RAK OFF conference for whom, when and where? Episode 66

Monika Rachtan
Hi Monika Rachtan I would like to welcome you to the next episode of Po Pierwsze Pacjent. On 12 September, the conference Cancer OFF. Why we want to tell cancer to drop. I will be talking about this today with Jacek Maciejewski from the Rak'n'Roll Foundation. Hi, a very warm welcome to you. The Rak'n'Roll Foundation is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Tell me, is this a time for taking stock, or rather a time of new challenges for you?

Jacek Maciejewski
It is always a time of new challenges. Even so, to be honest, 15 years is an anniversary. For us, these anniversaries don't really suit us, and actually we didn't even want to do any special summaries, so even this conference is more designed to use a little bit of what we know about cancer, about prevention, about this disease, and well, to start talking about it with the world, because we've never done a conference, so we're going to do it now for the 15th anniversary.

Monika Rachtan
Looking at what you have done over the last 15 years, it is actually strange that the conference did not take place, because there was a lot of action. I went to your website and started browsing through all the entries, month after month, year after year. There is so much. And tell me, which project are you most satisfied with? Which one is one that you would like to show off.

Jacek Maciejewski
A difficult question. Without preparation. Jesus. Really, so honestly, if I was making a short list, that would be a tough one. One thing I don't think I'm going to pick is these programmes. You know, it started with these kind of programmes, which we then called artistic-therapeutic, because there we just wanted to show women with cancer. Because when we worked with Magda Prokopowicz, it was mainly about women then. And there were projects like beautiful, bald, celebrity calendar and so on. And they are all very fresh all the time. It's good to look at it so far, and such projects, in which people with cancer stand in front of a photographic or film camera and have something to play themselves most often. But, but in some kind of styling for example, it turns out to be a very therapeutic, therapeutic thing, that as if in a situation of illness they suddenly become a kind of celebrity person in the spotlight. And we're doing a little bit less projects like that at the moment. Maybe, but they're important all the time and they're a bit part of particular programmes like I don't know, KancerSutra for example, or and after cancer.

Jacek Maciejewski
These are such modules let's say. And it's an activity that maybe we didn't invent it, but we saw the value in it such a therapeutic value in doing artistic things with people with cancer. And I started with that, because that's where the cancer and roll projects started. But then there was so much that happened with dajhair, just with the programme and after cancer with Kancer Sutra with onko fertility last, that well it would be hard to say which one is the most important. The one that I would choose. And I think I'm most proud of the fact that Cancer'n'Roll was created.

Monika Rachtan
Well, yes, and that is indeed to be congratulated.

Jacek Maciejewski
Because it made a difference then and it makes a difference now.

Monika Rachtan
I don't think anyone imagined 15 years ago that there could be a girl who has cancer, who still in the midst of that illness and in the midst of cancer treatment, who would give birth to a child, who would stand up loudly in front of a camera and talk about it. How do you look back on those times 15 years ago? What did this oncology care look like, how did we talk about the oncology disease, how were people ashamed of the fact that they had cancer? And how do you look at people today who have the disease and their situation? I'm not talking about medicine, I'm talking about this social attitude.

Jacek Maciejewski
Exactly, it's a very good thing that you're not asking about medicine, because I know there are a lot of changes going on there, as if medicine has moved on, but Cancer'n'Roll was created to take care of everything that's going on around medicine. Because medicine is what doctors are for. We're a foundation, a patient organisation that helps people when they're ill, that means helping them to raise money, to mentally embrace life during their illness, to help them get through cancer through this difficult time and to find their way after the illness. And I feel that we have managed to do a lot in these 15 years so that we can talk about cancer in general, so that it is not just a purely medical problem, for example. And so that patients who don't want to be seen precisely as patients No, actually I shouldn't have used that word, because it's about people in the process of treatment, in the process of recovery. In fact, you and I can be sick, but we don't want to. The moment, the moment I get the diagnosis I am sick with cancer, to be called patients and only.

