the rhetoric is my breast cancer was hormone positive, so therefore, absolute closed doors.
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No, you cannot have HRT.
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You can't even go near complementary medicines.
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Like there's so many no's and so many you can't, you can't, you can't and anyway I was really struggling.
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So I did this call with this naturopath who pitched herself as this specialist in women's health and would be really helpful, and we had this call.
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That was kind of a bit odd and I had made the decision that she wasn't someone I was going to work with and the very last question she asked me was so have you thought about what caused your cancer?
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And I just sat there and it took all of my energy to not be reactive and I just went no, I haven't, because that's not a good use of my time, but I thought about it afterwards and I was just so cross that somebody would be putting that back onto me.
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Yeah, and you're right.
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There are so many um aspects of the cancer community and the information that's out there and available.
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That is very fear-based well, and also I think that markets well, I think if you can say, you know, hey, you can take this supplement or this, whatever people are afraid and people want like any, like any aspect of health.
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People want something that they can do, that's really easy and doesn't require any lifestyle changes, and that makes that, makes people victims of predatory marketing.
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And so I just it really, really infuriates me and you know I have the same experience you had with that naturopath with some people in my life and I think people are scared, like I remember the same thing happened to me when I went through a divorce.
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Like people would say, like well, do you think it was because you didn't eat dinner as a family together every night.
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I think that's because people are trying to tell themselves I do this thing, so that is not going to happen to me.
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And I think it's the same with cancer.
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You know, if I think people, if they can nail down what, what I did wrong, then it won't happen to them, won't happen to me, yeah, it's a great way to look at it.
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Yeah, I mean, and it's really again, it's just a way to kind of like alleviate our fears.
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But it is.
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I did not.
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I was absolutely unprepared for the onslaught of mental health difficulties that I had after treatment.
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You know I, the anxiety, the absolute, absolute depression and just hopelessness, I, it was just, it was everything I could do to just go on.
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You know, that's just.
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That's not me at all.
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It's one thing that I I try to be honest with people I talk a lot with, like newly diagnosed people I'm sure you do too and it's one thing that I, you know you don't want to scare people, but you want to prepare them Like it's bad, it's really bad, but like you can get through it.
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You know, like anything else, but it's like, okay, what am I going to do this hour?
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Okay, I just need to get out of bed, you know.
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But yeah, it's really hard for menopause, really for menopause.
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Like there are so many symptoms of menopause that I'm like why the hell do we not know about this?
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Like it pisses me off, like what?
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Why don't we know about this?
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like yeah, a lot of the advocacy work that I do here I extrapolate that out into government and the funding and the research.
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It's not just our parents and generations before us haven't prepared us, the health system has let us down and there is this incredible loss of time and energy because we're not prepared.
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If we just talk about menopause even from a natural perspective the women that I speak to constantly that experience natural perimenopause and menopause it's hard enough for them.
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But for those of us that go through an unnatural menopause, and whether that's a surgical or a medically induced, or even those that experience POI and things like that there's just this ginormous gap that's literally like a canyon that everyone just falls into.
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Yeah, I mean, I didn't even realize I was.
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So I'm a runner and you know your vaginal tissue is so dry and so when you're running I mean you feel like you have a bladder infection, there's pelvic pressure, and finally went and got to see an oncology gynecologist that was like oh yeah, your vaginal tissues atrophied and like could anybody have mentioned that to me?
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Could literally anybody have mentioned that?
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Like that's just what's going to happen to me and even getting so, I do vaginal estrogen and I'm great, and I have hormone receptor positive cancer as well.
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But every single time I would go to the pharmacy, I wouldn't be allowed to take my medicine.
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I had to get a conference and the pharmacist would tell me how this increased my risk of breast cancer recurrence and I like that's old information.
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I finally got to the point where I printed out the correct and like the nih documents and studies and and I finally switched pharmacies because I'm like you're not accurate with people yeah, and this is my decision that I've made with my doctor.
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Like I don't need your help here, like I'm good and I have this conversation going on constantly hormone replacement therapy, or MHT as we call it here in Australia.
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There is still this incredible amount of gatekeeping and closed doors and absolute no's, and I very much believe that any conversation should be a collaborative conversation.
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It should be patient led.
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We need all the information to be able to make the decisions and that's what we rely on our doctors and our specialists for.
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But I feel very strongly that they should not be in a position to just shut you down and say absolutely no, you can't have that.
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I chose to take hormone therapy.
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So I've been on hormone therapy now for about 12 months because I did my research and I sat down and I understood what my risk was of taking hormone therapy, what my risk was of a recurrence of breast cancer without taking hormone therapy, and I was able to make the decision that my quality of life is more important to me right now than living in fear of a recurring breast cancer or another cancer as well.
