Bladder Cancer Survivor & Patient Advocate, Speaker, Author "Gratitude in the Storm"

Joined January 2011
956 Photos and videos
Advocating for myself and getting a 2nd opinion saved my life. I was 57 and my college age kids had already lost their father when they were in middle school. #Grateful to be a survivor, I advocate for increased awareness and earlier detection. Thank you for this report.
🌍 New report: tackling the gender care gap in bladder cancer Today we share Women Unseen: Tackling the Gender Care Gap in Bladder Cancer — a collaborative report spotlighting inequalities women face across the care pathway and how to address them. 📘 Based on the Global Bladder Cancer Patient & Carer Survey, the report shows women are more likely to face delayed diagnosis: 69% were first diagnosed with another condition. 🤝 It sets out clear actions to improve early diagnosis, clinical awareness, and care for women. 👉 Learn more and download the report: ow.ly/osX150XIu3L #WomenUnseen #BladderCancer #WomensHealth #PatientAdvocacy
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#sponsorship I partnered with Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (@JNJInnovMed) to raise awareness during Bladder Cancer Awareness Month - but I’m not done:) You can help! Comment and share to reach more people. @BladderCancerUS #bladdercancer #gratitude #cancersurvivor
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Watershed moment for cancer treatment. #Hope #Gratitude #pancreaticcancer #cancertreatment
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Margo R. Wickersham retweeted
Have we misunderstood the role of testosterone in prostate cancer for nearly a century? Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, author of, "Testosterone Does Not Drive Prostate Cancer: Presenting the New Framework of Androgen Adequacy vs Inadequacy," reviews evidence refuting the idea that testosterone drives prostate cancer and proposes a new framework focused on androgen adequacy vs inadequacy to guide clinical thinking and future research. 🔗 Read more: bit.ly/4a80CgL
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Overwhelmed with gratitude. For the focus on patient-centered decision making.🙏Thank you #bladdercancer leaders and community!
Developing a patient-centered decision aid for urinary diversion choices in #BladderCancer. @divyaajay_uro @UrologyMSK joins @UroDocAsh @UTMDAnderson to discuss a patient-centered decision aid for urinary diversion selection developed through BCAN's Young Investigator Award. #WatchNow > bit.ly/4tBz9fh
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Margo R. Wickersham retweeted
We couldn’t be prouder to share this moment: BCAN co-founder Diane Zipursky Quale receiving an @ASCO Patient Advocate Award, honoring 21 years of tireless advocacy for bladder cancer patients and families. Thank you, Diane, for all you do. Congratulations! 🧡
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Congratulations on all that @IBCG_BladderCA has accomplished In the first 20 years!🎉 I’m excited to be part of the next chapter with this amazing group!
Congratulations @UroDocAsh and @IBCG_BladderCA founders on 20 years of impact and innovation! 🎉 Grateful to be part of this outstanding global bladder cancer community. Sorry to miss the celebration, cheering from Chicago! Excited for all that lies ahead. @pjhensley11 @UrogerliMD @SpiessPhilippe @AndreaNecchi @BrigidaMaiorano @karima_oualla @mouwlab @spsutkaMD
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#Sponsored I’m partnering with Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (@jnjinovativemedicine) to raise awareness during Bladder Cancer Awareness Month #BCAM Does every #bladdercancer patient have to have their bladder removed? @JNJInnovMed
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Pleased to attend this - happening now!
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I was honored to join these esteemed panelists to share #bladdercancer #patients experiences and the results of the recent poll, @IBCG_BladderCA @urotoday @BladderCancerUS @WorldBladderCan @JNJInnovMed
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Margo R. Wickersham retweeted
Happening tomorrow! Come join us to learn about the lived experience of bladder cancer patients and insights from urologists who treat them. What does treatment actually do to a life? To a career, a relationship, a sense of self? #AUA26 @BladderCancerUS @WorldBladderCan @IBCG_BladderCA @UroToday @filicevas @MargoWickersham @paolo_gontero @MRoupret #BladderCancer #BladderCancerAwarenessMonth #AUA26
Excited to be part of this important event the day before #AUA2026 kicks off. When Treatment Shapes Life - a session featuring new data from a global survey on the lived experience of bladder cancer patients and urologists. May 14 | National Press Club, Washington D.C. Hosted with @WorldBladderCan @BladderCancerUS @IBCG_BladderCA moderated by Gina Carithers @UroToday and featuring: @filicevas @MargoWickersham Meri-Margaret Deoudes #BladderCancer #BladderCancerAwarenessMonth #AUA26 Register here: airtable.com/appcvY4DR2Lv4pi…
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#Sponsored I’m partnering with Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (@jnjinovativemedicine) to raise awareness during Bladder Cancer Awareness Month #BCAM26 Early detection—and a second opinion @UTMDAnderson saved my life. #BladderCancer Follow me and @BladderCancerUS to help:)
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You're invited! A few spots still open to join me and this outstanding panel to reveal and discuss results from this global bladder cancer patient survey. Register 👉 lnkd.in/dhFp9iXr
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#Sponsored I’m partnering with J&J @JNJInnovation to raise awareness during #BladderCancerAwareness Month #BCAM Early detection can save lives. Comment, follow me and @BCAN to reach more people
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Cancer loves time! Let’s give it less! If you see 🩸 in your urine, see a doctor. If I’d followed the recommended to keep an eye on it, I wouldn’t be here.