Jacek Maciejewski
No. When you're a journalist with a track record and an agenda, do you continue to want to be a journalist with a track record and an agenda and not want to suddenly be reduced to calling someone who has cancer? No. And then, those 15 years ago, Magda Prokopowicz was sort of like that person herself, who just noticed that everybody to her. Suddenly it was just about cancer. And she wanted to set up an organisation that would help people in just such a situation and create the conditions for people to be able to say openly that I'd like to talk to someone about a film or what book I've read about a book, and not necessarily about how I'm feeling today and how I'm doing after chemo or well, those are also topics and we want to talk about that too. But the idea is to sort of broaden the spectrum so that we don't have this, this reduction to a patient position. And I feel that this very spectrum, this space has broadened thanks to what rock'n'roll is doing.

Monika Rachtan
To people in Poland. I don't know what it's like in the world, what it's like, how cancer is perceived in the world, but people in Poland still associate cancer with great drama, with dying, with death, with chemotherapy, with hair loss with diarrhoea that lasts for several weeks with vomiting with feeling awful and I think that's why people also this cancer, if someone has been diagnosed, what do you ask a cancer patient? You know your sister was in the hospital two days ago at the National Cancer Institute, she was given heavy chemo. Well you're supposed to ask her what book she's read and you know, And maybe this is where the problem is Exactly not in the head of the sick people, but more in the head of the healthy people, that it's us, when a person comes into our environment who is in the treatment process, we start treating them like some queer person who just has cancer and that's all we want to talk to them about. And that's kind of how I explain it to myself, that it's us healthy people who have to change our attitude.

Jacek Maciejewski
Well, yes, this connects exactly with what I said before, that this kind of space to, life space to the patient should be widened a little bit, which also means widening such a space in the head of all those who have anything to do with the patient. Because if there is, we are going back 15 years. If we only talk about cancer in medical language, and when we invite someone to talk about cancer, it's a doctor or a patient who likes to talk about their illness. It's then people out there who see just all these medical accents, including in a conversation about cancer, and try to be the same way. Get into it.

Jacek Maciejewski
That's how cancer is talked about, that's how cancer is talked about. And what wasn't talked about these 15 years ago is that there are groups of mountain runners who are cancer patients and they do, they sort of train in between their chemo to pursue their passions. That's what happens in Cancer and Roll, for example. Also in the Rolling programme. Well that's what I'm talking about a little bit, as if to show that this multidimensionality of being a patient, that it's not. That it's not just hospital, chemo. And it's not like everyone has to suddenly get a PhD in the disease. It's great as if they're increasing their knowledge, because that's something that everyone can do. But, but it's not that suddenly everyone has to talk only about cancer, because we are talking to a person with cancer. Especially since it's often the case that we don't know if we're talking to a person with cancer, to what kind of cancer, how much and so on.

Monika Rachtan
And also, you know, I think it kind of adds nothing to the conversation, because if someone doesn't have that much medical and factual knowledge about cancer, what's the point of someone telling them that they have stage 2 bowel cancer with a BrCA mutation and they're taking Inhibitors for that in the B drug programme anyway.

Jacek Maciejewski
Well, God forbid. He will come with the good advice to drink apricot kernel oil and that takes care of virtually everything.

Monika Rachtan
Well that's the thing, it's probably better actually not to touch on such topics, i.e. to touch on them, but a little bit in moderation and to approach it in such a way that actually apart from being a patient someone is also a mother, a wife, a person who likes to read books, who rides a bike, who has ridden a bike and who wants to continue to ride a bike. You said that you as cancer and roll don't touch on medical topics, that you deal with that sphere of everything that is.

Jacek Maciejewski
We can't not touch medical topics, we touch them. But as if the professionals in this matter are doctors. That is, we will not, for example, make a diagnosis to anyone or give an opinion on a medical diagnosis. At most, we will suggest a doctor to whom it is worth giving an opinion on the diagnosis. But, but, but we also know that doctors, in turn, are not particularly interested in what the patient's financial situation is, what their mental situation is at the moment, their family situation, their professional situation and so on. These are all spaces where people should be helped. And that's where the foundation is, that's where our role is.

