Before cancer was a hashtag. Before survivorship was a talking point. Before anyone rang a damn bell—there were Mavericks.
They didn’t look like heroes. They weren’t trying to go viral. They were patients, parents, doctors, punks, poets, and misfits who got sick, got angry, and got loud. They questioned authority, rewrote the rules, and turned personal trauma into public transformation. They didn’t wait to be invited into the room—they built new rooms.
The Cancer Mavericks is a documentary podcast series about the people who made survivorship matter—before it had a name. From the National Cancer Act to the birth of the AYA movement, from grassroots organizing to celebrity activism, from chemo brain to the cancer Moonshot—this is the untold history of how patients forced the system to care.
Created and hosted by 30-year brain cancer survivor and healthcare rebel Matthew Zachary, this isn’t a story about cancer. It’s a story about what people do after.
Bold. Human. Unapologetically real.
What if surviving cancer was just the beginning of the real fight?
In this episode, we dig into the dirty little secret of cancer care: post-treatment survivorship is often a medical no-man’s-land. Once the last scan is clean and the bell is rung, patients are left to figure out what “getting back to normal” even means—if that’s possible at all.
We hear from patients and pioneers who pulled back the curtain on life after cancer, exposing the physical, emotional, and financial wreckage that doesn’t make it into the brochure. From debilitating fatigue, chemo brain, and fertility loss to job discrimination and bankruptcy—survivors found themselves told they should be grateful... while falling apart.
Leading the charge is Dr. Patricia Ganz, one of the first physicians to say out loud that survivorship is a medical specialty—and a broken one at that. We follow her 40-year journey advocating for quality of life research, survivor rehab, and the creation of actual survivorship clinics, not just exit paperwork and “good luck” wishes.
Matthew Zachary brings it home with his own brutal reality check after treatment: no support, no rehab, no roadmap. Just the question: now what?
This episode is a wake-up call. It’s not about beating cancer. It’s about what comes after—and why most of us weren’t ready for it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Survivorship doesn’t end with the last round of chemo—it often starts there
- Dr. Patricia Ganz pioneered survivorship as a field, pushing for real research into long-term effects and quality of life
- Survivors face lasting trauma, cognitive issues, sexual dysfunction, and financial devastation—with little clinical recognition
- "Chemo brain" is real, and many patients had to convince their own doctors it wasn’t “just aging”
- Survivorship clinics, where they exist, are rare—but vital
- Society celebrates survival but often ignores the cost of staying alive
FEEDBACK
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