Stronger In the Broken Places with Author Terry Tucker

We chat with Terry Tucker, a college basketball player who defied familial expectations to pursue a career in law enforcement, inspired by his grandfather's legacy. Through his moving story of battling cancer for 12 years and eventually writing "Sustainable Excellence," we explore themes of service, familial bonds, and the ever-evolving nature of purpose. Terry's journey illustrates that our true calling can emerge from adversity, reshaping our lives unexpectedly.
           
Personal stories bring to light the emotional and physical toll of navigating the healthcare landscape, highlighting the importance of self-advocacy and the resilience needed to overcome adversity. From the transformative power of personal agency to the choice between love and fear, this episode explores finding the inner strength to thrive amidst life’s most trying moments.

Learn more about Terry at the following links:
Motivational Check Website: https://www.motivationalcheck.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-tucker-9b5605179
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/motivationalcheck
X (Twitter): https://mobile.twitter.com/terrytucker2012
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sustainableexcellenceauthor

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:08

Hi guys, and welcome to Language of the Soul, where life is story. Firstly, as usual, I would like to introduce my partner in crime, and this week I'm going to call you the superwoman producer extraordinaire, virginia Grenia grenier thank you how are you doing?

Speaker 2 0:29

I'm I'm doing good and I know why you're asking.

Speaker 1 0:31

Yeah I don't want to say too much, but you've had a challenging couple weeks I have, I have.

Speaker 2 0:37

So you and I have both experienced loss over the last gosh six months in our I want to say yeah six months in our I want to say yeah six months of our lives you, your mother and me, recently, my stepdad. So, yeah, so we've been. We've been bonding, not just over the podcast but over, you know, supporting each other through those hurdles and, yeah, it's, it's been a full two weeks, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 0:59

Well, it keeps you out of trouble.

Speaker 2 1:00

Yeah, it has been.

Speaker 1 1:02

So it is kind of astounding how we're on parallel paths, but not exactly neck and neck, you know, and definitely some identification going on for sure.

Speaker 2 1:11

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:12

In fact, when you tell me what you're going through, it's like I try to just listen and be there for you, but I'm biting my tongue because I feel like I was just there, you know.

Speaker 2 1:21

Yeah, well, and that's the thing I mean. I know, before I was empathizing with you just because of doing grief, counseling and stuff like that with people and so being able to empathize and hear you, and now it's like the tables have turned and so no I do. I do appreciate that you've been there and you've been a rock and that you have literally gone through this right just before me, so it's helpful.

Speaker 1 1:42

People hang in there. Hang in there, I am here.

Speaker 3 1:45

Yes.

Speaker 1 1:46

And we're both kind of hoping. You know we don't use this as therapy but and I don't want to put words in your mouth but it absolutely gives me a diversion and a sense of purpose and keeps me you know, keeps me a nose to the grindstone in a way. And now you've got your plate really full with logistics and, as we said, when you're in crisis mode or sort of survival mode, doing something like this is a luxury. But I actually think sometimes it's the reason we're doing all the drudgery is so that we get to have conversations like this, you know.

Speaker 2 2:17

Yeah, and like we always say in every episode, pretty much you know it is that cathartic, you know process for us as hosts, as producer, you know talking to our guests. I mean, I know we talk all the time before and after episodes. So yeah, it is a welcome distraction, but it's very therapeutic for us as well.

Speaker 1 2:43

Exactly. I think it serves everybody and nobody's exempt from life. How about that? We'll all experience these kind of challenges. Let's call them circumstances and conditions, and that's what makes us human. Is we all right, have this universal human experience and we get to bounce things off of each other, have a dialogue and hopefully help us all? You know, it takes a village, as we just said, and we're just here to help one another. So, anyway, thank you for being here. Truly, you do have a lot going on and I appreciate you being here Now.

Speaker 1 3:14

On that front, our guest is going to have a lot to say about this as well.

Speaker 1 3:16

Again, as I said during our pre-interview, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but I do get the feeling, I get the impression that we'll have a lot of notes to compare on the front of taking circumstances and conditions that actually are neutral, but we often project good, bad, right, wrong, pleasurable excruciating on them, right and then how you actually here's in the spirit of our podcast, the stories we tell about those circumstances and conditions are really what matters in terms of what manifests.

Speaker 1 3:50

So that's the spirit in which I definitely want to hear today's guest's story in his own words, but I am going to start by reading the bio and then he's going to expound on that, because, of course, the words he chooses in telling the story are so much more loaded than anything that I could possibly read in the bio. Before I do that, I want to encourage all of our listeners whether you're a new listener or you've been with us from day one please be sure to subscribe or follow us. It really helps us build our numbers and therefore our platform, and puts us in a position, hopefully, so that this becomes sustainable and we can keep contributing. Okay, so we're on all the platforms. Help me out, virginia. We're on iHeartRadio, amazon, music.

Speaker 2 4:34

Amazon Music, apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 4:37

Spotify.

Speaker 2 4:39

I mean so all the majors, all the little tiny ones. And you can even, you know, if you've got something that you like better. You know, we even have the RSS feed that you can grab. So, yeah, pretty much everywhere. And YouTube it all populates. Now it's nice.

Speaker 1 4:54

Yeah, and the best way you can help us out is listen to us on all the platforms. All the hits count, but no, I'm somewhat joking. But to my friends and family I've absolutely said even if you don't listen to it all the way, just download it on all of them, because we really do need those numbers to get to the point of monetizing. And that is the goal. It's still going to be a labor of love, it's going to be our contribution, but it will be nice when it sustains itself, because it's not only been sort of a volunteer basis effort here, but, yeah, it does have expenses attached to it. So help us out, like us on all the platforms, but, most importantly, subscribe to us on Buzzsprout, because then you'll get notifications whenever a new episode drops. Okay, enough of the what do you call it? House cleaning?

Speaker 2 5:45

Yes, begging for support.

Speaker 1 5:48

Okay, and now for today's guest, and Terry. Again, after I read it, you'll have a chance to correct anything I might botch. All right, we're scrolling here. Okay. Terry Tucker is an author, speaker and international podcast guest on the topics of mindset, motivation and self-development. He has a business administration degree from the Citadel, where he played hostage negotiator, a business owner and, for the past 12 years, a cancer warrior. He is author of the book Sustainable Excellence 10 Principles to Leading your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life 10 Principles to Leading your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life, and a featured author of the new book Perspectives on Cancer Stories of Healing, hope and Resilience. Welcome, terry Tucker.

Speaker 3 6:53

Well, dominic Virginia, thanks for having me on. I'm really looking forward to talking with you today.

Speaker 2 6:57

We're glad to have you here.

Speaker 3 6:59

Thank you.

Speaker 1 7:00

Yeah, man, you're inspiring. I of course research all my guests, but I might have gone a little deeper down the rabbit hole this time, because I just relate to so much of it. Again, not to the degree perhaps of the challenges that you've experienced, the challenges that you've experienced, but so much of it resonated with me. And there's only so much one can. Oh, did I get the bio remotely correct?

Speaker 3 7:24

Oh, you're great, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 7:26

Perfect, okay. Well, on that front, maybe you could sort of dovetail off the bio and, in your own words, just for our listeners, tell us what led you to write the book. I know that again, or the impression I get is that this is your contribution, and I think you said in one of the interviews I listened to that your purpose has changed over life. You've identified it as one thing, but then of course, it evolves. So your latest sense of purpose, again without putting words in your mouth, is to contribute and give back. Tell us about the trials that led up to the writing of this book, if you would.

Life's Stepping Stones

Speaker 3 8:02

Sure. So I mean, I've had trials throughout my whole life, but I've had a great life. I've had an amazing life, starting, you know, with the, what our parents taught my brothers and I about the importance of family, of loving each other, of caring for each other, of supporting each other. And then, as I grew, I'm six foot eight inches tall, so I actually went to college on a basketball scholarship, despite having three knee surgeries in high school. When I graduated from college, I moved home to find a job. I'm really going to date myself now. This is long before the internet was available to help people find employment. And so I had a major choice.

Speaker 3 8:43

When I graduated from college, my father was dying of cancer and I'd always wanted to follow in my grandfather's footsteps. My grandfather was a Chicago police officer from 1924 to 1954 and was actually shot in the line of duty with his own gun. It was not a serious injury. He was shot in the line of duty with his own gun. It was not a serious injury. He was shot in the ankle. But my dad, who was an infant at the time, always remembered the stories my grandmother told of that. Knock on the door of Mrs Tucker, grab your son, come with us. Your husband's been shot, and so when I expressed an interest in following in my grandfather's footsteps, my dad was absolutely not. You're going to college, you're going to major in business, you're going to get out, get a great job, get married, have 2.4 kids and live happily ever after. But that's what my dad wanted me to do. That's the life he wanted me to live. That's not the life I felt I was supposed to live. So, like I said, I had a major choice in my life.