Monika Rachtan
I also asked this question, because I observe many organisations, patients, which function in Poland. And I noticed that you guys are a bit like Switzerland, because all these organisations are involved in various discussions about what should be reimbursed, what should the system look like, what should doctors do. And I never saw you guys there. And so I was wondering why you guys are not taking part in this discussion. But I understand now that it's like the doctors are from the treatment, the doctors are from what the system should look like, and you want to be close to the patient and here is yours.

Jacek Maciejewski
We are doing a bit of this, too, but we do not really make a big deal about it, because at a certain point it was quite late to admit it, but we noticed that we were a bit underrepresented in the system, and at the beginning we did not participate in the conferences of such patient organisations, because we felt a bit short of time, because the same thing always happened there, that is, doctors stood up, said how important it was to detect as early as possible, and patients stood up and said there should be more money. Why isn't such and such a drug reimbursed? They applauded each other a bit, then took pictures of themselves on the walls, put it out on social media and it basically always looked the same. And there, somehow, we didn't see ourselves particularly in such and such a space. But we have noticed that the voice of patient organisations does matter in what action the ministries take. Do politicians take this into account at all? Somehow they don't. Well, and this is where the problems with the patient organisations themselves overlap, because we used to be there in Poland, in the KPO, which we withdrew from and together with other organisations set up another one.

Jacek Maciejewski
We set up the National Oncology Forum, which brings together a number of patient organisations that we want to have in order to sort of channel that voice, to sort of establish our voice together with, I don't know, Zalivia from Onkocafe, there are a number of these organisations there, and to be some kind of force in discussions with, I don't know, the Speaker in the Sejm or the Minister. Recently there we managed to do these meetings where we just spoke with our voice. No. And we don't publicise this in any special way, because we don't see any reason here to advertise from this side either, because, well, somehow, I see the role of rak'n'roll differently, in this whole thing. It means what we do perhaps better than others. It's that we're communicating, we're communicating, I mean we're sort of talking about cancer in a way that people want to listen to it, in general, they're taming the subject and And by doing that we're creating an environment for getting sick that's more healing friendly.

Monika Rachtan
Over these 15 years. How many people do you think you have been able to help? I know it's hard to quantify, well, because you can't tell me how many people use, for example, your guides on the website, but you kind of say how many people the foundation could have helped.

Jacek Maciejewski
You know what, well just those two or three questions back. I felt like pulling one out myself. And it's like, I don't really know. I mean these wards of ours, which we have 120 or so there at the moment. They are rotating. There were fewer of them, now there are more over the years, but it's really kind of a fraction of what we do. Because, for example, what I was saying about this kind of awareness-raising. The patient's situation, we do, we all do. I did myself, when I met Magda and I found out that there was a problem in general, like how women are pregnant and they have cancer and they get false medical knowledge. At the time they didn't. And that was something that I ad I didn't know at the time, I found out. That broadened my consciousness a little bit and cancer and roll came about as a result of that. As a result of that. But what we did later on as an organisation was just telling people what the situation of the patient was. And if that's how we define our, our task, our achievements, then those people are millions, Because it's like, because the campaigns, I don't know, even when we did with Stańczyk last year, the reach there was some huge of that campaign, and the idea was that people should go and get themselves checked out and that they should find that one day a year where it's just about them and confirm their health.

Jacek Maciejewski
And I think that, for example, thinking about prevention in such a way as to encourage people to confirm their health and not to find the disease at the earliest possible stage, which is a classic of prevention messages in Poland. I also think that this is, that this is an achievement. And because I know that such a message is more effective, that is, people would sooner go to the doctor to confirm health than to have the disease found for them, No?

Monika Rachtan
Well, yes, nobody. He doesn't want to be sick.

Jacek Maciejewski
That's right.

Monika Rachtan
And everyone wants to be healthy, so go and confirm, high-five with others.

