From Big Brother to Bigger Battles: Britney Haynes’ Story of Strength
Episode Summary
In this deeply personal and wide-ranging episode, David Raubach sits down with Britney Haynes — a familiar face from CBS reality programs Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and The Traitors — who now serves on the marketing team at the Oklahoma Proton Center in Tulsa. Far beyond her television career, Britney is the mother of Tilly, a pediatric cancer survivor who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at just eight weeks old. The episode moves fluidly between proton therapy education, the harrowing reality of parenting a critically ill infant, and a candid look at what life looks like more than a decade after treatment ends.
Britney’s advocacy for proton therapy is both professional and genuinely informed. Having spent years immersed in pediatric oncology Facebook groups even after her daughter’s treatment concluded, she arrived at the Oklahoma Proton Center already aware of the photon-versus-proton debate that parents in radiation decisions face constantly. On the podcast she delivers a confident, layperson-friendly explanation of the Bragg peak — the point of maximum dose deposition that allows proton beams to stop inside a tumor with no exit dose — and explains why that property is especially critical for pediatric patients whose organs are still developing and who may live seven or more decades post-treatment. She even correctly situates the Bragg peak within the Oklahoma Proton Center’s own logo during the episode.
The conversation’s emotional center is Britney’s account of Tilly’s diagnosis and the years that followed. Born full-term after a routine pregnancy, Tilly showed no warning signs; Britney had not even known that cancer could originate in utero. The neuroblastoma diagnosis at eight weeks old forced Britney to immediately become a full-time medical manager — researching specialists nationally and internationally, changing chemotherapy diapers with gloves and a mask, coordinating weekly physical therapy sessions, and eventually flying the family to Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles in search of additional opinions. She reflects candidly on the obsessive but ultimately exhausting pursuit of a cure, and the hard-won emotional work required to accept that some of Tilly’s long-term effects — including a leg brace and ongoing physical therapy — are permanent. A pivotal moment came when Tilly herself told her mother to stop trying to “fix” her.
A striking segment of the episode addresses the systemic underfunding of pediatric oncology. Britney points out that only one chemotherapy agent has been developed specifically for the pediatric population since 2004, meaning children with neuroblastoma and other pediatric cancers — whose tumors carry distinct genetic biomarkers rather than the environmental triggers common in adult malignancies — are still treated with the same agents, many developed between the 1950s and 1980s, used for adults. Only 4% of cancer research funding is directed toward pediatric cancers, a disparity highlighted by the “More Than Four” awareness campaign. With federal research funding currently under pressure, Britney and David emphasize the urgency of independent clinical trials and immunotherapy research for this underserved population.
The episode closes on a theme of identity and resilience. Britney describes the internal struggle of reconciling her public persona — known for dry wit, sarcasm, and one-liners — with the gravity of what she and Tilly had survived. Referencing Princess Catherine’s public remarks about cancer creating a “before and after” in one’s identity, Britney describes a gradual metamorphosis rather than a clean return to her former self. She also discusses bringing Tilly into her own medical narrative as she grew older, the therapeutic value of peer communities for pediatric cancer families, and her belief that every patient and caregiver must be their own most relentless advocate. Listeners are directed to Britney’s Patreon at patreon.com/britneyhaynes and her social channels at @britney_haynes.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Proton vs. Photon Radiation: Traditional photon (X-ray) radiation travels entirely through the body, delivering an entry dose and an exit dose. Proton therapy stops the beam inside the tumor at the Bragg peak, eliminating exit dose and sparing surrounding healthy tissue.
- The Bragg Peak: Named after physicist William H. Bragg, the Bragg peak is the point of maximum energy deposition in proton therapy. It allows clinicians to concentrate dose precisely inside a tumor and then achieve an immediate drop-off, protecting adjacent organs and structures.
- Why Proton Therapy Matters Most for Pediatrics: Because children’s organs are still developing and their survivorship can extend seven or more decades, minimizing radiation exposure to healthy tissue is especially critical — a tumor site that might be treated with photons in an adult is often a proton candidate in a child.
- Neuroblastoma and In-Utero Diagnosis: Neuroblastoma, the cancer Britney’s daughter Tilly was diagnosed with at eight weeks old, can originate and in some cases be detected before birth. Many parents — and even some physicians — are unaware that malignant cells can develop in utero.
- Chemotherapy and Pediatric Patients: Only one chemotherapy agent has been developed specifically for the pediatric population since 2004. Children with cancer are largely treated with the same agents developed between the 1950s and 1980s that are used for adult patients, despite pediatric tumors having distinct genetic biomarkers.
- The “More Than Four” Campaign: Only 4% of cancer research funding in the United States is directed toward pediatric cancers. The “More Than Four” and “Go Gold” movements, especially visible during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September, advocate for greater research investment in this underserved population.
