In this episode of Own Your Health, Katie Brindle is joined by her close friend Katie Nicholl (Vanity Fair’s royal correspondent and BBC contributor) for a conversation about stress, symptoms, and the wake-up call that changed everything. Katie shares how what looked like burnout, palpitations, and perimenopause stress turned out to be cholangiocarcinoma (a rare primary liver cancer), despite “normal” blood tests, and why pushing for a scan likely saved her life. They unpack the post-treatment reality: life doesn’t magically get easier after a diagnosis, so self-care has to become non-negotiable.
Chapters
00:00 — Meet the guest: royal correspondent, author, high-stress career
00:33 — Building self-care habits that don’t collapse in January
01:05 — How they met: gua sha, “liver” themes… and what no one knew yet
02:08 — The moment: “It’s probably stress”… but the truth was liver cancer
05:18 — The scary part: normal bloods, no tumour markers —why scans mattered
06:14 — Diagnosis to surgery fast: MRI confirmed it, 11-hour operation, chemo
08:00 — After the all-clear: life stays hard, so the system has to change
09:25 — Stop the self-care guilt: how to restart without beating yourself up
10:02 — The “diary-first” rule: schedule self-care before everything else
12:32 — The non-negotiables: nature, internal vs external exercise, organ strength
15:12 — Forest bathing + “tree hugging”: why nature became her anchor
18:03 — Joy as medicine: shedding what wasn’t serving her, gratitude as a practice
22:31 — Reinvention: rage, resentment, marriage ending, rebuilding a new life
25:16 — What she’s adding now: foot baths, daily breathwork, simple routines
30:47 — Guided practice: Healing Sounds for organs (follow along)
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Love, Katie Brindle.