Speaker 3 9:39

When I graduated, I could have said sorry, dad, you know what. I'm going to go, blaze my own trail, do my own thing, or, out of love and respect for you, I will do what you want me to do. So, understanding a little bit of the backstory, that's why my first two jobs were in business, and then I sort of pivoted when my father passed away and became a police officer. But really, what led me to write Sustainable Excellence was the 12-year battle that I've had with cancer. So, 2012, I was diagnosed with a rare form of melanoma that appeared on the bottom of my foot. I was told that, more than likely, I would be dead in two years, and so I thought well, you gave me a death sentence. Maybe I can turn that death sentence into a life sentence, and so that's really what I've been trying to do, and I've been on medication that's caused me to be very sick for five years. I had my foot amputated in 2018, my leg amputated in 2020, and I still have tumors in my lungs, which I'm being treated for now.

Speaker 3 10:43

So, in a nutshell, that's all really what led me up to writing. Sustainable Excellence.

Speaker 1 10:49

Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, the first question I would ask. You know, sometimes Virginia included. By the way, the bio can be very diverse. Now I understand the backstory does explain why you went one direction and then you pivoted. I'm guessing on your father's passing, but is there a common thread among all those occupations? I do want to hear about what you learned during your hostage negotiations, if that's the term, but is there a common thread throughout all that? What is your essence? That sort of I don't know, informed, all of those endeavors?

Speaker 3 11:23

I mean, the first two jobs were, you know, I was in the corporate headquarters of Wendy's International, the hamburger chain. That was my first job out of school because my dad wanted me to be in business. I really didn't, and you know, you look back on it and I was, you know, a 17, 18 year old kid. When I went to college I had no idea what I wanted really to do in terms of a major. I majored in business because my dad told me to.

Speaker 2 11:48

in all honesty, Am I glad I did that.

Speaker 3 11:51

Yeah, I mean I learned a lot at Wendy's. I learned then, after Wendy's I went to work for the hospital that cared for my father and I learned things. I was a 37-year-old rookie police officer, which by most accounts is pretty old to be getting into that line of work, but I felt my business career had helped me to talk to all kinds of different people. That led me down the road of being a hostage negotiator and as a police officer you talk to people.

Speaker 3 12:25

That's pretty much what you do, and if you can't do that, if the only way you can communicate is on your devices, it's going to be an awful frustrating job for you. So I was glad I had that experience, because I think it made me a better police officer.

Speaker 1 12:40

Right? Well, that's what I was hinting at. I said, is there a common thread? But also there is this phenomenon no matter how diverse your different occupations and vocations seem to be throughout life, one can snowball into a different skill set, translated here or there, if that makes sense. And if you're a spiritual person, it does seem like. Oh OK, in retrospect you see the meaning in all of it, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 13:14

It absolutely does and there is. I mean, you know, I, I was at Wendy's, I was, I was in health care and part of my whole life, and I think this goes back to my parents. You know, my parents, as I mentioned, taught us the value of family, but part of that was service, and I have two brothers. Both of my brothers are in education. I was in law enforcement. So our whole family, my parents, you know, taught us to be of service to people, and my brothers and I went down that road and I think all of us are very happy that we did.

Speaker 1 13:46

Yep, and I noticed that. Sorry, virginia, if you, you can jump in at any time. But I was thinking about my family too, and sometimes you don't realize, I don't think we see our own gifts, especially if we've inherited them. So I've, my parents will give you the shirts off their backs, and they do regularly. That's been their whole legacy, right? Just, oh, sharon, you know Sharon and Tony and uh.

Speaker 1 14:09

But when I hear people say, oh, you're generous, it's not even on my radar because I'm like the crab in the boiling water. It's just the way I was raised. But in terms of like our pursuits, I think it's fascinating how you might not identify as a writer per se, but you found yourself storytelling in some capacity and there's so many members of my family that are actually giving back through telling their stories, if that makes sense. And all you have to do is go back to Clinton D Ray, my great grandfather, or my grandfather, and you see that you know he was in the first graduating class of Harvard and he was a writer. So you don't recognize what you inherited in some cases because it looks a little different or it takes a different form.

Speaker 3 14:50

It does. And I remember gosh, I don't know, probably grade school, maybe early high school. I heard somebody say never make a point without telling a story and never tell a story without making a point.

Speaker 1 15:04

Wow.

Speaker 3 15:04

Wow, I hope to story without making a point.

Speaker 1 15:05

Wow, wow, did I make, I hope, like to god, I made a point with all of that, just checking but that's the point, you know.

Speaker 3 15:11

I mean, before we had written language and things like that, how did things get passed down through stories? Right, and we're thank you.

Speaker 1 15:18

That is the spirit of the podcast every week, and the intro and the outro life is story. Yeah, it is it every week, and the intro and the outro life is story. Yeah, it is Absolutely. Well this is a good transition. Again, Virginia, please just cut me off and jump in if you want.

Speaker 2 15:30

Well, I actually was going to cut you off right now Because I was going to say because when you and Terry were kind of talking about, like you know, the path that we were in the green room you know, you kind of asked a little bit about who I was and I mean I started off in marketing similar to you. I don't want to say it was because my parents pushed me that way, but they definitely wanted me to be more in a white collar profession and so I fell into something you know. But in that I discovered you know obviously, which I know you did too being you know in business and marketing. You do learn kind of that psychology of why people purchase and you know impulse buying, all that kind of stuff or what makes people do what they do. And so I think you know, for someone who comes from the victim advocacy side of public safety, I know for me that marketing skill set did.

Speaker 2 16:28

It segued into being able to talk with people. It also helped benefit community outreach with the police department. It helped definitely when I was doing the book festival and got into writing, as you know, basically my stress reliever to all the other stuff. So it's interesting when we sit back and we really think about you know basically my stress reliever to all the other stuff. So it's interesting when we sit back and we really think about you, know the stories of our own lives, how each stepping stone gets us to where we need to be in the present moment, and I think that's kind of where I think your life's led you, terry. In many ways, I think it has.

Speaker 3 17:00

And you, you know, you get to a point in your life where you know I'd spent so much of my my life, you know, I was a college basketball player, I was on the police department, I was on the SWAT team, so a lot of physical kind of things, and now I'm in a wheelchair, I have no left leg, I have tumors in my lungs, and so, you know, balancing that is what I've come to understand is when you can't do what you're good at, you do what's important, and that's what I feel I'm doing.

Exploring Purpose and Overcoming Adversity

Speaker 3 17:32

And, Dominic, you mentioned this before. I think we talk about purpose a lot of times in our life, in the singular, that it's one thing that we're supposed to do. And I found and I can't speak to anybody else, but from my perspective, my purpose has been plural, has been purposes. You know, when I was younger, it was to be an athlete, and then I felt my purpose was to be in law enforcement. And now, in all honesty, is I'm probably coming towards the end of my life, I think my purpose has changed again, to put as much goodness, positivity, motivation, love back into the world.

Speaker 3 18:05

So you know, it'd be great if our purpose could align with our occupation, but I guess for all your listeners I would say it doesn't have to. You know, your job could be over here. It's what you do to pay the bills. But your purpose is over here and it's to write a book, or to be a podcast host, or to paint, or whatever it is you feel is in your heart or your soul podcast host, or to paint, or whatever it is you feel is in your heart or your soul.

Speaker 1 18:24

Right, yeah, beautiful, and I think we all have. You know, we're variations on a theme I love. I look for the universal, actually in the human experience. Largely it's what makes me a writer. I just look for the universal milestones in the spiritual journey. But I'm hyper aware, you know, I think one of the biggest mistakes, especially politically and life one can make is assuming we're all the same. It takes a village, we're all part of the tapestry, right, amen to all of it. We're not all the same, but there are so many universals.

Speaker 1 18:55

So what I hear in all of that is like, yeah, your self-identified purpose evolved, I'm gently suggesting. You have a core essence, we all do, and maybe it's your temperament and disposition that you were born with, your inclinations, your sense of aesthetics. I just call it a soul. We have a soul, right, and I do think that remains as a common thread and the way you use it or manifest it evolves, right, but I hope we're all headed toward finding an authentic way of using our gifts in the world as our contribution to the collective or the village. Right, and I think you are coming more and more into alignment with it. But I think we're all saying we adopt, right, little skill sets here and there, or maybe I don't know, qualities that snowball into something greater, and I don't think it takes right a brush with death to connect your skill sets or your craft, or whatever it is, with a sense of purpose, but it certainly nudges things along, doesn't it?

Speaker 3 19:52

I think it does. I like there's a. There's an entrepreneur by the name of Ed Milet and he talks about the four types of people in the world and I like his little description. He says the first type are the unmotivated and he said that's the vast majority of people you will run across in your life. And the second group he talks about are the motivated, and he said that's kind of a carrot and stick approach to life. If I do this I will more than likely get that.

