Why One Walk Can Change Everything for Survivors

December 15, 2025

Transcript

Voice over:

This is Bladder Cancer Matters, the podcast for bladder cancer patients, caregivers, advocates, and medical and research professionals. It’s brought to you by the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, otherwise known as BCAN. BCAN works to increase public awareness about bladder cancer, advances bladder cancer research, and provides educational and support services for bladder cancer patients and their loved ones. To learn more, please visit bcan.org.

Rick Bangs:

Hi, I’m Rick Bangs, the host of Bladder Cancer Matters, a podcast for, by, and about the bladder cancer community. I’m also a survivor of muscle-invasive bladder cancer, the proud owner of a 2006 model year neobladder, and a patient advocate supporting cancer research at the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, or as many call it, BCAN, producers of this podcast. I’m pleased to welcome today’s guest, Sandy Weicher and Danny Gereg.

Sandy Weicher is a retired business executive who now enjoys pickleball and walks in Central Park and patient advocacy work in New York City with husband Joe and mini dachshund, Hazel. Sandy was diagnosed with T1 high-grade non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. She founded and leads a Zoom support group for people with the Indiana pouch and has become a social media advocate for it. Sandy likes to say her surgeon saved her life, but BCAN brought her back to life. This is why she supports BCAN in different ways. Sandy followed Brian Billings in leading the New York Walk last year and will lead the walk this coming year. Sandy offers two key learnings from her experience. A recurrence is not a horrible thing, and losing her bladder was not the horrific thing she thought it would be.

Diagnosed in 2023, Danny Gereg is returning for his second Bladder Cancer Matters podcast. Danny treated his cancer as a wake-up call rather than defeat. While navigating surgery and immunotherapy, he committed to a total lifestyle overhaul, losing 100 pounds and reclaiming his vitality. He describes the experience as the electric shock he needed to change his life, using his renewed energy to inspire fellow survivors to fight for their health. Welcome, Sandy and Danny.

Danny Gereg:

Thank you, Rick.

Sandy Weicher:

Thanks, Rick.

Rick Bangs:

Sandy, I want to start with you because our listeners haven’t met you before. Let’s start with what was your diagnosis and what was that treatment journey like?

Sandy Weicher:

My diagnosis story is pretty common. I was diagnosed with high-grade non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, as you said. I went through two rounds of BCG and I thought I was good. It’s my recurrence story after 7 years of being NED that really impacted me. I had an immediate radical cystectomy, and at the recommendation of my surgeon, I chose the Indiana Pouch, and that was really the start of my BCAN and my advocacy journey.

Rick Bangs:

Okay. The Indiana Pouch, for our listeners, is a little bit of an unusual choice, but nonetheless, it is one of the three options people have. So Danny, remind our listeners about your journey and its twists and turns.

Danny Gereg:

Yes, sir. I was diagnosed with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer in 2023, and I’m currently in a 3-year course of BCG therapy, which I’m almost done. I’ve got 1 year left. And when I got bladder cancer, it was a huge wake-up call.

Rick Bangs:

All right. So Sandy, you had this recurrence after 7 years, that you mentioned. How has that field your need for community and giving back?

Sandy Weicher:

Rick, I had so much help during my radical cystectomy, my diversion choice. I went through survivor-to-survivor, so much help during my surgery and my recovery, and that is actually when I found the BCAN community and realized how truly powerful the community is. The way that people helped me, and continue to help me now every single day, is what makes me want to support both BCAN the organization and BCAN the amazing patient community in every way that I can. And that’s really what’s fueled me.

Rick Bangs:

Awesome. Awesome. Now, Danny, you’ve had good results with BCG over the last 2 years. What did you hope to give and get in the community and how has your need for community changed in that time period?

Danny Gereg:

Well, when I first came in, I really had no idea what I would need from my community. I was lost in this huge void and I just did not know what to do. I was extremely depressed and anxious about my condition. But when I finally got a hold on it, I found myself at that walk in Columbus. And that’s where my community opened up with me and showed me that there’s something else to help drive the energy and to keep me surviving and thriving through this, and I just could not have done this without that BCAN community that I met on that day.

Rick Bangs:

Okay. So we’re going to focus on a specific kind of community in the BCAN spectrum, and we’re going to talk about the Annual Walk for Bladder Cancer. That started, and I was a participant in that, back in 2011. So I want to start with you, Danny. You participated in the Columbus Walk in 2024. How did you end up there?

