Hosted by Priya Rao, MD, this episode features Dr. Kerri Glasner, a gastroenterologist diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and often fatal bile duct cancer.They examine what it means to face a life-threatening cancer diagnosis as a physician and how surviving a liver transplant reshaped how she practices medicine, understands pain, and lives her life.
In this conversation, Kerri shares what it was like to receive that diagnosis as a physician and new mother, fully understanding the prognosis from her medical training. She walks through undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, qualifying for a liver transplant that most patients with cholangiocarcinoma never reach, and surviving a complex surgery that included a liver transplant and a Whipple procedure.Kerri describes the complications that followed, including liver necrosis, pancreatic leaks, prolonged ICU care, and severe postoperative pain. She speaks candidly about being told her pain was “out of proportion,” the loss of control that comes with critical illness, and how different the patient experience feels when you are on the other side of the bed.
The conversation also explores what happens after survival. Returning to clinical work before fully recovering. The quiet pressure physicians feel to function as if nothing happened. Medical trauma and avoidance after time in the ICU. Why going back to the same institution where the trauma occurred can be destabilizing. How becoming a patient changed the way she listens to pain, intuition, and fear in her own patients.Kerri also shares the life changes she made after surviving cancer, including leaving an academic role, moving closer to family, working fewer days, and redefining what matters most. She reflects on faith, uncertainty, intuition, and what it means to live with an open heart after facing mortality.T
his is the first time Kerri has shared her story publicly.Open Heart is a space for grounded conversations examining where medical systems, professional training, and conventional frameworks fail to fully account for lived human experience, especially in life transformations.