Speaker 3 20:21

He talks about it as a low level form of living, but it's a very effective way for a lot of people to live. And then the third group he talks about are the inspirational people, the word inspiration coming from two words in spirit. So if you're an inspirational person, you move people with your energy. And then the last group he talks about are the aspirational people, where people aspire to be like you, and I like thinking about that. I think it's sometimes when I talk to groups. Depending on the group, I'll tell that story and then it'll be like all right, show of hands. How many people are unmotivated?

Speaker 2 20:58

Nobody raises their hand.

Speaker 3 21:01

Nobody ever says I'm unmotivated. But if you believe that there, Right. But if you believe that there are a lot of people are, there are a lot of people out there that never look for their purpose, that never think there's a reason, that you know we come from nothing, we go to nothing. I'm just kind of here for the ride and it sounds like the three of us.

Speaker 3 21:17

We've come to the conclusion that that's not the case, that there's something, something bigger here than us that is kind of driving us, or moving us in our lives.

Speaker 1 21:27

Right, Well, I would just add, because I love what you just said, but I also heard a parallel with do you know Michael Beckwith?

Speaker 3 21:35

I don't.

Speaker 1 21:36

He has a really great book just to give it a shout out, called Life Visioning. He started Agape Church. It was a huge movement and I think he founded it in 1985. Anyway, he's one of many people I listen to for inspiration and I don't have any one guru right, or any one, I don't know religion, but I do listen to certain usual suspects just for inspiration, and they have a lot in common, right, when we talk about manifestation or law of attraction or even, I don't know, just spiritual tenets in general, there tends to be more common ground in my experience than not.

Speaker 1 22:09

But Michael's kind of it was a variation on what you just said, but he identifies this one group he calls victim consciousness. So when it comes to manifesting, it's like oh, this laundry list of excuses for your circumstances and conditions, of why you haven't manifested what you know you desire. And then the second group is kind of like, when you learn the art of manifestation, how now you wield it like a sword, right, and you manipulate everything around you, and that can have a material slant or a sort of consumerist slant to it, right, but then I forget the other two stages. But you then integrate, right, and I think I love the word emanate. So instead of inspiring other people or aspiring, you actually embody what you aspire to right, and then you emanate it, and I would love to get there.

Speaker 3 23:00

Yeah, Wouldn't we all right?

Speaker 1 23:01

I mean, on a good day we can emanate our best selves. But I think, yeah, I guess it's all reciprocal, right? If you're offering your best self to the universe, you're going to inspire somebody, whether it's one person here or there, you know, sure, absolutely. Anyway, I don't know if we're off track, but in the spirit of the podcast, again, in all of that for you in your journey that seems to be dovetailing here, all your skill sets, all your experiences in life dovetailing toward a sense of purpose, with all I mean I can't even relate to.

Speaker 1 23:38

I have been through my own experience, but I, like I said, I still have a foot, I still have a lower leg, like that is beyond my realm of comprehension, and not to mention the years of interferon and just how that makes you feel on a daily basis. It's hard for most of us to get up in the morning, right, but when your body feels like crap, it's even harder to get motivated. So, in the spirit of this podcast, do you relate at all to, like the stories you told yourself about, again, victim consciousness? Some people would say poor me, why did this happen to me? And I think you rise to the occasion and you find your way out of that sometimes, but instead of saying why would this happen to me? What stories did you initially tell yourself about your circumstances and conditions, and how did that evolve? Did the story you told about it evolve?

Speaker 3 24:27

You know, I never asked why and I've had that question a lot, you know.

Speaker 2 24:32

Did you ever? You know?

Speaker 3 24:33

why me?

Speaker 2 24:35

Why not me? What makes me any more special?

Speaker 3 24:38

to not get cancer and have all these amputations and stuff than anybody else why? Shouldn't I?

Speaker 2 24:43

get it.

Speaker 3 24:43

But I know when I was first diagnosed I went through all the stages. I guess that we would associate you know with grief. First it was the you know I can't possibly have cancer. I've done everything right in my life. You know, I eat right, I exercise, I see my doctor every year and then you get to a. I was angry. It's like. You know, I can't possibly have cancer, I'd done everything right in my life. And then when I was initially diagnosed, our daughter was in high school and there was sort of a bargaining with God.

Speaker 3 25:16

It was hey look, just let me live long enough to see her graduate. And then I absolutely got down. I felt sorry for myself, like I said, I never asked why, but I was just like this is lousy, this is going to stink. And then I got to a point where I just felt this sucks, but I'm going to have to embrace the suck, for lack of a better term. I don't like the cards that I've been dealt, but I'm going to have to basically play these cards to the best of my ability. And I made a conscious decision very early on that I would never take out my misfortune on a doctor or a nurse or a therapist or somebody that was trying to help me get better or maintain or whatever it ended up being and I've seen a lot of- people over these 12 years that you know they're, they're mad and they lash out and they, they lash out at people that are trying to help them.

Speaker 3 26:14

You know, on this journey, you know life's not fair. I, when I was, you know, girls high school basketball coach, you know I do drills and my players would always be like you know, well, well, that's not fair and my response would be whoever said life was fair, life is, you know. Nobody said life was fair but that's so funny.

Speaker 1 26:32

My dad would say, um, I guess my version of that instead of going. You know, it's not fair again, I'm sure I said that a lot. It's not fair, I say, but I didn't mean to. And my dad would say, um, that's not going to work in the military. But, sarge, I didn't mean to, but he was definitely onto something. You know you don't make excuses, you take accountability and responsibility.

Speaker 3 26:56

Absolutely, and that's what you do. I mean, you've been given this, you know, it's really kind of how you look at life. I mean, it's every time I go to treatment. There are days when it's like, oh, I have to go to treatment, and then there are other days where I get to go to treatment. How do you look at?

Speaker 1 27:12

life Do I?

Speaker 3 27:13

have to do this or do I? Get to do this.

Speaker 1 27:15

Right. Well, that's kind of what I meant by things are actually neutral. Now there is physical pain. There are a lot of things that are pleasurable by nature, right, and we do operate for good or bad on the pleasure principle. But within reason, a lot of suffering is created with this projection of good, bad, right, wrong. Eckhart Tolle would say most human suffering is a, you know, it's mind created, wishing things were other than what they are. And he actually has said whether it's waiting in line at the supermarket and just wishing it was otherwise, or, yeah, missing a foot. He actually uses that example. But so I think you learn those skills and you rise to the occasion in a way.

Speaker 1 27:54

But I, what I want to investigate in all of that is I have had my journey and it was during a pandemic, by the way where I had to fight for every bit of care that I got when everybody was impacted. You know, la was the hotbed for COVID. So here I was, you know, and it was hard not to be angry at my anti-masker friends who were the very reason I couldn't get my physical therapy and get my agency back and my life back. So, you know, I think I handled it well and I didn't develop too much of a chip on my shoulder, but I definitely took notes about our very faulted healthcare system. Trust me, I focused on the angels. You know, it was said to me many times doctors treat, nurses heal. So I focused on those angels. I bought flowers for my nurses. I really focused on the angels.

Speaker 1 28:39

But I will tell you, I encountered a lot of hubris, put it that way Hours waiting on hold, for example, then talking to a 22 year old who's never had a problem in life, if that makes sense. And so I was really up against a lack of humanity. Now, it's not compassion, because I think we all need to be accountable. I'm not looking for extra charity or extra compassion, but when you are privileged and you've never had a problem in life, you're going to be more pedantic about the red tape, and you know what I mean. I just found that's what I thought in myself. If I'm carrying a little bit of anger over, it's against the system and maybe the lack of humanity that I saw in some of that red tape, if that makes sense.

Healthcare Challenges During COVID-19

Speaker 3 29:21

It absolutely does, and I think I experienced that when I was initially diagnosed, because my cancer was so rare, so uncommon, I was told that I should go be treated at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which is one of the I'm not going to say it's the best, but it's certainly one of the best cancer facilities in the world and I would wait for hours. You know you have an 11 o'clock appointment and maybe you'd get in at 1.30, because all these people from around the world were coming to have their cancers dealt with too. When I had my leg amputated, it was right in the middle of COVID. Everything that had been elective was shut down and my doctor had to plead to actually cut my leg off because I'd had a tumor that had basically broken my tibia. My leg wasn't going to heal.

Speaker 3 30:12

So I couldn't put it in a cast. And so five days of waiting, and then the surgery was. My wife dropped me off at the hospital. I could have no one with me. I was in this large pre-op room with, you know, 30 different bays. I was the only patient in there and I had a nurse and an anesthesiology resident the three of us. If I could have run out of there, I would have. I was so scared.

