S2 EP 21 - Cancer Changes Everything: Listen to Your Heart

What I thought was a routine appointment turned into an 11-hour stretch in the ER—and then the words no one is ever ready to hear: stage four metastatic cervical cancer. I’m sharing this with a shaky voice but a steady purpose, because my best friend Tanya is fighting for her life, and right now, I’m one of her primary caregivers.

This has made me really think about what chosen family actually means when the crisis isn’t abstract. Tanya is my person—the friend who crossed countries, built a life from nothing, cared deeply for others, loved animals like family, and showed up for me through surgeries, pain, and all the messy parts of being human. Now she’s facing cancer that has spread to her bones, lungs, liver, and lymph nodes, and I’m trying to navigate pain management, treatment decisions, and the emotional whiplash that comes when someone you love can’t even sit up in a chair.

And I have to say the part people don’t always want to talk about: the cost. The reality of U.S. healthcare. Insurance questions, growing medical bills, and the impossible math of losing income while caregiving becomes a full-time job. If you’ve ever carried caregiver stress, unresolved grief, or that deep wound of losing someone too early, you’ll understand—this is raw, unfiltered, and straight from the heart.

If you can, please listen. Share this with someone who believes in showing up for others. Help Tanya in her fight by donating or spreading the word. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell me—what does showing up for your person look like in your life?

Contact Suzanne Swain:
Email: suzanneswain@gmail.com Website: msmarypoppins.com

Produced By: StellaMix Podcast Productions

Special thanks to our producer, StellaMix podcast productions, another Palm Beach County School of the Arts collaboration. Need a podcast? Connect with Janine Stella ASAP: http://www.Stellamix.com