Jacek Maciejewski
Exactly, so if it is that I don't know. The ministry is making moves like sending letters to women come get tested because if you get detected it's ok, no? Well, and they've known for years that this is an ineffective measure and they've been repeating spending the same money for many, many years. They are repeating the same measures that just don't work.

Monika Rachtan
They do not encourage.

Jacek Maciejewski
They don't really encourage that. And we do the kind of thing that makes people go. And of course here keeping all the proportions, I mean there it's kind of like acting out of a state cannon and we're shooting ourselves out of a foundation slingshot, but we know that we're hitting.

Monika Rachtan
You have a better eye. And do you think Magda would be happy if she could now celebrate this 15th anniversary of the foundation with us? That she would be proud of what has been achieved?

Jacek Maciejewski
That's how it always sets me off when I'm reminded of Magda. You know. It's interesting that it's 15 years and it's actually worked the same way all the time.

Monika Rachtan
I'll tell you that when I was looking through, in preparation for this talk, various materials related to Magda, I was looking at her photos, she had beautiful eyes, beautiful, beautiful. She looked like that and she looked at this world with just these eyes that you could see joy and happiness in. And I think that's how you know. Later when I read to myself what you did, what she did, you can see it in her eyes And I think we should all be grateful to her that she just managed her illness in such a way that it wasn't about getting sick, it was about how to go on living a normal life. And that's great.

Jacek Maciejewski
I came up with the name Rak'n'Roll, but I also came up with this philosophy of how this organisation should work. But I actually called it what Magda was and what she wanted, so I don't really see it as my own merit. I just added a workshop piece to it, but it was her vision of what people needed in this illness.

Monika Rachtan
And tell me, when you found out that Magda had passed away and that you had to embrace it all, what did you feel? Did you feel fear? Did you feel fear, or was it more like you took a brave step and said I can do this.

Jacek Maciejewski
Is it okay to curse here?

Monika Rachtan
You can.

Jacek Maciejewski
I can get a piss out of myself. But it was such a what? It was a grotesque situation. You know, because Magda and I were working on a project, I don't even remember what it was, but she suggested I join the board of the foundation. You know, I'm the creative director at an advertising agency. What am I going to do on the board of the foundation? We do so much together. You know, just a formality.

Jacek Maciejewski
The formality of getting on the board. I say good as a formality, if you need there for formal reasons or something, well that's cool. And then she sent me by text message the address of the notary where I should go. I went to that notary, signed what I needed to, and that's how I became a board member of the Rak'n'Roll Foundation. Then I went on to do my own thing, because I had a very engaging job. It was when I was grinding terribly and on some Saturday morning I got a call that Magda was dead. That's what I remember Patrycja called with that information and it was It was shocking because I didn't know it was that bad. I knew she had gone to Lublin just there for another round of treatment. And here she was. And then the girl from the foundation office called and I heard the question Mr President, can, can I, can we spend money on a wreath for this funeral? I say What chairman at all? Well, because Magda is not here. So now you are the chairman. But why am I the chairman? Well because there is no one else. You and Magda were on the board.

Monika Rachtan
Do you think Magda did it on purpose? And do you know, as if she knew?

Jacek Maciejewski
I don't know. I don't know, but I felt miffed because I didn't talk to her about it. There were never any such plans and I was not aware that it was me and Magda. I mean when she told me that there was a board there, well I didn't know that the board was her and I would be the other one.

Monika Rachtan
Well, yes, you thought there were probably ten other people there.

Jacek Maciejewski
Ten is maybe not, but I know there's Bartek, maybe some. Well, there were a couple of people there who were sort of around her, so for me it was a surprise. I agreed, and then I started to explain why I was, to be the chairman. And then I was that chairman there for a year or a year and a half, somehow. Then we looked for some other solutions, because I didn't decide to give up working in advertising for reasons, for various reasons. But I didn't abandon cancer and roll either. I mean I ran the foundation all the time.

