The Bridges Between Us

About The Bridges Between Us

The Bridges Between Us shares stories of real families navigating traumatic health challenges - including cancer, traumatic brain injuries, stroke, Alzheimer's, and more. Through intimate, thoughtful conversations with caregivers, patients, healthcare experts, and advocates, the podcast explores what it truly means to navigate illness, recovery, loss, and everything in between. Each episode is a window into lived experience - how people found strength when they least expected it, how communities rallied around families in crisis, and how connection became a form of care all its own. These stories are raw, honest, and deeply human. At its heart, The Bridges Between Us is about exactly what its name suggests: the bridges we build between people, between isolation and community, between hardship and hope. Wherever you are on a health journey - as a caregiver, a patient, a supporter, or someone who simply wants to understand - this podcast invites you to listen slowly, reflect openly, and feel a little less alone.

Publisher

CaringBridge

Category

business · health & fitness · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Apr 2026

Latest episode

30 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

14 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   30 Oct 2026

   You Don't Have to Do It Alone: Stan & Sue Stanek on AML, the Gratitude Calendar That Never Stopped, and What It Means to Be Blessed to Be a Blessing

   In December 2016, Stan Stanek went to the eye doctor about some spots he'd noticed while reading the newspaper. By four o'clock that afternoon, he was in the emergency room. By the end of the week, he had a port, a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia, and a very large calendar taped to his hospital room wall — where Sue wrote down something good about every single day, for two years. In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Stan and Sue share the full story: eighteen months of grueling trea...

2. 

   16 Oct 2026

   Twenty-Five Percent: Dr. Wayne Jonas on Social Support, Cancer Survival, and the Medicine We're Not Prescribing

   Twenty-five percent. That's how much longer cancer patients with high social support live compared to those with low social support. Not quality of life. Not comfort. Survival. "If you had a drug that increased your living by twenty-five percent, it would be on the docket immediately." ~ Dr. Wayne Jonas. It is not on the docket. It is not prescribed. It is not reimbursable. And Dr. Jonas has spent his career asking why. A physician, researcher, former director of the NIH Office of Alternative...

3. 

   2 Oct 2026

   Live a Great Life for the Rest of Your Life: Les Whitney on Eight Years with Stage Four Lung Cancer, Perfect Moments, and the Choice to Not Let Anything Get in the Way

   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 ...

4. 

   18 Sept 2026

   Everyone Was There With Us: Travis Scott & Jessica Hammond on Zoe's Leukemia, the Village That Showed Up, and Life on the Other Side

   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 wr...

5. 

   31 Jul 2026

   One Obstacle at a Time: John Carter on His Son Cannon, a Congenital Heart Defect, and What Thirty Days in a Cardiac ICU Taught a Healthcare Insider About Being a Patient

   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, ...

6. 

   17 Jul 2026

   Ferocious, Loyal, and Absolutely in Control: Sarah Krevans on Caregiving for the Sister Who Refused to Be Defined by Cancer

   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 voi...

7. 

   3 Jul 2026

   Three Minutes and Forty-Nine Seconds: Paolo Narciso on Cardiac Arrest Mid-Run, the Tech That Saved Him, and Why Data Isn't Destiny

   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 min...

8. 

   19 Jun 2026

   You Can Influence the Journey: Tina Jackson on Rare Disease, Radical Advocacy, and Raising Miss T

   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 ho...

9. 

   5 Jun 2026

   What Do We Do Now: Mason Branstrator and One Family's Road Through Paralysis, Building Community and Connection

   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 fol...

10. 

    22 May 2026

    Close to Home: Paurvi Bhatt on Immigrant Family Caregiving, the Loneliness Epidemic, and Why Gen X Has to Start Asking for Help

    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...

11. 

    7 May 2026

    Living with Joy: Cris Ross on Two Cancer Diagnoses, Learning to Receive Support, and the CaringBridge Page That Changed Everything

    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 hi...

12. 

    7 May 2026

    The Stranger Who Stopped, and the Road Back: Jeff Winston and Jackie Klinkner on Survival, Recovery, and Reconnection

    ⚠️ 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...

13. 

    7 May 2026

    Grieving Twice: Sally Zibrowski on Alzheimer’s, Caregiving From a Distance, and Showing Up for Her Family

    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...

14. 

    30 Apr 2026

    The Bridges Between Us Trailer Episode

    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. Support the show

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.