It’s Patient Experience Week! 🚨 Blood in urine 🤕 Pelvic pain 🩸 Frequent urination Knowing the signs of #bladdercancer improves the patient journey, starting with early detection. Learn more about the symptoms 👉 ow.ly/O2mP50VBSBN
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Excited to share the next big step in my patient advocacy journey - first partnership with @JNJNews! I'm honored to join @mmdeoudes @UroDocAsh and @filicevas on the panel discussing results of bladder cancer patient survey on May 14. co-sponsored by @IBCG_BladderCA @AmerUrological @BladderCancerUS @WorldBladderCan
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I love this resource!! Bladder cancer can feel overwhelming and like another language. Thank you for this plain speak fact sheet!
💬 Medical terms should not feel like another obstacle after a bladder cancer diagnosis. 📘 Our new factsheet, Understanding Medical Terms in Bladder Cancer, explains words like biopsy, cystoscopy and immunotherapy in clear, plain language. So patients can feel more confident asking questions and taking part in decisions. 🔗 Learn more about the new factsheet: ow.ly/L2jr50YiGj5 📄 Explore the full Factsheet Series: ow.ly/J2IL50YiGjM #BladderCancer #BladderCancerAware #PatientSupport #HealthLiteracy
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Margo R. Wickersham retweeted
The annual @IBCG_BladderCA@AmerUrological Bladder Cancer Forum is back – and this year’s lineup is 🔥 Sunday May 17 | 2–5 pm #AUA2026 Washington DC Real debates. No safe answers. Evidence meets real-world decision making. 🧵Stay tuned @spsutkaMD @shilpaonc @niyatilobo @pjhensley11 @UroToday @BladderCancerUS @MRoupret @AndreaNecchi #BladderCancer #Urology #OncSurgery
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As Bladder cancer patient with Stage 1, high grade non muscle invasive bladder cancer #NMBC, I desperately wanted to avoid a radical cystectomy. But my second opinion at a major cancer center indicated a rare variant that required removal of my bladder for survival. Stick to the plan saved my life:)
Replying to @BogdanaSchmidt
Had the pleasure of being a discussant on this very topic at #EAU26. My take? - Stick to the plan! The survival benefit in EV-304/303 was built on consolidation RC PLND - not observation, not TMT. EV P and radical cystectomy together deliver the advantage. Skipping surgery outside a clinical trial based on cCR alone is premature. Those studies are needed - and are underway - but we have no data yet. #AUA2026 #AACR2026
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I just spoke about this at a meeting in Austin for @NAWIC Austin.!
🚨BREAKING: 8 weeks of gratitude practice physically rebuilds the neural pathways between your memory and reward centers. Your brain physically rewires itself every time you feel grateful. Eight weeks of intentional gratitude practice creates measurable structural changes in the neural pathways connecting your hippocampus to your ventral tegmental area. The memory center starts talking to the reward center in a fundamentally different way. New synaptic connections form. Existing ones strengthen. The physical architecture of how you process positive experiences rebuilds itself. Most people approach gratitude like a mood they can choose to feel. A psychological vitamin they remember to take when life gets difficult. The neuroscience reveals something far more profound. Gratitude is a biological intervention that sculpts brain tissue. Researchers tracked participants practicing gratitude exercises for two months using brain scans. They watched new neural highways construct themselves in real time. The anterior cingulate cortex developed stronger connections to the medial prefrontal cortex. The brain learned to route positive emotional experiences through higher order thinking centers instead of storing them as fleeting feelings. Every positive experience you’ve ever had exists as a neural trace in your memory network. Most sit dormant, accessible only when something external triggers the specific sensory combination that originally encoded them. You smell coffee, suddenly remember a conversation from years ago. Random. Unreliable. Outside your control. Gratitude practice systematically rewires that retrieval system. After two months, participants could voluntarily access positive memories with increasing ease. Their brains had built stronger pathways between memory storage areas and emotional processing centers. They experienced deeper emotional resonance during memory retrieval. The quality of remembering itself had improved. The participants also started noticing positive details in their present environment they had previously filtered out. Their attention systems recalibrated. The same neural pathways pulling positive memories forward were scanning current experiences more thoroughly for elements worth encoding as positive memories. Their brains became biased toward collecting evidence that life contains meaningful moments. Most cognitive interventions try to change how you interpret negative experiences. Gratitude practice changes how thoroughly you notice positive ones. It teaches your visual and emotional processing systems to detect opportunities and pleasures that were always present but neurologically invisible. The timeline reveals something crucial about neural plasticity. Weeks one through three showed minimal structural changes. Participants felt slightly more positive, but brain scans looked identical to baseline. Weeks four through six showed the first measurable increases in gray matter density. Weeks seven and eight revealed entirely new neural network formation. Two months. Your nervous system can physically restructure itself with consistent practice. The method was almost embarrassingly simple. Participants wrote down three specific things they felt grateful for every evening, explaining why each mattered. No meditation apps. No guided visualizations. Just pen, paper, and the requirement to identify gratitude targets with enough detail that their brains had to actively search for positive elements. Specificity drives the neural development. General statements like “I’m grateful for my family” generate different brain activity than precise observations like “I’m grateful my daughter laughed at my terrible joke during dinner because it showed me she still finds me funny despite growing more independent.” The brain needs detailed targets to practice connecting memory specifics to emotional rewards. After eight weeks, participants developed a fundamentally different relationship with their attention and memory systems. Someone whose brain automatically scans for and emotionally amplifies aspects of experience that make existence feel worthwhile. The neural pathways remain permanent after practice ends. Gratitude carves lasting roads through consciousness.
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Had a great time sharing my story and gratitude practice with the amazing @NAWIC Austin! @nawicchapter7 Thank you for having me!
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