Danny Gereg:

Yeah. Like I said, with the depression and that shock of cancer, it just got me to where I didn’t want to do anything. So my wife had signed me up for this walk and as some days when I’d lay in bed, I’d remember her coming in and saying, “Hey, that walk is so many months away,” or, “Hey, you remember that walk? You want to go to the BCAN website?” And I just wasn’t interested in it at all.

Rick Bangs:

Yeah.

Danny Gereg:

But luckily when I finally came to the precipice of my health journey, I knew that I was going to survive. I had a really good chance, anyway. My surgery was over and I was well into my treatment and everything seemed to be going good. And I found myself at that walk and it opened me up to a huge community of which I’ve just gotten deeper into. Every time I speak to a volunteer or an employee from BCAN or anyone, it deepens my relationship and there’s just so much more to do in our community through our flagship organization.

Rick Bangs:

Yeah. Amen to that. So Sandy, I want to ask you, what got you started with the New York City Walk?

Sandy Weicher:

Well, Rick, I joined the New York City Bladder Cancer Support Group right after my surgery and met a bunch of amazing people there, including Brian Billings and Lydia Saravis, who immediately encouraged me to come, meet them in person, not on Zoom, and walk with them. And I had only lived in New York for a year. And the minute I got down to the pier and saw that we were walking with the Statue of Liberty in view, the Freedom Tower, and here we were with all these amazing people, I was hooked. I couldn’t believe what a wonderful experience it was.

Rick Bangs:

Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about why the two of you walked, because, as we know, it’s hopefully a beautiful Saturday morning in the spring,. So why spend your time at a BCAN Walk for Bladder Cancer? Let’s start with you, Danny.

Danny Gereg:

It becomes very symbolic, especially for me and my wife, like this year. This upcoming year, 2026, will be our third year. So we started off really early. We get into the volunteer aspect very deeply. We’re there right at the beginning when everybody else is there, willing to lend our hand. But I end up, after a while, all these patients and caregivers will come up and I’ll find myself talking here, my wife will go over talking there. So we’ll find all these people and make all these friends and connect all of these different stories together and then kind of go do our walk as a big family. It’s just the most amazing day full of symbolism and hope that we just enjoy the heck out of it.

Rick Bangs:

Sandy, what about you?

Sandy Weicher:

Rick, Danny just nailed it. The hope. I walk. I realized pretty quickly that Zoom support groups are great, but there’s something about being in person. It’s kind of like the same thing as a patient summit.

Rick Bangs:

Right, right.

Sandy Weicher:

But when you are all together and it’s a beautiful, or even a rainy, Saturday morning, and you’re together walking, you have hope, like Danny said, and you have community. And for me, it’s become a reminder that hope and love can come from a very difficult experience. I would not have met all these amazing people, Danny, Lydia, Brian, all the amazing people I’ve met here, I wouldn’t have met them if not for my cancer diagnosis. So the walk has kind of become that for me, that day of remembering that many good things can come out of a very difficult journey.

Rick Bangs:

Yeah. Again, you’ve hit the nail on the head because it’s actually meeting these people that makes the walks so important. So talk about how the communities at the walk are different from the communities at other events, from your perspective.

Sandy Weicher:

Well, I think that’s one of the really cool things because you meet people you might not meet in other places. And I know this is true in a lot of the markets. Like New York, we’re a tri-state walk. So we get people from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. You might walk next to your nurse or nurses from others. I love that in New York we get NYU Langone, we get Memorial Sloan Kettering, and we meet these people from different organizations. Also, you get to meet our sponsors and you can learn about clinical trials and new treatments and new developments. So it really is a day full of a really broad community.

And so many of our communities are specific. They’re a support group community or some other community, but the walk communities, to me, are very broad and they’re in person. And so many things are on Zoom now and they’re great. It’s great. But like you said, being together in person and meeting people that you’ve never met before is just amazing. And then when you see them the next year, you’re like, “Oh my God, here we are again.” It’s fabulous.

Rick Bangs:

Yeah. It’s like seeing family again.

Sandy Weicher:

Yep.

Rick Bangs:

So Danny, what are your thoughts?

Danny Gereg:

I totally agree with Sandy. It’s just this amazing family. And Sandy, I would have never met you if it wasn’t for this just ignorant illness and everything about it, but I just love you dearly and I can’t think of what my life would be without you at this point. So thank you.