Monika Rachtan
It's been 15 years since the foundation was established. You have done a lot, but you probably have even more planned. Tell me, do you already have any campaigns in mind that will come out of your hands next year or even this year? Do you already have any plans?

Jacek Maciejewski
Yes, I mean. We have such strategic themes. This is prevention in a new way, because we would like to convince as many people as possible to do prevention in a different way than the standard way, i.e. by scaring them with diseases, statistics and so on.

Monika Rachtan
I am signing up to this campaign.

Jacek Maciejewski
I would love to, because I think it would be worth working on it together somehow and coming up with something sensible. Because it's not even about some kind of creative fireworks, it's about sort of carrying out some kind of effective action that will get more people to join in. It's a bit of a problem, because it's also a problem in patient organisations, which are just going by the shtick, if when they do preventive actions with the Ministry, which has money simply for this, and they don't do it, I mean there's no one there to communicate, who learns from the mistakes they made before, and it's as if something comes out, some kind of Ministry campaign, then you can see that, that there's a problem. So here we would like to act as broadly as possible and also give a little outside in some conferences like this, well this is the work to do. And the other thread that interests us somehow, me perhaps more than others in the foundation, but after years we have returned to the male thread. That is, rock'n'roll is seen as a women's organisation. Sometimes I hear, sometimes I hear that rock'n'roll is about breast cancer, it's not.

Jacek Maciejewski
And elsewhere from others that the rak'n'roll are the hair ones, so whatever someone chooses. But in any case, most often the image is precisely that of a woman. And there's a bit of a problem with the fact that men come to us for help too rarely than it's worth. And we have an offer for men. We also want to develop it and, in fact, some kind of broader recruitment of men to take advantage of our help, is also something that we want to expand a little.

Monika Rachtan
You know, guys in general have a problem asking for help and admitting that they need help at all. But actually, like you say you associate with hair and with breast cancer, I think that's actually the case. I rather don't associate here as I think of the face of Cancer'n'roll then I think of a woman. You are right. Also cool, cool. I'm really looking forward to these, to these new projects. But yes, there's a conference in Warsaw on 12 September. You can sign up.

Jacek Maciejewski
You can sign up for Rak OFF via two "f".org there you can buy tickets, read about what it's going to be about, see who's going to participate. And it will be a cool event in my opinion. I mean yes.

Monika Rachtan
It will be very cool for me, too, because it is not at all medical. I was looking at the programme and at the beginning it's about people, then it's about language, and then it's about prevention, and I didn't see a single medical term in all these descriptions that you have prepared. And I think that's what our audience should be attracted to, because it's still a while away. Until this conference actually about two weeks away. And it doesn't matter if you're from Warsaw or if you're from Wrocław. I, for example, will pack my bags and come from Wrocław to the conference to talk about health and prevention together with the foundation. So it's really worth getting together, because you can meet cool people. You'll probably be able to high-five each other.

Jacek Maciejewski
So we're also doing an exhibition there, a little bit in the middle, because it's all going to be at the Warsaw School of Economics, which is a fantastic space in general. And we're very happy that we've managed to get there at all, because the collaboration with SGH is quite new for us and we've hit a bit of a snag. And in this cool space we found a place to show a bit of what we've done so far. I hope it won't be perceived as just bragging about history, because it's not supposed to be historical, it's supposed to be quite lively and. We are going to talk a little bit offhand about what we are doing, show what we have done so far, but at the conference itself, in the main auditorium, there will be super cool speeches by the speakers we have invited. We kind of thought of the topics first and actually they were about everything, but not about medicine. I mean there's not about cell sharing and and the latest drugs and so on, because there's a lot of that. I mean I think if someone is interested in that, they can find better places, but here it's everything that's going on in getting sick around.

