Explore every episode of the podcast The Bridges Between Us

Eight years ago, Les Whitney finished a surf session, picked up his ukulele, and his left hand stopped working. A brain tumor. Then, worse: stage four lung cancer, metastasized. His doctors gave him six months.

He's still here.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Les, a CEO mentor, author of Cancer's Gifts, and one of the most genuinely joyful guests we've ever had, shares what eight years of living with a terminal diagnosis has taught him about gratitude, presence, community, and the choice to live fully no matter what. He doesn't use hope as a strategy. He doesn't fear dying. He counts perfect moments three to five times a day. And he has found, across eight years of CaringBridge posts to over 1,200 followers, that the act of documenting his journey has built a community that has literally extended his life, including a follower who connected him to a newly approved treatment when his lungs were completely filled with cancer and nothing was working.

Les also shares something new: his wife was recently diagnosed with lung cancer too. And he says watching her receive the diagnosis was harder than receiving his own.

He is planning a trip to Morocco or India. He is preparing a best man speech in advance, just in case. He is living in a three-month window and calling it a great life.

Read more about Les Whitney's Book, Cancer's Gifts, here: https://www.caringbridge.org/resources/cancers-gifts-a-loving-journey-toward-the-final-chapter

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Travis Scott and Jessica Hammond drove an RV to Seattle in the middle of a pandemic with their eighteen-month-old daughter Zoe. Three years later, Zoe was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at age three and a half. What followed was months of inpatient chemotherapy, a clinical drug trial, COVID-19 isolation protocols, and two parents who quietly moved into the hospital. In this episode, they share the diagnosis, the village that showed up, and how CaringBridge became the place Travis, a writer, could tell the story as they lived it. Zoe is six now. She won her class's perseverance award. She's doing great.

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John Carter has spent sixteen years in healthcare working with health systems, physicians, and executives all over the country. He knows how the system works. He knows which levers to pull. He knows the language.

None of it prepared him for the moment a cardiologist walked into a NICU room and a grenade went off.

In this episode of *The Bridges Between Us*, John shares the full story of his son Cannon. Born July 5th, named for the cannon his father fired as an Army field artillery officer, wild and unyielding by name and by nature. Diagnosed in utero with a coarctation of the aorta and tricuspid valve concerns, Cannon arrived at nine pounds, briefly fooled every monitor in the NICU into thinking he might be fine, and then wasn't. Thirty days in the cardiac ICU followed including a crash after surgery, a reintubation, an infection, and two moments where John and his wife Vanessa almost lost him.

John talks about what it's like to know the system intimately and still feel powerless inside it. About the difference between a care team's mission and a father's. About "hopium," the discipline of focusing only on the next obstacle, never the finish line. And about CaringBridge, which became the one tool that let him protect his family's energy, communicate with their tribe, and process thirty days of fear one journal entry at a time.

Cannon just turned three. He's been cleared to annual cardiology checkups. He smiles with his whole face.

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Rachel was fourteen months older than Sarah. She was a litigator; ferocious, loyal, deeply private, and absolutely determined not to let stage four metastatic colon cancer define her. When she got the call after her colonoscopy, she knew exactly who to call first: her sister.

And Sarah knew exactly what to do.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, CaringBridge board chair Sarah Krevans shares the story of the two-and-a-half-year journey she walked alongside her sister Rachel - as her voice, her advocate, her fellow wig-try-on partner, and the person who read every CaringBridge post aloud to Rachel before hitting publish, because it was Rachel's story. Not Sarah's.

She talks about creating two separate CaringBridge pages - one for family and friends, one for Rachel's work colleagues - to honor a woman who worked in the courtroom almost until the end of her life and wanted to keep those worlds carefully separated. She shares the fruitcake post, the wig shopping photos, the rhinestone-decorated chemo bag, and a Christmas trip to England where a nephew-in-law's secret proposal was the one thing Rachel was allowed to know that no one else did.

And she talks about what it was like to slowly take over the narrating when Rachel could no longer be part of the writing, and the community needed a way to say goodbye.