What comes to mind when you mention that, Rick, is just that the people still that I meet, I got lucky enough to meet several different people, but one guy showed up and he just looked so lost and I went up to him and I said, “What’s going on?” Well, he had just found out the day before, he had just gotten that CT scan that said he had a smudge, he had no idea, and he said, “My brother brought me here and I’m here.” And I said, “Sir, you are in the best place you could ever have been dropped in.” I said, “This place saved my life, man.” So we talked to this day. I’ve got his number right up there on my wall. I’m waiting for him to call me, and he’s to call me today, actually.

Rick Bangs:

Yeah. If only all of us could have the opportunity to have a walk the next day, that would be just-

Danny Gereg:

He was so lucky too, to be able to be guided. I threw him right in the network and he’s doing okay. He’s as lost as the rest of us were, but he’ll get there. We’ll help.

Rick Bangs:

Oh, yeah. That’s terrific. So Sandy, you’re so passionate about these walks that you’re now leading one of BCAN’s largest walks. So talk about why walks of all sizes are so important to BCAN, to our patient communities, to our medical communities.

Sandy Weicher:

Yeah. So Rick, we’ve talked about the community, and that’s what you get on the day of. But the benefit of walks goes on all year long. So first and foremost, I should know off if the top of my head how much money the walks raised last year. I think it was $1.7 million, something like that. So first and foremost, BCAN really does an amazing job of supporting research, research that supports treatment advances. When I was diagnosed 10 years ago, I had two options, BCG or radical cystectomy. That was it. Even 4 years ago when I went to radical cystectomy, I went so quickly because there was very little in clinical trial that I could have gotten into quickly. The whole world has changed in treatment, which is so wonderful. So that’s the first piece.

But second of all, the amazing programs we all love. Patient summits. I love to go to patient summits. My support group, we go and meet in person at patient summits, the Female Focus Support Group, survivor-to-survivor, the 800 number that BCAN helps to staff with a social worker, the webinars, this podcast. I have a very specific post-surgery issue about parastomal hernias. I just signed up for a webinar in January on understanding peristomal hernias. And would I have access to Dr. Lee from Northwestern University in Chicago if it wasn’t for BCAN at no cost to me? I wouldn’t.

So there’s so many benefits to patients and then to our medical communities. Again, BCAN is a driving force in bladder cancer research and these research funds benefit our medical partners. We have the Young Investigator Awards. There’s just so many ways that the WAC funds benefit patients, medical partners, and the overall bladder cancer community all year long.

Rick Bangs:

Absolutely. All right. So what are some of the ways that people can participate in a walk? Because it’s not just a one-size-fits-all.

Sandy Weicher:

No, it isn’t, and that’s the great thing about it, Rick. So first, you can walk. You can show up and walk and walk and raise funds. And I should say, in every market, there’s a long walk, a short walk, or a you-don’t-have-to-walk option, you just hang out and have community. So it’s not one-size-fits-all. So you can walk and raise funds. You can walk and lead a team. I bring my pickleball friends and we walk together as a team and raise funds as a team. Then you can volunteer to help with the walk on the local Walk Team. That’s how I first got involved. And then last but not least, if your market doesn’t have a walk, you can do a virtual walk and just walk with your friends and your community in your city. So there’s four different ways that you can participate.

Rick Bangs:

Right. And I want to emphasize cities and towns of all sizes, number one, walks can be done anywhere, and number two, BCAN has some great resources to help people to make it as turnkey as it possibly can. So Sandy, you’re very honest about how every Walk Team and every market needs the gifts of peoples’ time and talent. What kinds of help do Walk Teams need based on your experience?

Sandy Weicher:

So the Walk Teams need people with all kinds of skills, and we have a plethora of things that you can help with. We have upfront jobs that you can do from your home. You can do research for us. You can do communication. You can do planning. We need people with organization skills who can figure out, “How do we set this up?” That’s not my thing. How to set up tables on a pier? I’m not good at that. But Brian Billings is. We need people who can think creatively. “Okay, what should our activities be? How do we engage people?” We need people who can help with social media, with outreach. And then we need people who can be there on the day of. We have people that just direct people. We have people that hand out t-shirts, do registration.

We really have all kinds of jobs to fit your skills, what you’re comfortable with, and what you enjoy. And if you have children or teenagers that need volunteer hours, this work counts for that too. And I promise you, you will have fun, you will make friends and you will build new community. And I want to make a point. Last year, the BCAN staff did a great job of putting volunteer requests up on a national site called Volunteer Match, and in New York City, we got nine people who came out. They had no connection to bladder cancer. They just wanted to volunteer and came out. All nine of those people are coming back to help again this year. I think that says it all.