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And that took a lot for me to go through that process, find the clinicians that I could have those conversations with and really conscious of when I have conversations with other people, that not everybody is capable of getting to that point where they can make that decision and that their fear of everything that else that kind of could potentially come from that overrides their ability to make that decision.
00:20:00.688 --> 00:20:04.241
And that's absolutely okay and I respect that for everybody.
00:20:04.241 --> 00:20:10.941
But I get really cross that the clinicians are the ones so often just shutting that door and saying no, no, you can't.
00:20:11.315 --> 00:20:14.334
But also there's health risks of not doing hormone replacement therapy.
00:20:14.334 --> 00:20:21.700
I mean they don't even cover all of the cardiac risks from let alone just menopause, but endocrine therapy as well.
00:20:21.720 --> 00:20:35.542
And also bone health, like if we talk about bone health and for someone that has been through medical treatment for a cancer, experienced and induced menopause, and a lot of the adjuvant therapies as well have significant impacts on bone.
00:20:35.542 --> 00:20:51.785
You know, that's just creating a whole other problem for a community down the track that then has to be addressed by the healthcare system, and I just get so frustrated that there's such short-sightedness down the track that then has to be addressed by the healthcare system, and I just get so frustrated that there's such short-sightedness in the decisions that are made, and often they're made for women without the women being included.
00:20:52.515 --> 00:21:10.258
Absolutely, and I think I genuinely believe that it's just a lack of information between providers and patients, because I mean, even when I talk to people who are newly diagnosed, I'm like I want to know everything, I want to ask a million questions, and I'm sure my providers are like, oh my goodness.
00:21:10.258 --> 00:21:12.344
But I'm really nice though, but still.
00:21:12.523 --> 00:21:14.035
Yeah, but it's also, it's our health.
00:21:14.115 --> 00:21:15.978
Like we have every right to ask.
00:21:15.978 --> 00:21:17.881
Right, I want to know what all my options are.
00:21:17.881 --> 00:21:22.949
I don't want you like, if there's 10 options, I don't want you to tell me the two that you want me to choose between.
00:21:22.949 --> 00:21:24.652
I want to know what all of them are.
00:21:24.652 --> 00:21:45.612
And it's one of the reasons when I had these uterine growths and they were doing my hysterectomy, I I wanted everything out, because I'm like I had had a secondary colon cancer and another secondary primary cancer and so, and so I was like I'm not messing around, I don, I don't want my own reason, I don't want my fallopian tubes there, I don't want my cervix there, just take it out.
00:21:45.795 --> 00:21:47.843
And I had to fight with people for that.
00:21:47.843 --> 00:21:50.263
And I'm like, yeah, I don't care.
00:21:50.263 --> 00:21:52.281
And then they didn't, they only wanted to pay for part of it.
00:21:52.281 --> 00:21:57.902
And I'm like, fine, how much is it?
00:21:57.902 --> 00:22:00.546
Tell me how much it is to take for, I'll pay for it.
00:22:00.546 --> 00:22:04.732
But why isn't that being offered as an option to women?
00:22:04.732 --> 00:22:07.397
Why aren't we told about hormone replacement therapy?
00:22:07.397 --> 00:22:09.522
Why aren't we told about vaginal estrogen?
00:22:09.522 --> 00:22:20.061
These things can improve not only our quality of life but our relationships and our ability to feel at home in our own bodies, and I share your frustration very strong.
00:22:21.066 --> 00:22:46.647
And it's interesting when we're on, you know different parts of the planet, yet the frustrations and the challenges that we face are so, so similar, which is indicative of a global issue of um, you know, education gap for clinicians and a patriarchal um and misogynistic health care system, and I'm not saying that that just comes from male doctors, it comes from female doctors as well that it is definitely a misogyny that's baked into the healthcare system.
00:22:46.647 --> 00:23:07.694
Okay, I feel like we should move into some more of a positive space, and one of the areas that I was really hoping to explore with you was what steps did you take, tell us about what lifestyle changes you did make other than the trauma, counselling and that sort of thing have you used as levers to really get you into this place now, where you do feel so much better?
00:23:07.694 --> 00:23:08.135
I think?
00:23:08.477 --> 00:23:14.868
there's probably a mental health and work component and then a physical component.
00:23:14.868 --> 00:23:15.395
I think.
00:23:15.395 --> 00:23:26.617
From the physical perspective, I just kept trying different methods, like when I was running I tried 80-20 running and I just jumped into a bunch of different things.
00:23:26.617 --> 00:23:30.741
I would try something and then if it worked for a little bit then I'd be like great, I'll go with that for a little bit.
00:23:30.741 --> 00:23:32.770
I did like walk run.
