Surprising Update on Healthcare Self Advocacy!

Itchy and Bitchy Podcast

KS Miller-Hnilica

Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Medicine

4.9 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After listening to an episode of Itchy and Bitchy, a woman pushed for further testing and caught grade 1A ovarian cancer early—requiring only surgery. Karen revisits why self-advocacy saves lives, translating expert definitions into everyday guidance and offering practical steps: build a true partnership with your provider, keep detailed symptom and medication notes, ask clear questions about tests, risks, and costs, use reliable resources (not “Dr. Google”), consult your pharmacist, and keep your advance care planning up to date.

Visit our website itchyandbitchy.com to read blog posts on the many topics we have covered on the show.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/itchy-and-bitchy-podcast--4303608/support.

Itchy & Bitchy is back! ... and the medical system is officially on notice.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The content of this podcast is provided for general informational purposes only and is not intended
0:05.9	as, nor should it be considered a substitute for professional medical advice.
0:10.8	Oh, how I feel.
0:14.2	Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy and bitchy.
0:21.1	Hello, everyone.
0:22.1	This is Karen Nicol family nurse practitioner, and this is Itchy and Bitchie, a podcast that provides answers to your many unanswered health questions.
0:31.1	If you listen until the very end of every episode, which I'd love for you to do, I always encourage you to be aware that your health
0:40.8	is in your hands. I share that on every episode because I strongly believe that we all have to
0:48.5	advocate for ourselves when it comes to our health care. In the March 15th, 2025 episode called The Best Health Advocate
0:57.2	is you, I shared a listener's story about how she had worsening abdominal and pelvic
1:04.1	symptoms that were being incorrectly evaluated and treated. I shared with you that she had
1:10.5	been listening to Itchy and Bichy,
1:12.6	previously called Sweety and Pist for quite a while, and she re-listened to one that I did with
1:19.8	comedian Leanne Morgan during Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Our listener didn't connect
1:26.3	the ovarian cancer dots at that point, but she remembered that she
1:30.7	had heard in that episode that if you are feeling dismissed but know something is wrong,
1:37.6	you should keep pushing for an evaluation of the problem by your provider or get a second
1:42.8	opinion. So my listener graciously agreed to let me
1:46.9	share her story with you and I encourage you to go back to that episode to listen to her health journey.
1:53.0	I'm bringing up that story again because a couple of days ago, another listener reached out to me
1:59.7	and shared the most amazing story. She has given me
2:03.6	permission to tell you her story as she told it to me. I've taken out some pieces of her
	...

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