Transcript

elcome And A Hard Update

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome. It is a beautiful day to bust some cognitive distortions. Hey y'all, my name is Suzanne M. Swain, EDS LMSW, and I am a child therapist, educational specialist, and all things schools and middle school. Well, today's a special edition. I need to talk to you from the heart today, and I have an update that I need to talk to you all about. And to be honest, I just for the first time, it's the 30th episode, so woo! We made it to 30. And we're almost at 200,000 downloads. So I want to thank everybody out there in the community. I cannot thank you enough. This has been, I started this toward the end of August. This has been my passion project. And I haven't made a single dollar off this podcast. I was determined to go all PBS style, where it's not for profit, it's just for learning. And then if something works out, donations only kind of thing. But here's the thing. Folks, I need your help. I need to tell you about someone that's part of the MSMP community that y'all don't even know about. And this is Steve's best friend, Tanya. Her name's Tanya Biekis, and she is my person. In life, you only have a couple of people. And if you're lucky, you have one. And if you're super lucky, you have two. Well, in my life, I've had two best people that are my person, my rock, my everything, my chosen family. You have your birth family and your chosen family. Well, my chosen family are two people specifically. My best friend Dee, who's down in Florida, and she's got two kids who are teenagers. Hey guys! Who I lovingly call my niece and nephew, and I'd move the moon and the stars for them any moment. So there's Dee, and I've known her since I was about six years old, and I came to visit her kindergarten class and punched out some boy trying to kiss her. Yeah, that's the makings of our meet cute right there. Now the other one I met much later in life, and I actually only met her about four years ago, and her name is Tanya. And it was sort of weird how we ended up meeting. She was actually in the Cookpool area visiting a friend who had just moved there from Texas, and she's from South Africa, which is pretty interesting. She's from Johannesburg, South Africa, and lived there her whole life, and then ended up traveling the world. I mean, she's been to oh, like 23 different countries, something like that. But imagine just taking off and just going around the world and living somewhere for a while. And I mean, it's the dream, right? For so many people to just be able to have that experience in their younger days. But she ended up living in the UK, she lived here in the US, she stayed with that friend down in Texas for a while, really loved it. Hey, Texas. And then here in Tennessee, well, she was actually online and just posting locally that she was new to the area and looking for friends. And I'm an introvert, I'm an INFJ. So it was like, well, and so I went on there and I was like, I need to just I want to throw some dinner parties and get to know some new people and that type of thing, and expand my social circle, get off the computer, and we ended up meeting. Well, we hit it off right away. We went out for Indian food and we just couldn't stop talking. And it's been that way ever since. That was four years ago. Well, Steve's bestie is Tonya. Let me tell you, she is the biggest roughhousing buddy. She says this thing where she throws him on his back and then takes his two front legs and his back, two legs, and then holds him like he's on a spit and like he's hanging. So she'll pick him up by his little two feet, two feet, and swing him. And he just thinks that is the funniest. Like, I'm the heart, I'm the mom. And she just like, every time she's around, he's just like, Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So Tanya's our person. Well, here's what happened. I'm still recovering from my double knee surgery thing where my leg collapsed. Well, I'm still hobbling around and should use my cane a lot more. But well, she was coming over and helping me out and making food, making sure I was clean, making sure the house was clean. She took care of me, and that was since December to now, and I'm still not healed yet. So I was talking to her a couple weeks ago about some changes she'd had in her herself, and she's in it, she's 48 years old, and she lost her parents, her dad to stomach cancer, and her mom to a stroke several years ago. And so she's kind of faced the whole world on her own. So she has no family or anything really per se. She does, but they're in different countries and things, and so she doesn't get to see them. So we kind of built a little world family, kind of family by choice type of thing, where we just became part of each other's world. And I bounce ideas off her. She was here many times when I was recording podcasts and things. Well, a couple weeks ago, she she was having a lot of pain in her lower back, and she just couldn't get rid of it. And so I was like, let's go to the OBGYN and this is the lady doctor, and go get checked out and things and see what happens. Well, we bounced to a couple of different appointments. She's like, Oh, I don't need to do this, whatever. I don't want to, I don't want to. Well, they found a mass. I stayed in the ER with her for 11 hours a couple weeks ago, and they took her away in an ambulance to Nashville, to Centennial Hospital. Thank you, folks. And to Dr. Sullivan in the oncology OB unit, you are a rock star. Thank you for who you are, because you may have saved her life. They found stage four metastatic cervical cancer. It's in her bones, it's in her lungs, it's in her liver, and it's in her lymph nodes. So imagine two weeks ago you thought you were just going for a routine doctor visit, and then two weeks later you haven't been able to sit up in a chair this entire time. So I've moved her into my home and she's in my guest room right now, sleeping peacefully, thanks to a lot of medicine and things that she really desperately needs right now. But today, in fact, I'm gonna have to go and try to figure out a way to get her the level of pain medication