Jacek Maciejewski
Around treatment that's what it is and it's so soft and so important in getting sick, that's where it's going to be. I mean this first blog is just about the patient situation and there's going to be a couple of patients and there's going to be two psychologists, great people, because it's going to be Alicja Długołęcka, for example, who runs the Kancer Sutra programme for us and she's going to be there. She's going to have this speech called quite well and we're going to talk about what she's going to talk about. That's for you guys to read for yourselves there. And come to the conference, Because what's interesting in general is that, just like I started this thread, that we came up with topics and then we came up with who could speak on these topics the most, and then these people digested it for themselves and and sent us these stories of more or less what it's going to be about, what they're going to do. And it got a lot more interesting than we had previously thought of there. So I'm actually now curious to see what it's going to be like already, what's going to happen on those on that stage.

Monika Rachtan
You know, and also as I reviewed the speakers for myself, because speakers is the wrong word. When it comes to this conference of speakers, I thought, these are people who either are a cancer patient themselves, or are in contact with a cancer patient, but they don't have the kind of relationship that a doctor patient has, because it's a different doctor-patient relationship, and a different one, for example. I also saw among the speakers Dr Mariola Kosowicz, who is a psycho-oncologist at the National Institute of Oncology. And she, as she was telling me, what patients come to her with. But listen, well not just patients. Husbands, for example, come and say my wife has stage four breast cancer. We have two children and I stand firm and I know what the end of the story is. But what do I do with these children, how do I prepare them for this? And that these are the kind of conversations that you don't get in your head at all. People who are not affected by cancer, who are not affected by this situation of the cancer patient. I often say when someone tells me about a tragedy, for example, they tell me that they have a disease that is going to make their hair fall out.

Monika Rachtan
And I understand, it's an aesthetic defect and so on, but it can be dealt with. And now, for example, some 25-year-old mother is dying of cancer. That is, gee, a problem.

Jacek Maciejewski
Well, I don't know what to answer you now. I mean, what Dr Kosowicz was saying, it's like in this situation I see first of all a guy who wants to. Because the fact that he went to Dr. Kosowicz means that he, as the husband of the patient, saw himself sort of also sort of in the situation of the illness and went to the psycho-colonologist. No. It's also not so common again and so obvious that I don't know. Husbands, fathers, mothers sometimes go for psycho-oncological help, because this is also something that happens less often than it should.

Monika Rachtan
In Poland, it should even be a rule that these people should be taken care of, because I am in such a situation now, when I have a cancer patient among my relatives. And although it is a completely different situation, when it is a husband-wife relationship, but I am also affected by this situation and sometimes I think: gosh, I've had enough of this cancer. Why did he meet us and then I kind of stop and say hey, sorry, you're not the one who's sick, don't experience it so much because the cancer patient is suffering. But I notice on myself, where I super rotate in the system, I know a lot of doctors and I rather not have all these problems that cancer patients or their families have, that it weighs on me a little bit too. So I think how it must weigh on such a husband whose wife is leaving and there are two children waiting at home.

Jacek Maciejewski
You have to talk to them, answer questions. This is a big job. In general, what good has happened with the pandemic and also the increasing incidence of cancer? It's that people are sort of going to psychologists more and more. And these psychologists have suddenly gone from being such a kind of poor profession to being promoted into a super necessary, into a super necessary legion of soldiers who are out there on the front line just doing really super important work and. And let them educate themselves, let them work, because they're really needed, and we should use psychologists, psycho-oncologists.

Monika Rachtan
It seems to me that the media have also opened the door to psychologist's offices a little bit, because now going to a psychologist is not at all shameful or embarrassing. It used to be that it was disgusting to have cancer, it was disgusting to have depression, it was disgusting to go to a psychologist, and now it's all normal and people even talk about it. I was in a situation yesterday when a man in a shop told me I was suffering from depression. I am in the process of treatment, the gentleman in the furniture shop told me about it. Blimey.

Jacek Maciejewski
I've been telling such an anecdote recently. I was riding my bike around town and there I sat down at some point and there were four young people sitting there. And I just heard a piece of dialogue as the boy was telling what his therapist had recently told him. And these girls and the boy there were reacting to it as if it was a topic of conversation.

