Who remembers i[2]y? Leah Shearer does!

Out of Patients with Matthew Zachary

Prepare the Wayback Machine for today's chat with Leah Shearer, who, for all intents and purposes, was one of the first ten volunteers from 2007 who contributed to the birth of Stupid Cancer and the greater young adult cancer movement.

The "girl so nice she got cancer twice" Leah—a native of Rochester, NY— found out about my efforts when I guest starred as myself on a TV show called "Side Order of Life" for a scene I wrote based on a real-life young adult cancer meetup. (Back then, we called them "Stupid Cancer Happy Hours.") So, she emailed me, and the rest was history.

I hadn't seen her in years, but we've reunited right here in-studio for a nostalgic trip down memory lane about how the sausage was made and what it took to build a global movement from scratch before the Internet, life with dumb phones. At an irreplicable moment in time, everyone dropped their egos and their missions to unite around one cause: Adolescents and Young Adults with cancer deserved better. And we won.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.