and help that she really needs. I'm her primary caregiver right now. And oddly, today was the first day I was supposed to go back to work and go see my kids, and even though I'd be hobbling with a cane, I still didn't care. I was ready to bust it just to see my my my peeps. But our whole world is pulled out from under us, and Stevie is beside himself, he's acting so strange, and Ralphie, the dog, he's my elderly dog, he just lays by her head. She smells different, she seems different, her energy isn't there. And like I said, she can't sit up in a chair and can barely make it to the restroom. So I can't imagine what she must be feeling right now. I know the feels that I've gone through recently, and you know, when you rely on someone as part of your world every single day, it changes you. But here's the kicker this is what my mom had. So it applies to middle school because I was about 14 when my mom passed away. The same thing. She complained of back pains, the whole thing. Except now I'm a little older, a little smarter. Well, and with a new knee. But now I'm the primary caregiver. And unfortunately, I had to let go of my job over with the kiddos. And I figured it was best because, like all y'all would know, I mean, I haven't been back there since December, and to come back and see my kiddos again, only to leave on them, is not good to do when you have kids with adjustment disorders and abandonment issues, and so it's better to exit stage left sometimes. It's my the best job I ever had. But she's my person. That's just your person. She's my Christina Yang to my Meredith Gray. How can how could I do anything less? So it's messy. She's got all kinds of things in South Africa. We have to go this week to get her action plan. They're gonna do immunotherapy and chemotherapy and all kinds of things and see what her insurance will cover. But I've taken her in and now she's gonna be with me, which I love, and we're gonna have a blast. But right now, all I see is her crying and sad and pain, and poor Steve confused, is I'll get out. I learned a lot about food from her, and we went on all kinds of food journeys. We even went on a trip where when I graduated therapy school, she was there the whole time, and I complained to her about homework and this and that and overthinking things. And I remember two-hour conversation about some topic we had in class, and I was like, but kids could really use it. And super nerd was going on a tirade and a tangent, and she listened to me prattle on for two hours in the middle of the night and didn't think a thing of it. Takes the dogs and watches them, no problem. They need a walk, she'll do it. Anything. She's always ready to pitch in, but folks, we gotta help her. We gotta help her. Please help her. She's gonna have a lot of expenses she doesn't even know of. She's from a country where healthcare doesn't cost anything. She could go right away to the ER and she'd have a room in a hospital and be able to take care of that without any cost whatsoever. I've seen some of the bills that she's acquiring after getting her mail, and it's pretty terrifying. Well, now I don't really have an income, and I'm maybe regretting never having an advertisement or anything on this podcast because maybe I could have helped out a little better. But what I can do is I have a platform. And I just wanted you to know that I have loved every single minute of these 30 episodes that I have done for you, and I hope it has given you some knowledge and insight so you can make your lives a little bit better. And that's all I want. I don't care about money, I don't care about much of anything except bettering people. I feel like if I can have my last day on this planet where I know that I helped just somebody out there at some point, and they live a little better, kind of like the Girl Scouts, and you leave a place a little cleaner in the way you found it. Well, I feel like if I leave this world a little bit more joyous than the way that they were before, then I've done my job. And I have never done this before because I literally despise money. I think it's part of the triad of evil, power, money, and ego, and I try to avoid it at all costs. But I think I I have nothing left. So I am going to beg, beseech, and plead to y'all for a little bit of help. I made Tanya a GoFundMe page because she can't work anymore and I'm not working, but I'm gonna try to figure out some options for her. This is all gonna go to her. I don't want any of it, but I'd like to see if I can get y'all's help to maybe see if we can work on assisting her with some of her living expenses and things like that. So if you have any, if you have the means or are willing to help out, we can go to gofundme.com. And that what you can do is you can look up Mary Poppins Cancer Fight, and it will really go a long way. Or a couple of seconds of your time, maybe a few bucks here, a few bucks there. Whatever you can do. Middle schoolers, folks, you're better at raising money than anybody. She's got stage four cervical cancer. And if you can raise money for cancer, even if it doesn't go under Tanya's name, just raise money, put the fight out there. We're gonna stop this stuff. This is insane. My mom, Tanya, I don't know how much time she's got, but I promise you we're gonna make it as fun as possible. She really wanted desperately to go down to Orlando. She's a big fan of this show called Wentworth. She's a TV buff, absolutely loves TV, but she writes fiction, she's a fiction writer, and she's written two books. But Wentworth is her favorite show. It's kind of like Orange is the new black, but really severe. Kiddos, this is an adult show. This is not for you. But they're having like a Comic-Con type of thing. But she really wants to go. It's down in Orlando, but you can meet the characters, and her favorite characters are gonna be there. And I was gonna try to surprise her because her birthday is this Wednesday, and I was gonna try to figure out a way to get us down there so she could go check it out and surprise her. But I don't know financially. I can't afford it now, and she certainly wouldn't think of such a thing. But