Monika Rachtan
But this generation is probably more open of these younger people who see it as normal. I think we should accept that, in the same way that you can be affected by whether depression or cancer, it's a normal situation and you just have to find yourself in it somehow. Looking still at what the conference is going to be about, this question came to my mind. And you have had a lot of contact with cancer patients for many years, tell me, does such a cancer patient only experience one goodbye? Does his family also experience only one goodbye? Are there more of these goodbyes when he is already suffering from advanced cancer, after which he has to mourn?

Jacek Maciejewski
First of all, you know what we do is we stress every time that every patient is different and that there is no such thing as a statistical patient. Every single one of us. Well, first of all he is a human being and then he is a patient and what happens to him there depends on his condition and his family situation. And so on, and what the illness is. And it seems to me, but in what you're asking about, there's this interesting thread that we also wanted to bring up at the conference, that is, this kind of mourning for health. Because if we imagine that, I don't know, I tore my cruciate ligament about 10 years ago while skiing and I'm still mourning that cruciate ligament. That leg is not the same anymore, No.

Monika Rachtan
Something took it away from you.

Jacek Maciejewski
Something took it away from me and I got it. And it's like let's say you can't see it. But I kind of feel and know that I could have been healthier if I had, if I had taken a different route then, no. And I have such, such some thoughts about it, sort of stemming from that loss and I imagine and imagine that prostate cancer patients, for example, after surgery will also have their grief over something there. And each of us, let alone the super visible ones, like a breast after a mastectomy, or hair lost, or skin changing. These are all topics to deal with, to talk through. And when we talk about psycho-oncologists, well, that's one of the things they do, too, in order to deal with how our body has changed and what it's going to be like, and what can still be done with it, and so, well, just sort of see the perspective, not the loss itself. I don't want to play psychologist here right now, but, but this is such a topic very much worth popularising. It's bereavement after a loss of health.

Monika Rachtan
Research says that one in three Poles will experience an oncological disease in their lifetime, which is how we are here in the studio. There are somewhere around 10 of us, maybe 12. That's three or four of us who will get cancer. And I don't think anyone, no healthy person is ready to be a cancer patient or a person in general facing cancer and facing treatment. Because we don't realise what it is like when we are healthy. Even if we have someone close to us who has cancer, I don't think we can so much imagine stepping into that person's shoes what they feel. And that's why I think of the conference, which is on 12 September, that it really is a conference for everyone. Because it's not to scare us to see how bad it's going to be, but also to make us aware of what it's like. Because, however, a person who is prepared for certain things. It seems to me that he enters into them much more easily and copes with them.

Jacek Maciejewski
Well that's exactly right. Thank you for taking it up, because well there are some things in life that are not too cool, but they are life. I don't know, the passing of time, the fact that the weather changes, the fact that winter comes, the fact that we get older, the seasons, the fact that flowers wilt and so on. And all these These are the less pleasant things, but it's worth preparing for it somehow. To know that this flower is going to wilt And then what about it? A bit with cancer it's like with any other disease. They can happen to us And as we learn a little bit about it and understand what the situation is, it's not. It gets a little less demonic. That's one of the threads in the panel in that second block, which you're going to be leading, by the way. I don't think it's a secret. We can talk about it.

Monika Rachtan
Absolutely.

Jacek Maciejewski
It's about that, for example. About the language used to talk about cancer. And there's a very interesting thread there about how cancer is cast in films, not movies. They put cancer in film scripts, like there's supposed to be some kind of breakthrough or some kind of total evil happening to a person, then either they get cancer or someone in their family and there could be a lot of other diseases out there. But multiple sclerosis for example doesn't or but he has to for cancer, because cancer. Everybody knows it's the end, not cancer, that's the worst. And by the way, it was an interesting observation that if the cancer gets the supporting character, he's going to die, and if the cancer gets the primary character, he's going to survive. And it gets a bit stiff funny and but cancer even has its roles in the scripts.