Speaker 1 30:39

You're making me tell a story, sorry, at the height of COVID. This is my prime example of, you know, fighting that resentment for people that just didn't help flatten the curve and therefore I couldn't get the care I needed. Similar story I literally waited for an MRI. I had already done all the x-rays and the blood tests and ruled out osteoarthritis and whatever the other rheumatoid arthritis and it just was months of trying to get to the bottom of some you know myalgia and arthralgia and joint pain. Now I'm getting the MRIs, there's hope on the horizon and I might get the physical therapy I need.

Speaker 1 31:12

And so I go for an MRI mid COVID. I wait for and I'm not kidding two and a half to three hours and they have to take walk-ins. You know children, older people, so they kept putting people in front of me. At one point the nurse was good enough to come out and go. Oh, I'm so sorry. The reason you're waiting so long is the person before you had COVID. So we're cleaning the bed and this is before. We knew a whole lot right. So now, oh, holy crap, my fear. All the conspiracy theories I'd heard kicked in and I walked out. It freaked me out. You know she didn't need to tell me that, but I was already nauseated from my meds and I got depleted early on, so I was just waiting for three hours and I had to go eat. I was going to pass out. So I, you know, I I forfeited the MRI that would have gotten me the the physical therapy I needed, because, uh, it just wasn't going to happen. Being impacted that way.

Speaker 3 32:04

Yeah, I mean, I was sent home. I had my leg cut off. They sent me home 48 hours after.

Speaker 1 32:11

No, yeah, that's like an outpatient procedure.

Speaker 3 32:15

It was. I'm like wait a minute. And it was so funny because they said you'll be in the hospital 10 days to two weeks to learn how to function without a leg. And they told my occupational and physical therapist so like he's going home in 48 hours teach him everything, and they were like that's impossible.

Speaker 1 32:33

Did you not have physical therapy at home?

Speaker 3 32:36

No, no, it's like go home, bye. We're not bringing anybody into your house. It's COVID, we're not.

Speaker 1 32:41

Oh, so it wasn't like an insurance thing, it was due to COVID.

Speaker 3 32:45

That's amazing.

Speaker 1 32:46

Yeah, okay, well, it was due to COVID. That's amazing. Yeah, okay, well, we share that. We missed out on proper health care because of the pandemic. So, yeah, I have a book to write. There's another book in me about our faulted health care system but I think it has been for me been really tough to just focus on those angels again that are really my sister calls them the salt of the earth. Nurses are the salt of the earth. Fuck everybody else, anyway. So how do you really feel about it, dominic? No, I'm working on it. I think I need to write a book and get it out of my system. But you know, some of the I don't know some of the organizations that are there to help people are the least helpful. I'll leave it at that. The least helpful, I'll leave it at that. I think they've lost sight of what the initial vision was in some cases, some of the assistance programs and stuff like that. But I mean, I'm not the first to say our healthcare system is very broken. Have you guys ever seen Michael Moore's documentary Sicko?

Speaker 2 33:40

Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 33:42

Amazing, isn't it? Yes, my favorite scene is where I think it's a French I'm going to get in trouble for using the word housewife, but it's a French woman Domestique, she runs the household and she says, yeah, I've got the government coming over to do my laundry right now. And then there's another scene in Canada where the guys were looking around, you know, looking for the cashier, and they're like what they have no idea. You know no concept of a cashier in a medical facility.

Challenges in Healthcare and Advocacy

Speaker 3 34:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard. I mean I, I am in a university setting, so I am privy to clinical trials and things like that that people may not be, and but at the same time I've had people that have cared for me have said you know, we are not on a, we're not on a business model, not a patient care model. Right, exactly 20 minutes, 20 minutes, get you in, get you out.

Speaker 1 34:38

Next patient in I'm like, what if I'm shifting, though? Do you think it's shifting, uh, a little bit? No, okay, no I?

Speaker 3 34:45

I think they're. They're trying to make as much money as they can.

Speaker 2 34:48

I get the making money part, you know it's a business I get it, but don't deny me care and I, and I totally agree with you, I, if I need anything.

Speaker 3 34:57

I never go to my doctors, I always go to my nurses. You know, help, yes, yes, regard they are. They are amazing. I love them to death, but at the same time, it's, it's a business, you know. People in people out. People in people out.

Speaker 1 35:09

And if you don't advocate for yourself.

Speaker 3 35:12

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 35:13

It always can. Well, and that is in the spirit of our podcast. For me, it always ended up back in my hands. My care, my recovery, my agency always ended up back in my hands, and that is a spiritual thing. We're the only ones that can change our circumstances right. So the form it took, though, is another story, and that's why, sometimes, you want to treat a symptom and not the root cause. So as and and I guess it's kind of like not the rose colored glasses, but it's like we get to swap out the lenses through which we view every moment, Right, and so one of again, a challenge that I had was, you know, that old cynical view of our Western, you know medicine and, again, the pharmaceutical companies being dead with the doctors and getting their kickbacks.

Speaker 1 36:00

I think it's very fashionable to say. In fact, some members of my family will say, oh, they're all corrupt, Just like politics, right? Oh, it's the lesser of evils, they're all corrupt. I'm the one guy who will say, actually, there are people that are earnest and that do more and get up off their ass and do more in one day than we've ever done in our entire lives to make a difference. So I think you can say the same of the medical community. I'm very well aware that doctors are getting kickbacks. I'm very well aware of the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry and how it's way out of control.

Speaker 1 36:33

But I did walk away with this idea that actually, all the things they withheld from me, like I said, I fought for x-rays, Then I fought for MRIs, Then I did blood tests. I sought certain diagnoses for months, Finally, finally, finally got the physical therapy and the diagnoses I needed. But in the end I thought one of the meds I was on, like you, caused bone loss. I broke my shin while walking. But they made me kind of think that I was being a hypochondriac, right? So throughout I'd have to say you don't know me. I've never been to a doctor until the age of 50.

Speaker 1 37:11

I do not whine over a headache. If I say it, it's very real. Instead of saying yes, all the meds you're on caused this. They withheld that from me and I had to do my own research and be my own advocate and self-diagnose throughout. In the end I thought, well, they're not evil for withholding. There's actually an ethical responsibility there, right, and forget about the lawsuits against these companies for bone loss. It was more like it would have been irresponsible to speculate, and so I don't know. I had to really learn to find a balance of being not as cynical as some family members about sort of the mechanics of all this, but just having a balanced view of all of it. Does that make sense to you?

Speaker 3 37:52

It absolutely does, and I think you're right, because there are you and I are educated enough, are with it enough that we can advocate for ourselves? And you know, I always worry about the people that aren't educated, that are so overwhelmed and so scared of what's going on that they just whatever you say, doc, I'll do whatever you want. And I'll give you kind of a funny story. So I, when I had this tumor in my leg that grew large enough that it fractured my tibia, they thought it was a hematoma.

Speaker 3 38:22

And I remember going to see my surgeon and he he had to be called away for an emergency. So his resident was there and his resident's like I'm going to drain this. And I looked at him and I said I don't think that's a good idea. And he's like, well, you know, I know what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 38:37

I'm like, okay, you know and it kind of goes back to your point.

Speaker 3 38:42

You need to listen to us as patients because we know our bodies, we know how we feel. And so he sticks a needle in there and he pulls out a syringe of blood and he uncouples the syringe from the needle, leaves the needle in and, dominic Virginia, it looked like a fountain. When he removed that, blood was squirting everywhere all over him, the walls, the floor, and I'm just sitting there laughing Like I told you not to do this and I haven't even been.

Speaker 1 39:08

there was a moment in the emergency room where I actually had to, I, they were putting the IV on the machine and you know it's a learning facility, so I never saw the same face twice, right, which was a good thing in a way. But you know, anyway, a different nurse every morning and I had to go no, no, no, you got to punch that in manually. I'm like I she didn't even know it wasn't going to recognize the IV bag she was putting on it and that it had to be punched in manually. I'm like I'm not even being paid and I have not been to medical school and I'm training her. There was a lot of that.

Speaker 1 39:40

And another time I had skin cancer. It was not melanoma, but I've had squamous cell and basal cell and in one case you know they generally stretch the skin to try to do the suture right. Because, anyway, and they were doing one on my shin and yeah, it's kind of what you're saying I got all my care at LAC USC, which is, in a great way, very much in bed with Medi-Cal and Medicare. So you're getting a lot of undocumented patients right, and not only do they not have the means to look out for themselves? There are language barriers as well.

Speaker 1 40:13

Yes, so in the case of this one squamous cell carcinoma, I just the insurance. This is way before my ordeal, and I happened to go to a facility in Koreatown here in Los Angeles where, yes, they were taking a lot of Medicare and Medi-Cal patients, but most of their skin cancer patients and this was a, not a dermatologist but a surgeon were just little old Korean ladies that are on their last. That they view them as, oh, they're on their last legs. They don't care what they look like, we'll just butcher them.

