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The body versus the job: we’ve all been in this spot at some point in our careers.

For so many years as a journalist working in news, I’ve pushed myself to work longer and harder, to give up sleep, healthy food, exercise, even peace of mind - all in the name of performance. To be great at what I do, and to do it better than everyone else.

But - of course - high performance comes at a high cost, and often it starts with our bodies, and our health.

This week’s episode is a deeper exploration of that tension: I talked to Sanju Pal, a woman who made endometriosis a headline in the UK. ​

Sanju’s story began when she was told she had a cyst on her ovary the size of a coke can. And at her gynecologist visit, all she could think about was her next meeting, a big project at work, and the promotion she had been working towards. Until the doctor set her straight: her uterus, he told her, was in danger of twisting, and she needed urgent surgery. Work would have to come second.

What began in that gynecologist's office ultimately ended in an employment tribunal seven years later - a journey in advocacy for Sanju, who fought her former employer, consultancy firm Accenture, for unfair dismissal, and won a landmark case establishing that endometriosis can be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010 in the UK. Her story made the news, but in this episode, Sanju talks about overlooked aspects of her health story, and her relationship with her body, and what she’s learned from her struggle in these last seven years.

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More episode notes:

• The background to Sanju’s story can be found here (CrowdJustice) and here (BBC).
• A full bundle of Overlooked episodes about endometriosis is here on YouTube: subscribe to the channel and binge listen when you're ready​
• What to listen to next: Gabrielle Jackson, author of Pain and Prejudice, on her experience with endometriosis and how women's pain has systemically been sidelined.​

What else is going on:

What I'm reading right now: Ask me about my uterus, by Abbie Norman​

What I'm listening to: The Nocturnists, always such a brilliant podcast.

And then:

Cancer survivorship, and its shadow

I was in Vancouver this past weekend for the Canadian Conference on Ovarian Cancer Research.

I led a couple of workshops on storytelling, for researchers and survivors, and I also did a podcast taping with Dr Mercedes Castiel about survivorship (that episode will show up in the feed soon).

More people are surviving a cancer diagnosis than ever before - that’s broadly the headline, and I’m basing that on this report.​

Yes, it’s a good news story.

But there’s a shadow to survivorship, a whole new set of messy challenges that we talk about privately but not publicly, including anxiety and depression, cognitive issues (brain fog from chemo for example), the financial burden and sexual health issues. And all of these center around ‘quality of life’ - a woolly term that’s individually interpreted.

We need to talk about these things more because cancer survivors need support. Ovarian cancer survivors are living longer with the disease but nobody ever stops looking over their shoulder, and at the conference this weekend, I heard many women say just this.

These are conversations we're having in my own family too. My mom, an 8 year survivor of this disease, couldn’t be there at the conference, although she’s a patient partner in research with Ovarian Cancer Canada. This weekend she was too sick to make the journey. For a long time now we’ve been talking about the shadow of survivorship (I made an episode last year about it too) and I’ll tell you that as a daughter and caregiver, these are difficult conversations. But they need to happen.

I’m grateful I could attend this conference (though I was sad to do it solo without mum) and thankful to Ovarian Cancer Canada and the Gynecologic Cancer Initiative at the University of British Columbia, who are doing next-level work on ovarian cancer and survivorship issues. I’ll be covering this much more in my own work in the months to come. You can help inform my reporting by sharing your experience of being a survivor or caregiver - drop me an email at hello@overlookedpod.com.

Wishing you the best of health,

Golda