Rick Bangs:

What a great resource. That’s tremendous.

Sandy Weicher:

Yeah.

Rick Bangs:

All right. So Danny, where can people go to get additional information about the annual walk?

Danny Gereg:

You can always go to any of my social media. I’ve got stuff on Team Integrity there and that’ll lead you to BCAN. Of course, you can go to bcan.org and look up all the information that they have on there and all those wonderful programs that they were talking about. Definitely get involved in the network, because when you get involved in the online network, it can spread you out to the different areas to where you can be correctly informed about these fundraisers and these different ways that you can help.

I totally agree with Sandy. There’s a lot of amazing ways to do it. If you can’t do anything at all, you’re at home and you can’t get out for whatever medical reason, possibly, just try to help somebody, a caregiver, bladder cancer patient, or caregiver in some way. Gives them a little tiny bit of power to just move on. So we’ll take it whatever we can.

Rick Bangs:

Yeah. And the online community you’re referring to is the Inspire Community, which has a BCAN subsite. Final thoughts. I want to start with you, Sandy.

Sandy Weicher:

Just the walk is an amazing experience. It’s an amazing day and it’s an amazing experience. And like Danny said, you can go to bcan.org, and at the top of the page, you’ll see a light orange bar that says “Walk to End Bladder Cancer”. Click it, and you can find all kinds of information there. And if you’d like to help with a Walk Team or even just meet the leader in your market and find out what kinds of things they need, email [email protected] and the Walk Team will get you some info.

Rick Bangs:

Excellent. All right. Danny, your turn. Any final thoughts?

Danny Gereg:

Yeah, just get out to these walks. Do anything you can at any capacity you can, whether you’re a patient, a caregiver, or a family, distant family, just to give that support because BCAN means so much to our community. All these programs that they make possible for us, I utilize them and many, many people in our community use them to get by day by day. BCAN is always there. Once you turn around, BCAN’s got a resource that’s going to help you out. So get to the walk, support the walk, and it will save your life if you let it.

Rick Bangs:

Yeah. And have a lot of fun doing it at the same time.

Danny Gereg:

Yeah, definitely.

Rick Bangs:

Excellent. All right, Sandy and Danny, I want to thank you for explaining how the annual walk strengthened the bladder cancer community and power the programs that BCAN offers to us. If you’d like more information on bladder cancer, please visit the BCAN website, www.bcan.org. In case people would like to get in touch with you, Sandy, could you share some kind of contact information?

Sandy Weicher:

Absolutely. My email is [email protected]. And then I’m also on TikTok and Instagram sharing my Indiana pouch journey, quick plug, if you have to make a bladder diversion choice, please consider the Indiana pouch, and you can find me there at Sandy’s Radical Life and you can see my Indiana Pouch journey there and what it’s like to live with an Indiana pouch.

Rick Bangs:

I love that. Sandy’s radical life. Love it. All right, Danny, how about you?

Sandy Weicher:

All right, everybody. You can go to Google and type in Danny Bladder Cancer, and right there, you will find a link to Team Integrity for the Columbus Walk where you can donate to BCAN and all the wonderful services they provide.

Rick Bangs:

Excellent. All right. Let’s go back through in case people wanted more information about the 2026 walk for bladder cancer, which will be in May, where can they go?

Sandy Weicher:

They can go to www.bcan.org, And on the top of the page, they’ll see a light orange bar that says “Walk to End Bladder Cancer”. Click it and the different cities will come up or virtual walk and you can find your info there. And if you’d like to get connected to your local Walk Team that organizes the walk, email the BCAN Walk Team at [email protected].

Rick Bangs:

All right. Excellent. Just a reminder, if you’d like more information about bladder cancer, you can contact the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network at 1-888-901-2226. That’s all the time we have today. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to this podcast so we have your feedback. Thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another interesting episode of Bladder Cancer Matters. Thanks again, Sandy and Danny.

Danny Gereg:

Thank you, Rick.

Sandy Weicher:

Thank you, Rick.

Voice over:

Thank you for listening to Bladder Cancer Matters, a podcast by the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, or BCAN. BCAN works to increase public awareness about bladder cancer, advanced bladder cancer research, and provide educational and support services for bladder cancer patients. For more information about this podcast and additional information about bladder cancer, please visit bcan.org.