Sanna: Has Her Career Ended Because She Mentioned "Cancer"?

Making Sense Of Cancer #CancerCanDoOne With Mike Kinnaird

When treatment ended, Sanna Tiensuu-Piirainen was told: "You're cancer-free. Good luck."

Then she was lost. And of course we know that's not a unique situation. By some distance.

But the real question that came out of this cancer conversation was: has discrimination ended her career because she's open about her cancer when talking to employers?

Sanna was diagnosed with breast cancer at 43 in Finland—a country with universal healthcare considered among the best globally. She received treatment: chemotherapy, radiation, mastectomy, hormone therapy. Then treatment ended. And healthcare provided zero framework for what came next.

Sanna is a Master of Science in Economics—analytical, logical, trained to solve complex problems. But logic wasn't enough to navigate the physical, emotional, psychological, and practical reality of life after cancer treatment.

So over the following years, she trained herself: certified business coach, master coach, positive psychology practitioner, mindfulness-based cancer recovery trainer, NLP practitioner, solution-focused brief therapist.

Years of training. Multiple disciplines. That's thousands of hours and no doubt euros too. And all to create what the healthcare system should have provided.

She and her nurse friend Tiina wrote a book—a 13-step recovery program for women healing after breast cancer treatment. They wrote it because the book they needed didn't exist. Then she tried to re-enter the workforce with all this vast range of expertise in post-treatment recovery—expertise addressing a massive healthcare gap. And she's been rewarded with unemployment since March 2024, partly no doubt to the fragile economy in Finland at time of writing.

But you could easily argue that the system that failed to support her doesn't value her attempt to fix the gap.

In this episode, Sanna discusses:

• What specifically she needed when treatment ended that healthcare didn't provide
• Why her economics background and logical thinking weren't enough
• The 13-step recovery program she created and why each step matters
• Why it took years of training across multiple disciplines to navigate what should be standard care
• The unemployment reality despite expertise the system desperately needs
• What comprehensive post-treatment support should actually look like
• The Finnish healthcare context (if excellent systems still fail here, what does that mean globally?)

This matters because healthcare treating cancer as diagnosis → treatment → done ignores everything that comes after. And people are either left to build their own solutions (if they have resources) or fall through the gap entirely. How can that be acceptable economically, socially or morally?

This is #CancerCanDoOne—making sense of cancer when awareness isn't enough.

Sanna's book is in Finnish only at the moment.

https://www.tuumakustannus.fi/Tiina-Huhtanen/Hyvinvointikirja-rintasy%C3%B6v%C3%A4st%C3%A4-toipuvalle.html

#MakingSenseOfCancer