One Doctor’s Cancer Journey
Dr. Carol Turner’s Winding Path From Diagnosis to Recovery
A Candid Chronicle for Anyone Battling Cancer
Dr. Carol Turner
Dr. Turner is a mom, wife, physician, outdoor recreation enthusiast, and cancer patient—in that order. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas in Austin and her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She went on to complete her pediatrics residency at the University of Colorado Affiliated Hospitals in Denver, and her fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. She then practiced pediatric emergency medicine at Children’s Hospital in Denver for ten years before opening her own solo rural primary care pediatric practice in the foothills southwest of Denver. Today she lives in Conifer, Colorado with three sons, two dogs, one cat, and one husband.
Finding positivity, gratitude, and humor on the road to recovery
At fifty-seven, Dr. Carol Turner was in peak health and an active outdoor sports enthusiast. Then, suddenly, her life was upended. During a simple stop to fill her gas tank on the way to watch her sons compete in Colorado’s annual high school mountain bike championship, Dr. Turner received a call from her doctor, and learned that she had cancer.
In an instant, she knew that what was to come would have personal and universal significance. She started scrawling notes from the passenger seat of the car—her diagnosis, the experience of hearing the news, her thoughts, emotions, her outlook for the future. She would continue recording all the details of her journey, from the practical to the poignant, from pain to joy, and all the messy life lived in between.
Waldy, Myelo, and Me
Dr. Turner would turn the notes she began taking after that first call and every moment that followed into a book—an unvarnished account of her cancer journey, from diagnosis to recovery.
In Waldy, Myelo, and Me: Surviving Waldenström’s Macroglobulinemia and Myelodysplastic Syndrome Dr. Turner’s story oscillates between denial and acceptance, hope and despair, expectation and reality, and endless appointments bookended by interminable waits. And even though fear and pain never shy away from the spotlight, both are upstaged by positivity, gratitude, and humor.
A Message of Healing from a Survivor
Dr. Turner’s emotional, humorous, and clarifying talks speak to the full spectrum of cancer battle experiences. Sourcing her insights from her own experiences facing rare blood and bone marrow cancers, current patients, survivors, loved ones, and caretakers will find wisdom relevant to their own experiences, and inspiration in the tenacity of the human spirit to persevere despite the odds.
What’s more, Dr. Turner positions her experience in stark contrast to the unhelpful corpus of information today’s cancer patients have to sift through. Undistinguishable cancer websites, cancer clinics that all seem to have found the answers, snake oil salespeople, testimonies of those who survived and those who didn’t, the miasma of as-seen-on-TV cancer—all of it is noise, all of it adds to the confusion, fear, and chaos, and none of it maps on to Dr. Turner’s experience.
A talk with Dr. Turner turns down the volume on competing voices to give her audiences clarity, to tell people that she sees them and what their really going through, and to teach them how to find the light when things are at their darkest.
Some topics include:
- Narrative speech of my story
- The power of denial
- Physician as patient
- The post stem cell transplant journey
- The new portrayal of the cancer-stricken mom
Recent Blog Posts
Portrayal of Mothers with Cancer in Popular Culture
Occupying Your Brain and Body While Fighting Cancer
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Cancer Retrospective
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