Speaker 2 40:42

And so.

Speaker 1 40:43

I could even tell, as he was doing the sutra on my shin, like that's too tight. I knew it was going to spread right, and that's exactly what it did two days later. So sometimes, yeah, and you know, I wrote like a five page letter. At one point a friend of mine worked for the Dalai Lama she's actually been a guest on this show and she said, look, I can help just put everything in one document. And she wasn't going to hand it to the Dalai Lama, but really his right-hand man, she was going to get it to the top.

Speaker 1 41:16

And so I wrote a four-page letter about all the trials and tribulations and my inability to get the healthcare I needed. And the response was one word meditate, meditate. So it really did end up back in my court and I'll shut up in a second. But yeah, just absolutely speaking of holism, right, it absolutely was about me putting turmeric in everything I eat, adopting a dog for the oxytocin, literally, and, uh, just doing all the uh holistic measures that I could to up my immune system. They were not going to help, yeah.

Speaker 3 41:52

And that's true, and you know, and you learn, you know. One of the techniques or the procedures my doctor used to use for my diagnostics was what's called a PET scan, which is basically injecting you with radioactive.

Speaker 1 42:05

Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 42:06

With the idea being that cancer cells have a higher metabolism, they will pick up that sugar at a higher rate and they glow on the scan. Well, I didn't think it took an Einstein to say well, maybe I should really cut back on my sugar intake.

Speaker 2 42:19

You know, cancer likes that so much.

Speaker 3 42:21

No doctor told me that. No therapist, nobody said do that.

Speaker 2 42:24

But I did that, you know.

Speaker 3 42:26

I'm like, okay, I'm cutting out all desserts and breads and pastas and all that kind of stuff because I wanted to be healthy. But that was me doing it. That wasn't a medical person telling me to do it.

Speaker 1 42:37

Right. A friend of mine did the. She had literally an inoperable brain tumor. They took out as much as they could, but um, they couldn't get it all, and so she, her whole family, adopted the macrobiotic diet. They read the book and she's been cancer-free for 25 years.

Speaker 3 42:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1 42:54

Now you were on interferon, which seems to work with the body's own immune system rather than the radiation, like we're saying, that poisons the whole body in hopes of targeting a few cells and then we hope the rest of the body survives, right? Why interferon? And did you ever do radiation or chemo?

Speaker 3 43:12

I never did radiation, still have never done radiation. They put me on interferon because, as I said, they had nothing to offer me when I was diagnosed. And this was as my oncologist used to say we'll put you on interferon. We're trying to kick the can down the road. That's all we're trying to do with this. And I remember I had one of my players, one of my basketball players her grandmother was on interferon for a liver condition and I remember talking to her and she said oh yeah, you know I'm on it for about six months. It's not real good, but you can handle it for six months and you can, I, you know I go marching into my oncologist's office. You know my chest puffed out. I'm like, okay, all right, I'll do it, I can handle it for six months. And I remember she looked at me and she's like we'd like you to do it for five years. And I said I said, excuse me, you want me to have a terrible case of the flu every week for five years.

Speaker 2 44:06

She was like yeah, do the best you can.

Speaker 3 44:08

And I made it four years and seven months. So, uh it, but it was literally there was a point in time where I was so sick of being sick I prayed to die. I literally was like okay, god, take me out of this, I am not living, I'm just in the not dying camp right now.

Speaker 1 44:24

What pulled you out of that, virginia? I know you have a question.

Speaker 2 44:27

I'm so sorry no, that's what I was gonna actually ask, like what helped you reframe that? Because, I mean, I know, like so, dominic and I did a podcast, I did a mini episode about narrative therapy, which is, you know, restructuring the narrative of your perception and the difficulties you're going through. So I'm just like that's exactly what went through my mind was exactly that, Like what was the reframing there for you to pull out of that?

Navigating Illness and Family Support

Speaker 3 44:50

Yeah. I mean if you would have said what were your goals at that time. I would have said I just need to get up tomorrow morning. If I wake up tomorrow morning, I will. And it really kind of shrunk life down. It was to the point where a good day may have been I could have thrown a load of laundry in to help my wife out. Or today is a good day because I got out of bed and I made it to the couch. That's how pathetic I felt my life was.

Speaker 3 45:17

I wasn't contributing, everything was. You know, I smelled something I'd throw up. You know, I mean my wife would just sit with us at the table for dinner. I'd smell something, boom, I was throwing up. It was like this is ridiculous, but it kept me alive for five years, to the point where, well, eventually it became so toxic to my body that I ended up in the ICU with a body temperature of 108 degrees, which is usually not compatible with being alive.

Speaker 3 45:47

Somehow survived that but that was immediately stopping. The interferon Cancer came back immediately. We're going to take your foot off. They took my foot off and then they put me on chemo. Once they took my leg off, I did not want to go on chemo. Uh, I said I wasn't going to go on chemo, but kind of a funny story. I said, you know, I'll go, I'll go home and talk to my family about it. So I get home, it's my wife and daughter and I. I'm like all right, here's what the doctor wants to do. My daughter's meeting All right, we need a family meeting. I'm like family meeting. There's three of us. It's not like we got a whole year or something like that. So we sit around talking about how we feel about me having chemo and when that's done, my daughter's like all right, let's take a vote. How many people want dad to have chemo?

Speaker 2 46:31

And my wife and daughter raised their hand.

Speaker 3 46:33

I'm like wait a minute, am I getting outvoted for something I don't want to do? But I remembered when I was back in the police academy, our defensive tactics instructor used to have us bring a photograph of the people we love the most to class, because he reasoned you will fight harder people you love than you will fight for yourself. So I took chemo because my family wanted me to, not because I wanted to, but in hindsight it was the bridge that got me to this clinical trial drug that I've been on for the last three years now.

Speaker 2 47:07

Yeah, Can I? Can I back you up on something really quick? Sorry, this is now you can see the counselor, part of me is coming out. You made a comment that was really ridiculous for you because it sounded like, in my opinion. How it came across to me was just getting up and just being able to do a load of laundry, or just little tiny things. You felt defeated, which is not unreasonable. In those moments, do you look back at those, realizing those were small wins in a time where you felt so bad?

Speaker 3 47:34

oh, that I do, and that's kind of the way I felt. I mean, it was a small win. I just didn't feel you know, and this is going to sound kind of sexist. You know that I wasn't. I wasn't the man of the house, so to speak. I wasn't contributing as a husband and as a father. I was literally just trying to survive day to day.

Speaker 1 47:54

Well, I think men are socialized, of course, right To be the breadwinners and the problem solvers and all that, but I just think everybody, when you lose your agency in life, those of us that have been independent find it really. I mean, that was a big learning curve for me, literally even just allowing myself to accept care and help from the nurses. In right, you're confined to a bed, and so that was good for me. Actually I like that, I've, and now maybe I've gone too far with it. No, no, not at all.

Speaker 2 48:22

I wouldn't say so. And I think you make a really good point, dominic, because you know, especially when you talk about you know, how we've been socialized in our culture, about Ben being more of the dominant protector figure which is, you know, obviously you guys are biologically designed to be that as well as we know, back in the primitive time of history, um, Pull yourself up by the bootstraps Right. But with that I mean men are given society, I would say under society in the Western culture, a lot more autonomy than women are, because that's why you see women like group together share. You know that emotional connection more than men, because you guys are used to that role. You know autonomy of individualism over the collective.

Speaker 2 49:02

And so when you lose that in a health situation like especially when you're in a health crisis, it's really hard because now you have to go. Oh, I have to ask for help. My husband constantly tells me what's my role in health? Don't help unless I ask and I'm going okay.

Speaker 1 49:18

Well, I do, like you've heard me say this before. I do like the sentiment that unsolicited advice is always criticism. You kind of can't argue with that. But no, I, I, I. It was good for me personally because I was very self-sufficient, you know, and, um, I needed to allow myself to be cared for and helped, and I did hear a little bit of that in there too.

Speaker 1 49:40

That love heals, laughter, heals, right. And there is this reciprocal relationship where I've often cited, often cited, marvin's room. There's a great scene in that in which I don't want to I'll botch it if I try to describe it. But one sister says she disappeared and thought about her career, and the other one stayed home and, you know, cared for the ailing family member. And the selfish one comes home and says, eventually, you're so lucky, you've had so much love in your life. And the other character says, yeah, they really do love me. She goes no, no, no, no, it's because I've been given the opportunity to actively love, if that makes sense. So sometimes just having something to care for or love is your saving grace. But I also think there's some value when you wanted to fight for the loved ones who wanted to keep you here. It is just the connection, right, but sometimes being loved is medicine. What is that? What's the difference between allowing yourself to receive love and then the benefit of actually actively giving love? Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 50:48

It absolutely does, and I one of the nurses who cares for me now, uh, when I get my treatments used to be a hospice nurse and for those of your audience who don't know, hospice it's people take care of others at the end of their life. And she gave me a book to read called imagine heaven, and it's, it's a really great book.