00:23:32.770 --> 00:23:39.063
So from a physical perspective and like I had to, I had so much joint pain, like I, for example, couldn't do a back squat, so I got a.
00:23:39.063 --> 00:23:42.027
I had a safety squat bar bar, did some safety squats.
00:23:42.027 --> 00:23:51.876
I changed things up and wasn't afraid to adapt and scale and stop if something hurt and try to find another exercise that worked that muscle group.
00:23:51.876 --> 00:23:59.903
I also started transitioning some of my runs to trails so that I could not worry about my pace but have a great experience and be outdoors.
00:24:00.124 --> 00:24:28.963
I think one of the main things that really helped me and this is something I had beforehand of the main things that really helped me and this is something I had beforehand but it's just a really great, solid community of people that were a safe space for me and allowed me to be vulnerable and real about what I was experiencing and could reflect back to me who I was, who I've been and who I can be through their eyes, as well as just a safe space to be mad and to be sad and to be afraid.
00:24:28.963 --> 00:24:36.469
And I really feel like probably that between my, I have a Friday run group at my house.
00:24:36.469 --> 00:24:43.500
We've been meeting since 2008 and we run and then I make a big pot of oatmeal and big pot of coffee and we all sit in my garage and talk about life.
00:24:43.500 --> 00:24:50.557
That group is my family and you know they're the people that you call one friend from the group.
00:24:50.557 --> 00:25:15.835
For example, I had a baseline CT right after treatment and they found lesions on my lung and my hip and needed PET scan and I just texted the group and one of my like best friends came over and she was like I don't know what to say, like but I'll just stand by you, and like people not letting you be alone, and like my husband, I mean, he was there for everything and he was the same.
00:25:15.835 --> 00:25:31.828
And I feel like having your people and whatever form that is for you, whether it's a partner, whether it's friends, it could be coworkers-workers, it could be online support groups, but having people where you can be real and it's safe is, I mean, I don't feel like there's a substitute for that for sure.
00:25:32.055 --> 00:25:46.323
But then, athletically, I think I really invested myself in focusing on the process and focusing on sustainable, consistent habits and I just took like, for example, losing weight.
00:25:46.323 --> 00:25:59.064
I had just had a conversation with Alex not long ago and I was like like I lost all the weight but I haven't been weighing myself, I haven't been taking pictures of my body, I haven't been even tracking macros.
00:25:59.064 --> 00:26:12.423
I just I use a different modality to communicate my nutrition to Alex and because those things felt very not helpful for me in progressing forward, they felt like they were very kind of the opposite of progress in the way that I needed.
00:26:12.423 --> 00:26:17.637
So I basically focused on small, sustainable, boring.
00:26:17.637 --> 00:26:24.487
But I will say that I ran my first marathon.
00:26:24.487 --> 00:26:36.500
It was probably about a year, it was a little less than a year out from treatment ending and it's by far like by over an hour my slowest marathon I've ever done and I felt terrible.
00:26:36.500 --> 00:26:51.262
It was really hard, it was hot, but I think allowing myself to show up and be proud of what I could do, even even if that felt it feels hard to do something you used to be really good at and not be really good at it anymore.
00:26:51.262 --> 00:27:02.529
It feels shameful in a way qualifiers or apologies and show up as I am and accept.
00:27:02.590 --> 00:27:14.987
That is probably, if I'm honest, the biggest component as an athlete that has allowed me to progress, and that progression has happened without focus on the goals, without focus on the outcome.
00:27:14.987 --> 00:27:22.224
It's happened purely via focus on the effort, focus on what am I going to do today.
00:27:22.224 --> 00:27:33.943
It's just like when you're training for a really long endurance event, right, and you're like halfway through your training and you're doing for a marathon, you're doing a 15 miler, and at the end of it you feel utterly exhausted and you think, how on earth am I going to run 11 more miles?
00:27:33.943 --> 00:27:38.257
But here's the thing you're not running 11 more miles today, you're running 15.
00:27:38.257 --> 00:27:42.961
And you had enough strength for that and, I think, keeping yourself like in the present.
00:27:42.961 --> 00:27:51.709
There's a really great book, the Practice of Groundedness, by Brad Stolberg, and that book really helped me, I think, ground myself in good practices.
00:27:51.709 --> 00:28:00.880
But also, you know, even if you can't necessarily afford a one-to-one coach, there's tons of like online communities where you can get that grounding and I think that's really helpful.
00:28:10.115 --> 00:28:11.159
So I would say the main things are community show up.
00:28:11.159 --> 00:28:12.103
Show up every day, and that can look different.
00:28:12.103 --> 00:28:13.007
Some days you don't have it in you to go.
00:28:13.007 --> 00:28:13.569
You know run or whatever.
00:28:13.569 --> 00:28:13.911
Then that's okay.
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