Monika Rachtan
You are right that a film has never been made. I mean, maybe it was made once, because we don't know all the cinematography, but it would be nice to make a film showing just such a normal person who finds out that he has cancer. And so to show just all of that. You know what, you've inspired me here. I do reportage, so I think it's, it's a cool, cool idea for that kind of material. I'm going to think about it. It really could be interesting material at the end. But it's actually not at the end, it's in the third panel. We're going to talk about prevention. And like you said, we're not supposed to look for ourselves a disease. We are supposed to check for ourselves if we are healthy. Do you think there is room in our heads, in our Polish heads, to change this thinking? To turn them a little bit on the subject of health and not looking for ourselves cancer.

Jacek Maciejewski
Well, yes, definitely. We, in the campaign, in all these activities, encourage people to just find a day to confirm their health, to just confirm their health at the doctor's, and not to find an illness. That is what we are doing. But in this third block, that's where we want to show what we think prevention is. Because it's that people are starting to live more consciously, to make more health-promoting choices for themselves. By reading food labels, for example.

Jacek Maciejewski
It's really about taking away the chances of cancer, which either has its arms wide open and will come in and make itself comfortable, or it will have a harder time, it will have to combine. We won't give these guarantees to anyone, but we really can move more, eat better, breathe better, live in better relationships, more consciously. And all of these things make it harder for cancer simply. And that's why organisations like this that don't have it written into their status that they're anti-cancer, but they're doing activities that are de facto preventative and we know why and how we want to talk to them about it, thank them and show the world what they're doing.

Monika Rachtan
Well actually, a lot of these organisations have sprung up and I'll tell you that it's not at all difficult to live healthily these days, but what I mean is to get the knowledge of how to live healthily, because there really are a lot of people who talk about it, who show it on Instagram, on YouTube, in general we can get inundated with it everywhere, And yet, you know, I was at the Polish seaside and I counted the children who are obese who pass by me and there over 50 60 per cent had this problem. And I think we also all of these, all this prevention in general we don't relate to cancer in our heads. I'm talking as a society because, you know, nobody thinks about the fact that if I have a child and he's 12 years old and he's one metre sixty and weighs 75 kg, that I'm probably increasing his cancer risk. I would say to that mother yes. Do you know that you are working your child to death at the moment when that child is eating those crisps, she would probably slap me across the face and say What are you saying to me?

Monika Rachtan
But people do it and are totally unaware that it is by such actions that they are bringing their children and themselves closer to cancer.

Jacek Maciejewski
Well, yes, I mean, sort of this preventive perspective of ours is that we should stay healthy and when we talk about prevention, I find it even hard to define it as cancer prevention, because it's prevention of different diseases, no. Because that example you gave, that's where hypertension, heart disease comes into play.

Monika Rachtan
But again, cancer is more demonic.

Jacek Maciejewski
Cancer is more demonic. So it's best to scare cancer.

Monika Rachtan
I'm the one who's going to walk on the pier in Sopot now and just scare the cancer out of me.

Jacek Maciejewski
So. So it's just that a colleague of mine came back from Japan, now I've just been listening to some reportage from Japan recently, where I was struck by this information, that with the changes in civilisation, it's actually only in Japan that there is no, there is no wave of obesity. I mean it hasn't changed, it hasn't changed in that direction, because they in such school food, hospital food, factory food all the time make sure that the food is fresh and well made, balanced and so on. And it's like a basic medicine actually not. And to us, unfortunately, with the wave of civilisation from the West, we've been hit by the fact that we have crisps, hot dogs.

Monika Rachtan
Burger and kebab shops.

Monika Rachtan
And it actually shows. Listen, nobody wants to get cancer, but it's worth knowing what life is like for an oncology patient. That's why we would like to invite you once again very warmly to the Rak'n'Roll Rak Off Foundation conference on 12 September, which will be held in Warsaw at the Warsaw School of Economics from 10am to 5pm.

Monika Rachtan
You are also very welcome. Today my guest in the programme Po Pierwsze Pacjent was Jacek Maciejewski. Thank you very much for our conversation today, and I invite you to subscribe to my channel. As always, I wish you good health and see you next week. Thanks! Hi.