- Long-Term Side Effects in Pediatric Survivors: Because children are still growing during treatment, major interventions — surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation — frequently produce lasting side effects. These can range from physical challenges such as the brace Tilly wears, to cognitive effects like ADHD that may only become apparent years later in a school setting.
- The Power of Peer Community: Britney credits disease-specific online communities — including international groups for neuroblastoma — as essential sources of both medical knowledge and emotional support. She exchanged emails with parents in New Zealand and Greece whose children were diagnosed at the same time as Tilly.
- Being Your Own Advocate: No single physician has complete knowledge of every treatment option, particularly for rare cancers. Britney and David emphasize that patients and caregivers must actively seek second, third, and fourth opinions, stay current on clinical trials, and never assume one doctor has the full picture.
- Talking to Your Child About Their Diagnosis: With guidance from a therapist, Britney developed a deliberate approach to bringing Tilly into conversations about her own medical history as she grew older, including letting her become an active participant in appointments — preserving her privacy and building her sense of agency over her own body.
- Identity After Cancer: Britney describes a profound identity shift after Tilly’s diagnosis, echoing Princess Catherine’s public remarks about cancer creating a distinct “before and after.” She spent years working through how her sarcastic, humorous public persona could coexist with the depth of what her family had experienced — ultimately finding that the two could be integrated over time.
Britney Haynes brings a rare combination of lived experience, hard-won knowledge, and genuine warmth to a conversation that refuses to stay in one lane. Whether she is dissecting the physics of proton therapy, describing the particular loneliness of changing chemotherapy diapers while friends from her birth class discussed teething, or recounting a tearful breakdown at a St. Baldrick’s shirt sighting in a Ugandan market, she is always precise, honest, and unexpectedly funny. This episode is an essential listen for parents navigating a pediatric cancer diagnosis, for anyone curious about the real-world gaps in oncology research funding, and for anyone who has ever wondered what it looks like to rebuild an identity on the other side of something devastating — and still show up, brace and all.
Full Transcript
Read Full Transcript
David Raubach: Thank you for joining us on today’s episode of the Cancer Project podcast. We are really privileged to have Britney Haynes with us today. Many of you may know her from very popular reality TV shows like Big Brother, Amazing Race, and Traitors. We are very fortunate to have her as an integral part of the marketing team at the Oklahoma Proton Center, but she also has a very unique experience as the mother of a pediatric cancer survivor. We’re going to cross all of those topics today on the podcast. Britney, thank you so much for joining us today.
Britney Haynes: Welcome. Thanks for having me.
David Raubach: You work with us at the Oklahoma Proton Center. How long have you been working with us?
Britney Haynes: Three years.
David Raubach: I remember that first conversation we had at Los Cabos down on the Riverwalk in Tulsa — eating chips and salsa, talking about your experience as the mom of a pediatric cancer survivor, but also talking about proton therapy. Had you heard of proton therapy at that point?
Britney Haynes: Being that I have been in the pediatric oncology world, I feel I’m more versed than probably the average person. I had heard of it through the various Facebook groups I stayed in even after my daughter’s treatment twelve years ago. I always wanted to stay current on whatever new therapies existed. I have seen probably hundreds of posts about photon versus proton therapy — that question gets asked countless times by parents whose children are going through radiation. So I was aware of it, although my daughter never had radiation. I was aware through osmosis of the pediatric oncology community.
David Raubach: We have t-shirts that say “Ask me about proton therapy” on the back. You’ve had the privilege of wearing those. When someone asks you at the grocery store about proton therapy, what do you tell them?
Britney Haynes: Oh my gosh, I’m like an expert now — I actually do believe that. And I truly believe in the science of it. Especially in a pediatric population where every organ structure is still developing and so critical, it’s especially a great choice. Essentially, traditional radiation is photon radiation — X-rays — which travel all the way through the body and cannot stop inside of it. You have an entry dose, you have an exit dose, and it’s a broader brush of radiation going through your body. With proton therapy, we are able to stop the beam inside the tumor. There’s no exit dose, and it protects the organs and structures around the tumor so there’s less long-term damage. Specific to pediatrics, when you’re talking about surviving another seventy years, it’s so much more imperative to protect those healthy tissues.
David Raubach: That was so good — I don’t know if I could have explained it better myself. You must work in marketing for a proton center. Now I want to really put you on the spot. We have a rare limited-edition Oklahoma Proton Center shirt that says “Ask me about the Bragg peak.” What’s a Bragg peak?
Britney Haynes: The Bragg peak is what truly differentiates proton therapy. You can visualize it as an explosion — a firework. It’s the point of maximum dose deposited, and you can place that point of maximum dose inside the tumor with an immediate drop-off after. That is named after William H. Bragg, who identified that property. And it’s also part of our logo — the curve in the “O” is representative of the Bragg peak.
