Welcome to Chasing Life. You know, this is my favorite time of year. I just celebrated a birthday. It is fall. And of course, it is time for Halloween. A time for trick-or-treating and haunted houses and all sorts of ghouls and witches and, of course, zombies. In today's episode, however, I'm going to be talking about a different kind of zombie.

We're not talking about the brain-eating variety, but maybe something just as haunting.

Cancer zombies.

There's a whole category of people now who are in this in-between world, where they're neither sick or well, but they're

living with a permanent condition for longer than any of us ever did before. And I came up

with this term that I call us cancer zombies. That is Jonathan Gluck. He's a writer and the author of a new book called

An Exercise in Uncertainty, a memoir of illness and hope. It's about his odyssey with incurable

cancer that has been going on for more than 20 years. So, you know, zombie zombies are half dead

and half alive. Cancer zombies are half sick and half well.

And doomed to be that way forever, the same way zombies are doomed to be half alive forever.

Full disclosure, Jonathan's nephew, Ben, is my executive producer.

But I'm not doing this interview today because of a personal connection,

but rather because I read the book. And I think

his journey has a lot to teach us. And candidly, I don't know how I feel about this term

cancer zombie. It's his description of a growing group of patients, himself included, who are living

with chronic cancer for years, even decades. Oftentimes, these are

patients who are told they have no other options, and they don't have that long to live. But here

they are. And today, we're going to hear his story about living in a liminal space defined by

uncertainty. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and this is chasing life.

Hey, Sanjay, how are you? I'm doing well. How you doing? I'm well, thanks. It's nice to meet you.

Finally, I've heard so many wonderful things about you over the years from Ben and also just wanted to say thank you again for providing the blurb for the book.

Oh, it's my pleasure. It's a great book. Congratulations.

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