she can't sit up, but right now she had some radiation the other day, and maybe it'll help, maybe not. I don't know. She may not sit up again at this point, I don't know. But she was really wanting to go to that Wentworth thing, so I'm gonna figure out some way to zoom it or something, but it's like her the dreams she talked about maybe just aren't plausible anymore. And I don't know what to say to her to make her feel better or to make things go easier. And so if you can help out in some way, you can go to msmarypoppins.com and I'll put a link for Tanya on there, and you can click the link, it'll take you straight to our GoFundMe page, and you can read the description, see some pictures of her, and see my bestie and give her a big hug for me. So if you do prayers and thoughts and just spend some time thinking about life for Tanya, I greatly would appreciate it. But I need every kind of good vibe coming toward Livingston, Tennessee. So if you don't mind, help me out, folks. I I've never asked for anything this time, it's just for a friend, and so that makes me want to do it. I probably wouldn't ask for myself, but if you can spare a couple bucks or you want to raise some money for cancer research in her name, I would be forever grateful. There's no bigger person for the animals and the elderly than Tanya. You know, I have a bunch of stray cats that I feed every day, which have become parts of the family. I found this little gray kitten and skinny little guy and started feeding him. She kept coming over. She's like, I love him. And so over the four years I've known her, she's taken this little cat that we originally thought was a girl. So we and she would cry and just be like, Meh. So we called her Jolene. And so I was like, all right, let's name it Jolene. So, you know, she's oh well, she turned around and I was like, Oh, that's not a girl. So, so now there's Joe Space Lee, and that's kind of like her cat when she's here, and it's just amazing, absolutely amazing. And this guy's a big chubby, purring, adorable inside cat for the most part now. She did that, she saved that cat. And she had a cat named Willow that she absolutely adored. In fact, she even tattooed Willow's name on her wrist. So she's a big cat lover at heart. I'm probably a dog at heart, and she's definitely a cat at heart. And so she would do anything for animals. The guinea pigs that I have, she decided one day that she would make Melrose Place, and it's like a little apartment complex. So she put out towels and built this whole little fence and everything for them. And so Pedro and Nunu had a little area where she took Amazon boxes and cut holes in them and to make little apartments, and so she put them all over the place, and so they had like all these different little buildings to go into. And I was like, What are you doing? She's like, Oh, I'm having so much fun right now. I'm taking care of the guinea pigs. And she was just on a tear with that. And I just walked in and just I was like, What are you doing? And it just it made me laugh so hard because I was like, Of course, of course you're doing that. Just as I'm really quirky, so is she, and I think that's why we get along so well. But she was a nurse caregiver. She cared for her dad and went to that CNA training where she could learn to care for other people. And so she has worked for Caterpillar, where she worked in diamond mines, where she helped to organize equipment that would work in the diamond mines. How cool is that in South Africa? Like, what? And I was like, so tell me about this. I have questions. So she'd have to get sprayed off every day to make sure she didn't have any diamond dust on her or was like walking away with anything. I mean, the stories out of this person. It's just like, I feel so small towny, and I thought I traveled a bunch, but I realize I haven't been anywhere or seen anything. But she gets has to get up and go to just go to another country. That's brave. She's probably the bravest person I know. And these last two weeks, seeing what she's going through and trying to remain happy through it all is definitely something that is inspiring, and I would expect nothing less out of her. So kids and elderly people, and especially animals, she would give anything for them the shirt off her back. So if you can help out with this cancer fight, we are gonna start a whole new process. And today I'm gonna start making those phone calls, and she'll meet on Thursday to get the results and the action plan and see what we're gonna do because we're gonna fight. And she's gonna get chemo and immunotherapy and targeted therapy and whatever the bills will be, it money doesn't buy people. Now I realize that time is really short, and you don't know how many minutes you have with someone. And when I talk to or think of my middle school kid inside, who lost her mom and lost her words in the same moment, the thought of having this happen again with someone else that means so much to me deeply that I would give my life in a second for that person. The thought of this happening again is utterly devastating. And for once, my mental health might be in jeopardy a little bit. Because I feel like I can't breathe when I don't have my person. So if you can spare a little time, help us out. On Middle School Mary Poppins Podcast, Tanya's cancer fight, go to the website msmarypoppins.com and click on the link for Tanya, and you can go to the GoFundMe page or go to GoFundMe. And in the search bar, just look up Mary Poppins Cancer Fight. Okay, and you'll find you'll see a picture of Tanya there. There's me. We went to out to Arizona and we're uh out in Sedona, I think, at the time. So we were checking it out. But if you can help us out, folks, call on the army. I I need prayers, I need thoughts, and Tanya really needs to have the means to be able to support her through this cancel struggle. And I promise you, we're gonna give her all the love in the world, but I just need your help, folks. So I thank you for your time. And as always, stay clever little foxes. Love y'all bunches and happy 30th episode. Take care. And Tanya, we're gonna fight for you, girl. I got you.