David Raubach: So Robert Wilson publishes a paper in 1946 describing how protons and the Bragg peak could be used to treat cancer patients. He was a PhD student at the California Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, working with Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence. In 1954, the first patient was treated with proton therapy at Cal Berkeley by Dr. John Lawrence — Ernest Lawrence’s brother. Then Herman Suit and his team at the Harvard Cyclotron Lab did enormous work in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s developing protocols for dosing, immobilization, and treatment fractionation. So to call proton therapy experimental today is really a lack of awareness more than anything.
Britney Haynes: To call something that has been used that long experimental is a little crazy. It’s a lack of awareness. And especially in Tulsa, where there is no proton center, physicians who aren’t radiation oncologists — general practitioners, OBGYNs — just haven’t had reason to look into it. They refer radiation out and don’t oversee that treatment themselves. So there’s a genuine gap in awareness.
David Raubach: I want to talk about your experience with your daughter. You’ve been a fantastic advocate during Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month. Talk a little about the experience and the reality of being the mom of a child who had pediatric cancer.
Britney Haynes: I did my first season of Big Brother when I was 22, my second when I was 24 and newly married, and almost immediately after that second season I got pregnant with my daughter. Being a mom was something I always always wanted — I couldn’t have been more excited. I had an easy pregnancy; everything was presumed to be completely fine. And honestly, I didn’t even know that babies could have cancer. I had seen commercials for St. Jude’s, so I knew childhood cancer existed, but I was unaware that a child could be born with cancer, that malignant cells could literally be developing in utero. It turned our lives completely upside down. It’s surreal, it’s soul-crushing, and it is a definitive part of me now. It forever changed our family.
David Raubach: I think a lot of people don’t realize that. Malignant cells can literally develop in utero, and some are diagnosed before birth.
Britney Haynes: Yes — there are actually cases of her cancer type that are diagnosed in utero, with babies already presenting symptoms at birth from the tumor location. And I’ve heard so many adult cancer patients say “I would rather it be me than my child.” That is so true. You would rather take it for yourself. Your child is the hardest. You feel helpless, you feel powerless.
David Raubach: You hit 5 years out of treatment. What did that look like? You did something specific to celebrate.
Britney Haynes: Tilly was eight weeks old when it was detected — and presumably the neuroblastoma originated in utero. One silver lining with her age at diagnosis was that I could fully be in tailspin mode without having to shield her from my fear, because she was too young to read my emotions. When she was 5 years out, I ran my first half marathon as a way to honor her, and my husband ran it with us with zero preparation. A lot of hilarity ensued on his end. It’s always been something I try to acknowledge however my emotions are working that day, in collaboration with what Tilly herself is comfortable saying and doing.
David Raubach: One of the realities with pediatric cancer is that because it’s so rare, specialists aren’t everywhere. What has the reality looked like, twelve years out of treatment, navigating long-term effects?
Britney Haynes: Tilly has permanent long-term effects from her cancer. She wears a brace on her leg and foot. She’s been doing physical therapy once a week since she was eight weeks old — every day when she was inpatient. My mentality for years was: if I can just find the right person, we can fix this. Constant rotating door — seeking opinions all over the country, flying to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles. That is a terrible pressure to live under. It took a long time, and honestly Tilly herself eventually told me she was okay where she was — that we didn’t need to keep flying everywhere trying to fix something. It took me years to be comfortable putting that down.
David Raubach: How did you navigate talking to Tilly about what she went through when she was eight weeks old?
Britney Haynes: I went to therapy and really learned tools and ways to approach this in the healthiest way possible. It was always important to me to protect her privacy — I didn’t want other people to know more about what was happening in her body than she herself knew. As she grew and started asking questions, I began letting her in: “This is what happened, this is why we do this.” It was actually really helpful for me too, because I had been carrying this load for so long. And now I love that she gets to be engaged, ask her own questions, have an opinion, have a say, get educated on neuroblastoma. For a long time at appointments, I was doing all the talking and she was just there to be examined. Now she’s a participant, and that’s been really really nice.
David Raubach: What was the process like going through a second and third pregnancy mentally after what you went through with Tilly?
Britney Haynes: Full anxiety-riddled spaz. I was more aggressive with more in-depth scanning at a high-risk specialist for my anatomy scan, because that lingering question was always in my mind — could earlier detection have prevented some of the long-term side effects Tilly still deals with? I also tried to take comfort in the statistics. And Tilly was only ten months old, four months out of treatment, when I got pregnant with my second baby. That probably sounds insane. But my attitude was: I don’t want what happened to us to dictate the rest of my life. I don’t want it to have that power over our goals for our family. Fear was there, but I wasn’t going to let it alter everything permanently.
David Raubach: The statistics you brought up are striking. Only one chemotherapy agent has been developed specifically for the pediatric population since 2004?