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Paolo Narciso has spent four decades building companies - call centers, healthcare startups, AI ventures - and currently serves on the CaringBridge board, bringing a technologist's eye to social connection and care coordination. He knows data. He tracks everything: blood panels, visceral fat, lactate thresholds, sleep, recovery scores.

So when his Apple Watch gave him a readiness score of fifty percent before a training run in Egypt - practically begging him to rest - he ran anyway.

Three minutes and forty-nine seconds in, his watch paused. He doesn't remember what happened next. What he knows is what the data, the wreckage, and seventeen and a half minutes alone on a trail eventually told him: a sudden cardiac event, four impacts with the ground, a traumatic brain injury, a shattered face, and an Apple Watch that called emergency services, broadcast his exact coordinates, and brought help to a man lying alone in the middle of nowhere.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Paolo shares the full story - the diagnosis he still doesn't fully believe, the week tied to a hospital bed, and the CaringBridge page that let him stop narrating his own emergency to everyone who loved him. He also opens up about caregiving for his 89-year-old mother, the BPO industry health crisis that led him to start his first healthcare company, and why he believes every doctor should be telling their patients about CaringBridge.

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Tina Jackson was told her daughter Tionna - Miss T - most likely wouldn't survive. Born in 1995 with trisomy 8 mosaicism, a rare genetic condition, Miss T was labeled failure to thrive. She's now thirty years old, living independently, completing a hospital internship, and co-presenting keynote speeches with her mom. In this episode, Tina shares three decades of rare disease caregiving - including the 2022 hospitalization that landed Miss T on life support, and how CaringBridge helped Tina hold her community together and make a life-changing medical decision from a hospital waiting room. An extraordinary story of love, persistence, and what's possible. Read more about Suddenly Brave Together.

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Mason was seventeen, a junior in high school, and a record-holding runner when he hit a ski jump going a little too fast and broke his T12 vertebra. He became paralyzed. The next morning, he woke up and said: we need to make a plan. In this episode, Mason and his mom Stacy talk about what paralysis really looks like - the losses that reveal themselves slowly, the community that showed up through CaringBridge and Craig Hospital, and how a teenage athlete became a disability advocate with a following of thousands. Honest, funny, and genuinely moving.

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Paurvi Bhatt has spent her career responding to crises, from the HIV pandemic to global health financing, and has worked alongside former First Lady Rosalynn Carter on caregiving advocacy. But it wasn't until she became a caregiver herself that she understood what was missing.

Paurvi grew up watching her father navigate the unimaginable: a wife in her twenties with cervical cancer, a mother dying of cancer in India, no car, no phone, and no way to reach family except by aerogram - the folded blue paper airmail letters that took weeks to arrive. He did it through community, ingenuity, and a Gujarati song he sang for decades whose lyrics, his family now realizes, described everything he couldn't say out loud.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Paurvi shares what three generations of caregiving - her father's, her own, and the generation coming next - have taught her about community, trust, silence, and what happens when you finally let people know you need help. She talks about caring for both of her parents (her mother through five cancers, her father through early-onset dementia), being a solo ager, and why she believes Gen X - the latchkey generation that raised itself - is at a critical inflection point when it comes to asking for and receiving support.

She also reflects on what CaringBridge gave her family that her father never had: a way to let people in.

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When Sally Zibrowski’s dad, Andy, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia in 2021 at age 71, her family began to quietly reorient around a new and uncertain reality. Over time, earlier signs - subtle behavioral changes, growing confusion, and moments of paranoia - began to make sense in a way that was both clarifying and heartbreaking.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Sally shares what it has meant to support her family through Alzheimer’s - not as the primary caregiver, but as someone caring for the caregiver. Her mother carried the day-to-day responsibilities at home, while Sally worked to support both of them from a distance.

She reflects on starting her dad’s CaringBridge page to ease the emotional load on her mother, and how that simple decision became a critical source of connection for their wider community. Instead of managing constant texts and check-ins, CaringBridge became a shared place for updates, memories, and support.

Sally also speaks openly about taking FMLA leave to be present for her family, and what she learned about caregiving, exhaustion, and the ways support often arrives quietly - but meaningfully - when it is most needed.