Speaker 3 51:06

It's about people who have near-death experiences, and one of the biggest things I took away from that book was whoever the person saw during their near-death experience, whether it was Jesus or an angel or a saint, or your friend or your relative, the one question that everybody seemed to get asked is this how do you care for my people? In other words, how do we care for each other? How do we take care of each other? Nobody got asked. You know, did you cheat on your spouse or did you embezzle from your company or did you steal from your neighbor? Not that you should do those things you shouldn't, but it was how do you treat each other? How do we connect with each other?

Speaker 3 51:46

And I mean and it didn't matter if you were young or old, or male or female, or what culture you came from. That was the one question and I, you know, I go back in the Bible where Jesus is asked you know what's the greatest commandment? You know? Have no other gods with me. Love your God above all else. And the second is, just like it, love your neighbor as yourself, and that's what that's about.

Speaker 1 52:07

Yeah, and service, that's come up a lot today too. So being of service is where contentment lies, right? Inner peace, tranquility, wellbeing, all these things we seek are only right found through service. But I would add that service looks different on different people. Right, because it takes a village and we're all part of this tapestry and amen to all of our gifts. Right, service may not be like my sister will say.

Speaker 1 52:34

I never thought I'd be the primary caretaker for our mom. Meaning you mentioned home hospice. Did you almost laugh, virginia? It's like, yeah, I've been living that. My mom was in home hospice for two years at the tail end of the pandemic, and she just passed in February. So all of that rings true because, yes, her loved ones were right there to greet her. She started seeing uncle Bob and my grandmother, uh, literally out the window, across. She would say on the other side, and I go um, do you mean the other side of the road, mom? Or, like you want to talk about this, do you mean the? And she would get sheepish and clam up, but they very much were there to usher her over. Uh, but anyway, I don't know. I think service looks different on different people. So this silly podcast, believe it or not is my, at this moment, contribution. It may not look like changing mom's diapers, right, but we're all just trying to maintain our agency while we're above ground, and I do think that agency is largely a contribution of some kind.

Speaker 3 53:33

Absolutely. And services. You know, I remember, and you two will probably remember either heard about or know about, fred Rogers. You know Mr Rogers' television show, mr Rogers' Neighborhood, who educated so many kids, including me on public television and there's a story that when he died in 2003, his family was going through his effects and they found his wallet and inside his wallet was a scrap piece of paper on which Mr Rogers Rogers had written four simple words Life is for service.

Speaker 1 54:11

Wow, yeah, did you see the documentary about him? There was a narrative and a documentary right around the same time.

Speaker 2 54:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3 54:19

I don't think I've read his. I've read his bio, his biography, which is really interesting. The Good Neighbor is called Very interesting about, I mean, and he was. He was a minister as well as doing his children's television program.

Speaker 1 54:33

I just think he was so graceful about it that nobody realized how express his efforts were, if that makes sense In retrospect, like even that episode where he put his feet in the jacuzzi with the black gentleman. Yeah, yeah, like it was all by design.

Speaker 2 54:50

Yeah, yeah, I actually just finished watching um butterfly in the sky. Um, so it's the reading rainbow documentary and there is a section where it shows oh my gosh, of course I just watched star trek, so I have geordie laforge in my head versus um lamar lamar Burton. I'm like who's real?

Finding Purpose and Giving Back

Speaker 2 55:08

name yeah so and it shows, um, lamar and Fred Rogers together, um, and a scene where they're talking and you can just even in that, even though it's, you know, the show is obviously about reading Rainbow. Um, when I was watching the documentary, um, you could see like everything Fred Rogers was bestowing upon Lamar for like his efforts and getting children to you know to love literacy again, like it was all genuine from the heart and in both of them you could just like see that and it's, I think it's so important because people think, think like shows, like you know what we're doing, or like or writing books, or you know you're doing a TV show for kids or whatever. They don't realize that, yeah, a lot of that is that labor of love, it is service, it is a way for that person to connect and give back to.

Speaker 1 55:55

Well, I think we need to focus on I call them luminaries, right People that are doing things for the right reasons and we hope that if we're true right to our authentic sense of purpose or calling and again, that looks different on different people, but one hopes that not affluence follows but that we all deserve to be comfortable right. So I find that younger generations hate Oprah. They buy all the conspiracy theories that she's a pedophile and this and that, and I'm like, are you kidding me? I watched her become what she became and use her platform right so others could rise and be their best selves.

Speaker 1 56:29

So when I get cynical and at one point you know everyone that was doing well around me and my circles was acting as a consultant, taking people's money, really not doing their thing right, using their craft or their gift, but just kind of stepping on people taking people's money right and acting as a consultant or artist, as brand, that's the wrong example, but helping others find their platform, but really not getting their own voice out there.

Speaker 1 56:58

So eventually I was like I need to fix that view right or I'm never going to fix my circumstances, meaning my financial situation, until I right, reframe my view of money and so cause at times I've had it and at times I haven't, and um, so I started focusing on what I call luminaries, and you may not agree with them, but, like Ellen, I watched her grow up. I think she found a space, before all the haters came out of the woodwork, right when she could be her best self and then provide a platform in which others could be. Oprah is kind of another example. So I just started focusing on those, if that makes sense, and giving my airtime to people that are doing things seemingly for the right reason and contributing, and then one hopes the rest will follow. The abundance follows.

Speaker 1 57:43

Yeah it does, and but but that's you know.

Speaker 3 57:45

it's funny with society.

Speaker 3 57:46

We, we want people on the pedestal as soon as they get there we spend all our time trying to knock them off, Right, you know, and it's? I've seen so many people in my life that feel that they're born empty and that when they get out of school and kind of get into life whatever that looks like for them that then their job is to fill their empty self up. I've got to make as much money as I can and drive the nicest car and have the greatest home and have all the gadgets and gizmos, but what I found is it's just the opposite. We're not born empty. We're born full with everything we need to be successful already inside of us. We just need to find it, pull it out and use it. So our job in life should not be to fill ourselves up.

Speaker 3 58:32

Our job in life should be to empty ourselves out with our unique gifts and talents, certainly for the betterment of ourselves, but also for the betterment of our families, of our friends, of our communities and of our country. And when you make that shift, because there's never going to be enough stuff to fill you up, there's always going to be one more thing when you start giving of yourself, it's amazing how much better your life is.

Speaker 1 58:57

It's beautiful. You know, the whole time you were describing that I was picturing a block of marble, right? So you're chipping away at what was always there to begin with, to the masterpiece, under all right. All that, you whittle away the needless stuff. Well, the needless stuff could be ego, right? All the protections and the defense mechanisms we've acquired that are mind and ego, the personality that we've built, right? Yeah?

Speaker 2 59:24

I agree with that, and I think to add to that too and to kind of tie it back you know what what Terry was saying about you know giving out, you know our gifts and to empty ourselves and and tying it to what we were talking about previously too, when we put people up on pedestals, is, I think, we forget there's those flaws in our marble.

Speaker 2 59:40

And so we have to. You know, being the creator, the artist of our lives, you know to work around those flaws and give grace to everybody else, knowing they've got the same freaking flaws just in different places.

Speaker 1 59:54

Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, it's human nature to judge, right, I think we're always trying to keep that at bay. But I do want to back up because obviously we're going to eventually need to bring this to a close. But this is all interrelated, you know. I want to go back to that moment where, again, virginia and I are calling it, reframing the narrative, right, but when you transitioned cause it is a magical moment when you made that shift from like I'm just trying to sustain and get through the day.

Speaker 1 1:00:22

So in that I heard like sometimes, and even Nancy Bergeron, we have a 93 year old guest that just came on and she, she just, you know, published a book, she just launched a book and she's very engaged, very active, senior and, um, she still has agency in the world and, uh, but she's fighting for it, right, fighting for her relevance, fighting for her agency.

Speaker 1 1:00:45

But I guess she would say that you don't need to have a dark night of the soul, right, not everybody needs to have that brush with death, but I do think you need to somehow find a broader perspective, or I call it, have a meta view of the situation.

Speaker 1 1:01:01

And she was saying like, oh, I now found the balance of actually listening to my body and I'm there too, if I have to drool on the couch for one day and allow the melancholy or the depression, or whatever it is, to have its way with me. I actually understand the value of that, but I do think there's a moment when you'd somehow take a step back and see the meta view. So right if you were just trying to get through every day and you didn't have any long-term goals. What was was whether it's a dark night of the soul or just this magical shift that took place inside of you, what allowed you to see the big picture and that actually, your trials could result in. You know what I mean? Not lemons from now, lemonade from lemons, but in something of value that you could contribute back to the collective.

