In 2020, Emily Mendenhall drove from Washington, DC to Okoboji, Iowa, a town of 800 that swells to 200,000 every summer, and walked into a pandemic that looked nothing like the one dominating national headlines. Inside gas stations and bars, masks marked you as an outsider. In one stop, a…
At 25, Jace Yawnick was building a career in health and wellness sales, chasing growth, status, and the usual young adult fantasy of getting somewhere fast. Then his body stopped cooperating. Fatigue turned into chemotherapy. The diagnosis was primary mediastinal B cell non Hodgkin lymphoma, and the rest of his…
At 20 years old, newly arrived from Puerto Rico and trying to build a future in science, Benjamin Suarez Jimenez found himself sitting in front of two senior faculty members accused of plagiarism. He knew the material. He had done the work. His mistake came from failing to cite class…
Dr. Sarah Matt trained as a burn surgeon, working in a field where patients arrive with catastrophic injuries and survival depends on speed, skill, and resources. She left the bedside after confronting a limit that medicine does not like to admit. One physician can only see so many people in…
In the late 1980s, a child exposed to fallout from the Chernobyl disaster lay in a hospital bed while doctors told his family there were no clear answers and no reliable path forward. Decades later, that same child, Yan Leyfman, walks into exam rooms as a hematology oncology fellow, expected…
Matthew Zachary is a brain cancer survivor, healthcare advocate, founder of Stupid Cancer and We the Patients, and host of Out of Patients. In April 2026, he returned to the stage at Merkin Hall near Lincoln Center for his first solo public piano concert in almost 22 years while launching…
In December 1996, a 37 year old pharmaceutical executive sat in a Borders bookstore reading medical textbooks on the floor, trying to understand a disease she had never heard of. Multiple myeloma carried a three year prognosis. Her daughter was 18 months old. Her father had just died of cancer.…
On April 28, 2026, Matthew Zachary returned to the stage at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City for his first public solo piano performance in nearly 22 years. The evening marked 30 years since his brain cancer diagnosis at age 21 and celebrated the launch of his new book,…
At 19, Shlomit woke up unable to speak. The right side of her body went numb. An emergency room sent her home and called it stress. That moment did not end in a diagnosis that changed policy or triggered reform. It sent her into a decade long pursuit of understanding…
In 2020, developmental biologist Dr. Crystal Rogers drove the country roads outside Davis, California crying between grant rejections, wondering whether she was about to lose her lab, her career, and the scientific future she had spent years building. She had already done what academia tells young scientists to do. She…
In 2008, Katy Talento walked away from Capitol Hill and into a Catholic convent. Within a year, she walked out. Within another decade, she sat inside the White House shaping health policy. Somewhere in between, she got labeled “infertile” after a single cycle of testing and spent years believing it.…
Brain cancer at 21. Piano comeback at 51. Mr. G from PIX11 came to Merkin Hall and told my story to millions of New Yorkers. My Dad was with me every second during treatment. But the system still forced him to spend his nights in the basement on a fax…
In a wooded campground cabin in the early 2000s, 19 year old Ben Unger stood in the doorway and watched 20 naked men form a circle around a crying teenager. A counselor held up two tangerines and shouted, “These are your balls.” The exercise claimed to cure same sex attraction…
Drew Flugstad-Clarke never planned to work in brain cancer. She planned to play Division I soccer at Georgetown. She planned to paint. She even tried investment banking, answering emails at 4am in a cubicle that never slept. Then in June 2022 her father, Jim, was diagnosed with glioblastoma at 57.…
f you have ever spent hours on hold, fought a denial, waited for prior authorization, or watched care stall while paperwork moved, you already know something is wrong. We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America’s Healthcare Nightmare explains exactly why. The system was not built to serve patients. It…
Janine Durso spent 30 years inside pharmaceutical advertising shaping healthcare narratives before becoming a belief strategist and founder of The Believist. In November 2024, during a routine Zoom coaching session, she felt what she called a sharp, terrible pain in the right side of her head. Within hours she was…
Rebecca Benghiat holds a JD, passed the bar, and skipped corporate law to build mental health systems instead. She now serves as Chief of Staff and Head of Impact at Inner Foundation, where she helps direct capital toward emerging adults ages 18 to 30 and asks a hard question every…
At age 12, Dr. Chrystal Starbird stood by a pond after turning her mother in to the police. She watched tadpoles and fish move beneath the surface and found a strange kind of order. Science became her refuge long before it became her career. Years later, she built that refuge…
