Out of Patients EP456: Fitz Happens: The Marvelous Fitz Koehler
SHE WENT FROM CINNABON TO KICKBOXING TO CANCER. AND SHE'S STILL STANDING.
Fitz Koehler spent decades teaching people how to get fit. Then cancer showed up to test every lesson she ever taught.
Spoiler: she passed.
This woman worked at Cinnabon, grew hips, became a competitive kickboxer, starred in a martial arts movie connected to Jean Claude Van Damme, got dubbed on Telemundo, and now announces marathons and pro hockey games. Oh, and she beat breast cancer while doing leg lifts between vomiting episodes.
We talked about the difference between preventing disease and preparing for it. About exercise oncology. About stretching naked in the shower to Jerry Seinfeld interviews. About why fitness influencers selling green juice are scumbags. And about the bar fights. Yes, plural.
Her philosophy hit me hard: prepare your body for hardship before hardship finds you. Not because fitness makes you invincible. She did everything right and still got cancer weeks after a clean mammogram. Cancer did not care about her résumé.
But here is the thing. When treatment tried to drag her behind a horse, she had somewhere stronger to fall from.
I survived brain cancer at 21. I wrote We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare because patients deserve more than band aids and billing codes. The book is available now wherever books are sold.
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Producer
Matthew Zachary invented healthcare podcasting before podcasting was a thing. In 2007, fresh off building Stupid Cancer, he grabbed a mic, launched The Stupid Cancer Show, and started broadcasting patient stories on internet talk radio when everyone else was still writing blogs.
19 years and 2000+ episodes later, Out of Patients is still the most unfiltered healthcare show anywhere.
Matthew does not do softball interviews. Brain cancer at 21 taught him that time is finite and bullshit is expensive. He gets guests to say things they would never tell Congress. CEOs admit what is broken. Patients name what actually hurts. Scientists explain what industry does not want you to know. The conversations other shows will not touch because of sponsor concerns or political correctness.
What makes him different: he has been on both sides of the mic. Featured in documentaries. Keynoted hundreds of conferences. Published in The Hill. Now marching into Washington with a national patient constituency behind him.
But he has also been the guy puking from radiation, fighting insurance denials, and watching friends die from paperwork.
That dual perspective creates interviews you will not hear anywhere else. He knows which questions make power squirm because he has asked them from hospital beds and boardrooms both.
No pre-approved questions. No PR handlers. No seven-minute segments. Just real conversations with people brave enough to tell the truth about American healthcare.
Still the show where whistleblowers go first. Still the show … Read More
Out of Patients EP455: SurgeON: Dr. Jeremy Heffner
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