Speaker 1 1:01:50

Yeah that's a great question.

Speaker 3 1:01:51

And I talk about really what has gotten me through this, and I've said this for a while now. I think I've done more living in the 12 years that I've been dying of cancer than I've done in my entire life, and I've had a pretty good life before I had cancer. I did a lot of fun things and got've had a pretty good life before I had cancer.

Speaker 3 1:02:08

I did a lot of fun things and got to explore a lot of things that I had an interest in in life, but really what's gotten me through this is my faith, family and friends. I call them my three Fs. I have a very strong faith in God. I remember my oncologist showed me my CAT scan after I had my leg amputated and I had these tumors in my lungs and I don't. I have no medical background.

Speaker 1 1:02:34

I don't know how to read a CAT scan, but you can kind of look at it and be like, oh, that sure didn't look like it belongs there.

Speaker 3 1:02:38

You know, I had these big tumors in my lungs, flew it all around the pleural spaces and I will never forget this. I looked at my oncologist and I said how was I alive? And he put his head down and he shook his head no. And then he looked up at me and he said I don't know because you shouldn't have been. Which said to me God's not done with me yet.

Speaker 3 1:03:02

When I die, where I die, how I die way above my pay grade. Don't spend a lot of time worrying about that. And I remember hearing a Native American Blackfoot proverb years ago that I absolutely love, and it goes like this when you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice. That's what I want Beautiful, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:03:31

I love it, I'm so you definitely deliver. I wanted to go back to that moment because I knew there was something big and in my and you've heard me say this before Virginia. I apologize, but I just want to, I don't know. I related to that in that in my book the seeker, which was a parable for what I had been through, right, uh, it's all in the guise of, like, minoan religion and, uh, the canon of Greek, classical Greek gods, but actually bronze age, previous to all of that, anyway.

The Power of Personal Agency

Speaker 1 1:04:03

So in it I have this moment where, like we were saying earlier, the main character doesn't necessarily say why me? But he does feel like the gods have it in for him, right, like when everything around you is trying to do you in and put you in the grave. You got to ask why. So it's not like shaking your fist at God, but it's saying like Zeus, why do you have it in for me? Let's talk about this. But in his case he didn't shake his fist to God, but he had to dig his heels in and say, yeah, I'm not done here yet, and that is what free will is about. And then I would think you then dovetail with the will of the gods or destiny or whatever you want to call it, your DNA, whatever that is that seems to want to do you in, if it is nothing but free will, right that allows you to dig your heels in and find your agency in the world and say I am not done here yet.

Speaker 3 1:04:52

Yeah, it is. I mean, and I've had all excuse me 88 genes that doctors either know of or suspect cause every form of cancer that we know about. I've had all 88 genes tested and I have no mutations in those genes, which certainly begs the question then, why did I get this incredibly rare form of cancer? And nobody's ever been able to answer that question, and it's not a question I think about very much. Like I said, I've got it. I know I've got it. Now how can I live my life as an example for other people to go through the adversity that they're going through in their life?

Speaker 1 1:05:32

Beautiful Yep. That's the ideal right.

Speaker 3 1:05:36

You would hope.

Speaker 1 1:05:37

Yeah, I mean, I do, I mean it's. There's a lot we could go into. But I've been reading Bruce Lipton's biology of belief. It's about cell biology, right, science. Biology of belief, it's about cell biology, right.

Speaker 1 1:05:50

And anyway, and some a lot of Deepak Chopra and you know there's a lot of talk about holism versus, you know, allopathic medicine versus more Newtonian, mechanistic Western medicine, and I think we're, all you know, figuring out where we exist on that spectrum. But I think it's fair to say, you know, and one thing I did learn from I think it was Bruce Lipton was most of the diseases that the mainstream thinks of as heritable diseases are a combination of genes. They're not just one gene, right. And of course, if you've learned about epigenetics, it still takes the circumstances and conditions environmentally, that promote the expression of those genes, as opposed to the squelching right they're called methyl groups. So nature and nurture is alive and well.

Speaker 1 1:06:33

It's not a death sentence. The DNA is just the blueprint, right. But what maybe we need to do as a people is rediscover our power over that blueprint right, our personal agency, to create the circumstances and conditions where we don't need to fall victim to what our grandmother fell victim to, right? So I would say. In your case, it's like who the fuck knows? It could have been your microwave, it could have been all these environmental conditions that you were exposed to because you didn't have a gene for it, right, but all that matters is what you do with it.

Speaker 3 1:07:08

Right. Exactly, and that's and that's such an important part. It is what you do and I don't know why I got it, but I got it. Now, what am I supposed to learn and how am I? How am I supposed to project that back into the world? That's really where I spend most of my time focusing on. I don't. Yeah, I've got this. Yeah, I don't have a leg. Yeah, there's a lot of bad things, but it's up to me, I find and I do use humor. We were talking about humor a while ago.

Speaker 3 1:07:36

I do use humor, because you know, when I show up in a wheelchair without a leg, you know just like I used to show up before when I was six foot eight, and I would walk into a room and everybody would stare. Okay, now they just stare for a different reason and I need to make those people comfortable.

Speaker 1 1:07:56

So, since you're a fan of humor, you know, I think even if you chopped off the other leg, you'd still have a few inches on me, truly. I mean, people used to say I looked like a Wolverine, right. Yeah, what's his name?

Speaker 1 1:08:08

Oh, I can picture him right now, I'm just uh, yeah, wolverine anyway, and my stock answer was like, well, I wish I had his paycheck, or yeah, chop them off at the shins and we're twins. I'm like five, seven, oh, you have a over a foot on me. You have a what One? One foot and one inch on me.

Speaker 3 1:08:29

Something like that. Yeah Well, and I do only have one foot, so you know.

Speaker 1 1:08:32

All right. Well, I love your sense of humor and it sounds like you're not quite out of the woods with your health. I mean, what does the future look like? What do you see?

Speaker 3 1:08:41

So I am on a clinical trial drug now that does nothing to the cancer. But it's interesting. The way cancer proliferates in the body is it secretes an enzyme or a protein that hides it from your immune system. And what this drug has been doing for me for the last three years is going in wiping out that protein or enzyme so that my own immune system can say, just like a cold or a flu virus hey, this doesn't belong here, we need to attack it. So it's actually my immune system that's keeping my cancer in check. I mean, I would imagine at some point in time it won't work anymore and I don't know what else is in the toolbox.

Speaker 1 1:09:18

Probably not a whole lot, but I want to support you in that because, again, with the reading I've been doing and my own situation, you know, before my immune system, before I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, I was having signs. I've dealt with skin cancer for years, right, squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, a lot of excisions, a lot of reconstructives and, yeah, if that's your first line of defense, right, your skin is your first line of defense. So we get cancer all day, every day. Right, it's a cell here, it's just a cell there, but our body is able to, right, take care of it. If your immune system is compromised, your body can't do its job and it turns into a tumor, right. So it's not silly to say you know, what matters is the preventative, the upkeep, the lifestyle stuff. Right, because then your immune system won't be compromised.

Speaker 1 1:10:11

And I think very few people get that. Actually, stress equals inflammation, inflammation equals disease. We don't identify stress as emotional stress. What about just pain? Right, the thoughts and feelings that create that inflammation in our body, that cortisol and adrenaline. So I think it's pretty simple, isn't it? Health, I mean not that we're all going to live forever, but maintaining a degree, I would think, of agency is within all of our grasp.

Speaker 3 1:10:42

I would agree. And you know, and I kind of go, I'm sort of in the middle. You know, I I don't throw Western medicine out, but at the same time I want to talk about stress and what I'm putting in my body and sleep and meditation and prayer and all that kind of stuff. I combined the two and I think for me that has worked. And you know, I don't want to put that on anybody else, but I agree with you. I think you can marry Western medicine with traditional medicine or things that we've known for thousands of years and not say, oh well, the pharmaceutical, I don't care about the pharmaceutical company, how is this affecting my body and how do I feel?

Speaker 2 1:11:22

I was going to say. There's a new thought process out there and and it's growing more in the mental health industry, and it's actually one that I am part of. It's called the seven dimensions of wellness, so it takes both the biological, physiological and the psychological aspects, and then, of course, everything that is combined with that, and so it's basically like a whole wellness team versus just focusing on, you know, going to your doctor or only going to a therapist or only going to someone who's holistic. It's taking all three practices and bringing us together.

Speaker 1 1:11:57

It sounds like the definition of holism Right, and that's what it is.

Speaker 2 1:12:02

Yeah, that's what it is. It's whole person wellness, which is why, it's called the seven dimensions of wellness.