Her father, David Anderson, a beloved Minnesota science teacher, baseball coach, and longtime basketball official, passed away in May 2025. His CaringBridge page remains a record of his story and the community that surrounded him throughout his illness.

This episode is for anyone navigating Alzheimer’s or dementia in their family, anyone supporting a caregiver, or anyone trying to understand how to show up when life changes slowly and unexpectedly.

Topics covered:

• Early Alzheimer’s and dementia symptoms families often miss
• Supporting a caregiver from a distance
• Starting and managing a CaringBridge page
• FMLA leave and family caregiving decisions
• Anticipatory grief and emotional complexity in dementia care
• What meaningful support looks like for caregivers
• The lasting role of community in long health journeys

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Cris Ross spent more than a decade serving as Chief Information Officer at Mayo Clinic, helping lead one of the most respected healthcare organizations in the world through periods of enormous change and complexity.

Then, in 2018, he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

Used to solving problems and carrying responsibility for others, Cris approached treatment the same way he approached work: stay focused, push forward, and keep going. But cancer - and eventually cancer recurrence - forced him to confront something much harder than treatment itself: learning how to let people help him.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Cris reflects on the emotional and physical realities of living through two cancer diagnoses, including chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, caregiving, and the uncertainty that comes with recurrence.

He also shares the turning point that led him to start a CaringBridge page after initially resisting the idea. What began as a practical way to update people became something much more meaningful: a way for friends, family, and community to show up for him during one of the hardest seasons of his life.

Throughout the conversation, Cris speaks candidly about perspective, vulnerability, gratitude, and what it means to keep choosing joy even when life changes unexpectedly.

For more on his book, Diagnosed, please visit: https://www.amazon.com/Diagnosed-Insiders-Guide-Healthcare-Journey-ebook/dp/B0CRKXC5SH

Topics covered:

• Receiving a colorectal cancer diagnosis while leading at Mayo Clinic
• Navigating chemotherapy, radiation, and recurrence
• The emotional shift from caregiver and leader to patient
• Why Cris initially resisted starting a CaringBridge page
• Learning how to receive support from others
• The role family and caregiving played during treatment
• Living with gratitude, perspective, and joy after cancer

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⚠️ Content note: This episode includes descriptions of a serious accident and traumatic injury.

On a Sunday afternoon outside Minneapolis, Jeff Winston was in a life-altering motorcycle accident that he somehow survived - pulling himself safely to the side of the highway and calling for help.

Just behind him, Jackie Klinkner, a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA), noticed something wasn’t right and made a split-second decision to stop. Using what she had on hand, she stabilized Jeff and stayed with him until emergency responders arrived.

They were strangers in a critical moment, connected only by circumstance.

Jeff lost his leg below the knee that night. Jackie went home not knowing what happened next.

Months later, she came across a CaringBridge page created by Jeff’s fiancée, where friends and family had been following his recovery through regular updates. Through those posts, Jackie finally learned Jeff had survived - and eventually found a way to reconnect.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Jeff and Jackie share their story together: the accident, the moments immediately after, the uncertainty that followed, and the unexpected reunion that brought them back together.

Jeff also reflects on recovery, adapting to life after limb loss, supporting other amputees through Wiggle Your Toes, and the mindset shift that helped him move from focusing on what was lost to embracing what could still come next.

For more information on Wiggle Your Toes, please visit: https://wiggleyourtoes.org/

Topics covered:

• The moments leading up to and following Jeff’s accident
• Jackie’s decision to stop and provide care
• Navigating sudden, life-changing injury
• The role of CaringBridge in keeping people connected
• Reconnecting after crisis
• Recovery, resilience, and supporting others after limb loss
• Adaptive sports, prosthetics, and finding new “firsts”

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Hosted by Andy Thieman, The Bridges Between Us is a podcast from CaringBridge featuring honest conversations about caregiving, resilience, connection, and the ways people show up for one another during health journeys.

Through real stories from patients, caregivers, family members, and supporters, each episode explores what it means to navigate uncertainty, find hope, and feel less alone when life changes unexpectedly.

Send us your comments. We'd love to hear from you.