Britney Haynes: Correct. Even though pediatric tumor types are incredibly different from adult ones — in a pediatric patient population, cancer usually has specific genetic biomarkers at its origin; it wasn’t caused by an environmental exposure or toxin the way adult cancers most commonly are. And yet kids are still being treated with the exact same chemotherapy agents used for adults. Doxorubicin — called the “red devil” — is one of the harshest ones, and Tilly had that at eight weeks old. These are mostly agents developed in the ’50s through the ’80s. That is what is still in the pediatric protocols today. It’s really disheartening.
David Raubach: During Childhood Cancer Month you’ll see “Go Gold” and “More Than Four.” That “More Than Four” refers to the 4% of cancer research funding that goes toward pediatrics. With federal research funding under pressure right now, independent clinical trials — especially immunotherapy trials — become even more critical.
Britney Haynes: Yes, and right now is a pretty dismal time in terms of federal research funding. That makes it so important to have independent research going on, independent clinical trials, efforts to push immunotherapy forward for kids. Because the average childhood cancer survivor sees a survivorship in the seventies — the long-term effect of using these blanket-toxic old chemotherapy agents on a child who will live another seventy years is profound. We have to do better.
David Raubach: You mentioned seeking community among other pediatric cancer families. What would you say to someone who is newly diagnosed or has a family member who was just diagnosed?
Britney Haynes: One hundred percent connect with others going through the same thing — and not just from a treatment knowledge standpoint, also emotionally. It was really difficult to have a four-month-old in cancer treatment when all my friends from birth class were talking about teething. I didn’t feel like anyone understood. I sought community for emotional need as much as information. Who else could I ask how to change a chemotherapy diaper? Chemo urine is toxic — you have to wear gloves, change diapers a certain way. I was gloving and masking long before COVID. Those groups gave me so much. And now you can find them online nationally and internationally. I was emailing people in New Zealand; I talked to a mom in Greece whose daughter was diagnosed the same month and year as mine, the same age.
David Raubach: You’ve done an incredible job being transparent about all of this. On a lighter note — you mentioned Big Brother. For the listening audience who aspires to be on Big Brother, what did you have to do to get on that show?
Britney Haynes: They still do open casting calls. I was living in Arkansas but went to an open casting call at the Hard Rock Casino in Tulsa. All you had to do was walk up on stage and say why you think you should be on Big Brother. I said something to the effect of: the amount of secondhand cigarette smoke you’ve exposed me to today to bring me in here for this audition — you now owe me. And that is a true story. That’s how I got on Big Brother. Open casting, 2010, very young, fresh out of college.
David Raubach: You also did The Amazing Race and then came back for The Traitors. What’s the day-to-day like on the set of The Traitors?
Britney Haynes: Traitors was some of the longest filming hours I have ever had — brutal. You start your days around 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning and sometimes get back to your room at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. That’s inclusive of challenges where you’re out in the elements, running around, cold, going through it. I’d do it over and over. I loved it. But I had no phone, could tell no one where I was or what I was doing, and was gone a long time. You start each day worried you might be murdered before breakfast, then you have to survive a challenge, then you have to survive the banishment table, and then you think you’re safe until a poisoned drink might take you out. It’s a lot of extremes and very big personalities.
David Raubach: You came in second on Traitors — your best finish so far across all the shows you’ve done. What I noticed watching you was that you stayed true to yourself even though you were surrounded by enormous personalities. You went in with a gamer’s strategy and executed it.
Britney Haynes: I really do enjoy it, and I feel incredibly lucky to still be getting these opportunities. Someone from a cast of sixteen people fifteen years ago still popping up on shows — that is not the norm. Career longevity in reality TV is rare. But I also genuinely like working a regular job. It ticks a lot of boxes and the work at the proton center is meaningful. It’s not just routine — there’s a do-good element. I can relate to the patients, to the gratitude they feel, to how much those physician relationships mean. Tilly’s oncologist is like an angel walking on earth to me. I know exactly how those patients feel when they leave.
Britney Haynes: I want to say one more thing. There was a time after Tilly’s diagnosis where I really grappled with how to reconcile who I was — dry, sarcastic, known for one-liners — with everything we had been through. I worried I would never get back to just being basically stupid and funny. It took a long time. Princess Catherine talked about cancer creating a “before and after,” a metamorphosis where you take parts of yourself from before but become something else. That resonated deeply with me. Eventually I felt like I got there, but it was a very gradual process. And I think being able to bring Tilly into the conversations as she got older made it easier on me too. It’s something you go through that is very odd but very real.
David Raubach: Britney, thank you so much for being here. You can find Britney’s podcast and community at patreon.com/britneyhaynes, and she’s on all socials at @britney_haynes. That’ll be a wrap.
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