Lifespan: Stories of Illness, Accident, and Recovery
Kanaal Besonderhede
Lifespan: Stories of Illness, Accident, and Recovery
On Lifespan, you’ll hear stories about encounters with the health care system. Each show contains stories bound by a common theme – a person’s personal journey through a particular type of medical trauma. The stories are deeply personal. Some stories reflect a person’s response to treatment and othe...
Onlangse Episodes
25 episodes
“Long Covid”
Janet Golden, professor emerita of history, Rutgers University, describes her experience with Long Covid and points out that infectious diseases often...
“Kidney Failure”
Dylan lives in Tennessee. He’s a magazine editor. He has a wife. He has a young daughter. And he has Alport syndrome, a hereditary kidney disease. In...
“Alzheimer’s”
Larry and Carol have been married for 66 years. About 17 years ago, Carol began to show signs of memory problems. She has since been diagnosed as havi...
“Benign Tumors”
When someone suspects they have a tumor, the first thing they think about, and fear, is cancer. So, when their biopsy comes back as “benign,” they’re...
“Testicular Cancer”
“‘Breast cancer awareness’ is a national catchphrase. There is less recognition, however, of testicular cancer, even though the average age for onset...
“Medical Interpretation”
Faiza Aziz is a medical student. Before enrolling in medical school in 2020, given her public health and medical knowledge, her fluency in several lan...
"Stroke"
Bob Simpson and Estelle Carol have been together for almost 50 years. They have two grown children. Before retirement, Bob was a high school history t...
“Choosing Down Syndrome”
Chris Kaposy and Jan Beattie have three children: Elizabeth, 14, Aaron, 11, and Ty, 7. With each pregnancy, Jan and Chris decided in advance to refuse...
“Depression in the First Person”
Anna Mehler Paperny is a Canadian journalist who has worked for Reuters, The Globe and Mail, and Global News. She’s won awards for her investigative j...
“Grievous Loss: Death of a Spouse”
Steve Bild, Renee Pollock, and Mary Costello have all lost their longtime spouses. In this episode of Lifespan, they describe their spouses’ lives and...
“A Tale of Two Recoveries: Alcoholism and Co-Dependence”
Debbie and Doug have been married for more than 40 years. In this episode of Lifespan, Doug talks candidly about his addiction to alcohol and his ongo...
“Three Cancers/Two Cultures”
In the last 16 years, Bernhard Debatin has had three different types of cancer. Physicians in Germany treated his first cancer successfully; physician...
“Cesarean Sections”
While members of the medical community concede that at 32% of births obstetricians are performing too many cesareans, cesarean sections can also be li...
“Stomach Pain”
We all know how sick we feel when our stomach is upset. We’ve all experienced nausea, diarrhea, and stomach pain—among the most uncomfortable symptoms...
"First-Time Birth"
Last month, Jackie Wolf talked to three women, Lauren, Stacy, and Cora, who were pregnant for the first time. On this month’s episode of Lifespan, Jac...
"First-Time Pregnancy"
On this episode of Lifespan, Jackie Wolf talks to three women who will soon give birth for the first time. Their experiences during pregnancy have dif...
"Race and Racism in Medical School"
Medical students of color shoulder a double burden. They are medical students, expected to do all the hard work that goes with being a medical student...
“Organ Donation”
One deceased organ donor can save up to 8 lives. Yet, on average, 20 people on the United Network for Organ Sharing waiting list die each day because...
"Burned"
Burns are among the most difficult injuries for physicians to treat. Our skin isn’t just our appearance to the world, skin helps to regulate body temp...
"The American Way of End-of-Life Care"
Lifespan host Jackie Wolf’s mother died of lung cancer in 2010. In this episode of Lifespan, she uses the story of her mother’s illness and death as a...
"Living With Chronic Illness"
Chronic illness is, by definition, treatable but not curable. In this episode of Lifespan, Jennifer Grayson describes her struggle, beginning in high...
"A Difficult Diagnosis"
Sudden, catastrophic illnesses often perplex doctors and terrify patients. In Doug Mann’s case, doctors at multiple medical centers could not figure o...
"Breastfeeding Today"
We hear it all the time: “breastfeeding is the most natural thing in the world.” But as you’ll learn from these stories, today’s breastfeeding mothers...
"An Accident"
When Steve Miner was 18 years old, he fell 150 feet off a cliff in Northern California. He tells his story.
Coming Soon : Lifespan
On Lifespan, you’ll hear stories about encounters with the health care system. Each show contains stories bound by a common theme: chronic illness, su...