Speaker 2 1:12:07

And it's called the seven dimensions of wellness and it's an amazing thing. And what really got me when I started looking into that and started doing my studies into that area too under mental health, is I remember all the time we take our kids in to the pediatrician. I have my oldest child, dominique, is allergic to pretty much everything. Like has to be under the worst circumstances before they'll even give drugs, cause all the drugs are going to be the highest potency drugs that you can give somebody, which is usually like the last ditch effort and those are always like the only ones that will work.

Speaker 2 1:12:40

Um, based off that and Mike, I always heard my husband, my, in my mind, at what I'm doing'm doing, you know, studying, and I'm in clinicals and stuff is. Just remember, you know it's, it's called a practice for a reason, and so that's, and that's one reason why it's so cool to see these three um groups of people coming together under that seven dimensions of wellness. Because, yeah, I I feel like you know, for you terry and for you dominic, you guys, both you know, could benefit, benefit if we had been on there.

Speaker 1 1:13:12

you know, on that kind of mindset earlier during your journey yeah, if I could comment on that, I will acknowledge a hundred percent I'm only alive because of western medicine. I'm only alive because there's one pharmaceutical keeping me alive, period. So I actually think so I'm HIV positive. I had full blown AIDS. I'm lucky to have lived. But now I'm living HIV positive. But I thank the Lord.

Speaker 1 1:13:38

My doctor is the one that discovered the AIDS virus back in the eighties and he's been at the forefront from day one. So thank God for his blood, sweat and tears right when there was no funding for it. Thank God for all the people that died in the name of this research. So I'm not poo-pooing Western medicine but, like you're saying, virginia has just got to be a balance where I think you know the general public needs to be informed really, so that, like we're saying, the underprivileged don't just nod and smile and allow. You know, I just think it's. It is a racket, but it's on the part of the pharmaceutical companies pushing their product. But if we took the power back and said I actually have the agency to maintain homeostasis in my body, I'm not reliant on you name it, the pharmaceutical company, big brother, whomever for mybeing, that's where we need to be.

Speaker 2 1:14:31

Yeah, no, absolutely, and that's that's. That's that is the goal of that. You know whole theory and you know group of going forward and that is to bring those things all together. So it's what's best for the patient and everything versus. You know what the big dollar, almighty dollar, brings. Yep.

Speaker 1 1:14:52

Well, and Bruce Lipton says the history of medicine is the history of the placebo effect. So you mentioned mental health. You know again that leans a little more toward psychiatry and not psychology, right? But something like 90% of the effectiveness of antidepressants is the placebo effect. That has been proven. So it's on the micro and the macro. Well, why is it working in patients? Well, because culturally we've been brainwashed by so many of these antidepressants. I'm not saying it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 1:15:29

If you need them to get up off the couch and go fix your brain chemistry in any number of ways, take them Absolutely, and you know what I mean. There are very clear mental imbalances that require medication. But for general depression, even clinical depression, most of us would agree that those are the crucibles. Right, you come out the other end of depression when you allow yourself to embrace the shadow. In our experience you don't avoid the melancholy, but within reason. Do you know what I mean? If it's clinical depression, sometimes you just have to treat it. But it may not have to be a long-term solution. One can fix one's brain chemistry on one's own, and that I don't know. I think we need to maybe restore that as a goal culturally.

Speaker 3 1:16:17

Yeah, mind, body, spirit. I mean you know all three interact with each other and you know we need to make sure we take care of all of them. And if one's out of balance, I mean it's like a three-legged stool. If one of those legs is shorter than the other, your stool's wobbly, your stool doesn't support you, so you've got to have all three in balance.

Speaker 1 1:16:39

Love it. Perfect metaphor, and you would know I would. I just thought I'd leave our listeners with that image. Anyway, I think maybe, in the interest of coming to a close here, could you give us a synopsis of your book. I mean, I think we've covered a lot of territory here. Is there kind of a rote book jacket synopsis you'd like to share?

Choosing Love Over Fear

Speaker 3 1:17:05

I mean, sustainable Excellence is really. You know, I it's a book I never expected to write, never wanted to write, but it's also it's what I've learned over my 64 years, and it really is. I don't have all the answers, but these things have worked for me and you know, you know, and each chapter is a principle in the book and I'll give you the one that resonates with me and I think this kind of and they're not in any particular order, and I know I've done this in my life, we probably all have and the chapter is titled Most People Think With their Fears and their Insecurities Instead of Using their Minds, and I know I've done that I know I've wanted to start a business.

Speaker 3 1:17:47

A business like oh wait a minute, maybe I'm not smart enough, maybe I don't have enough information, what will people think about me if I fail? That's thinking with our fears, our insecurities, and whenever I talk to especially younger people, I always tell them if there's something in your heart, something in your soul that you believe you're supposed to do, but it scares you, go ahead and do it, because at the end of your life, the things you're going to regret are not going to be the things you did. They're going to be those things you didn't do, and then it's going to be too late to go back and do them. Love it.

Speaker 1 1:18:22

Beautiful.

Speaker 2 1:18:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:18:25

Words to live by.

Speaker 2 1:18:27

Absolutely 100%.

Speaker 1 1:18:29

That's awesome. Well, I might have to pick it up. I'm not out of the woods myself. So, yeah, I just think we also need to restore inspiration right Every day, especially this week, I think. We get up in the morning and it's like how can I restore my faith in humanity today, how can I restore my faith in the world today? And so regular inspiration right is really helpful. Staying on track.

Speaker 3 1:18:52

It is. But you know the thing you got to remember. You know when I was in law enforcement and you know, I think, the same thing when I talked to my nurses and doctors. You know you tend to look at life as a cop like everybody's, a criminal.

Speaker 3 1:19:05

And the same thing, you know, as with nurses and doctors, everybody's sick. Most people are good, kind, decent, caring, loving human beings, and most people are healthy. So understand that in your life. People are good. As much crap as I've seen in my life, as much evil as I've seen in my life people are genuinely good. We are better together, though I think if COVID taught us anything, we're better together than we are separately.

Speaker 1 1:19:32

Beautiful. Yeah, definitely illustrated our interconnectivity for sure. Right, if a tiny virus could change the world overnight, we're definitely interconnected. But I also love something you said a minute ago. Hinted at this idea of fear, right, if most of our unexamined thoughts and the feelings that result from those thoughts, right, are largely fear-based, and that the extreme of that would be PTSD or chronic anxiety, right, if you're constantly in a state of fight or flight, that's, that's fear. Um.

Speaker 1 1:20:04

But Marianne Williamson describes a miracle as a shift from fear to love. Right, so that choice, like it, sounds very Pollyanna, right. But to choose to see the good in people, that actually we all have, we all kind of want the same things and we all have an altruistic chip, even if it just serves the propagation of the species, you know what I mean. Better to focus on that than not. So, but I think every day we're tasked with ego stepping in and that's where we're judging our fellow man at every turn, right. But if you can just somehow breathe and then remove mind and ego from the equation, what's left? Well, love. So I do love that idea that a shift from fear to love is the definition of a miracle, and we have that in every moment. We have that choice.

Speaker 3 1:20:51

Absolutely, and love is the most important thing in the world. It solves everything. Just love each other.

Speaker 1 1:21:00

Just take care of each other. Wasn't it Einstein that said? You know, having a like. One of the biggest questions in life I'm going to botch it but is do you see the universe as benevolent or not Right? And so on, one day you can see pure love at the core of everything, truly pure consciousness, collective consciousness, is just love. You know, if you adopt the Darwinian idea that we're right, just adapt or die, kill or be killed, compete, well, that's that's going to determine what manifests in your life. I think the universe is a Rorschach test, and you can view it as benevolent, right, or you can view it as what's the other one? A doggy dog world, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 1:21:38

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. It's your choice.

Speaker 1 1:21:42

Okay, well, I want to end it on a good note. You said so many wonderful things and and I screwed up by following up, so if I don't have wisdom to live by them, um, yeah, I'll give you a.

Speaker 3 1:21:53

I'll give you a quote from ernest hemingway. Uh, in farewell to arms. Okay, life breaks everyone, and afterward, many are stronger at the broken places I love that I. I love that quote.

Speaker 1 1:22:08

I mean, it's just like breaking your arm.

Speaker 3 1:22:09

You know you put in a cast that heals. What part is stronger? The part that broke. Understand that in life.

Speaker 1 1:22:15

It's amazing what that can do for you Love it. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, you're the walking demonstration of that. Thank you so much for sharing and maybe we'll have you on. If there's something we didn't get to, let us know. We'll have you on If there's something we didn't get to, let us know.

Speaker 3 1:22:27

We'll have you on for a part. Two Sounds good, dominic, virginia, I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 1:22:30

Thank you so much, virginia. Anything else you want to follow up on, or are we moving?

Speaker 2 1:22:34

on. I think Terry wrapped it up perfectly, so I don't want to add to that.

Speaker 1 1:22:38

Exactly, I have a habit of doing that. Anyway, thank you Terry. We can get our hands in the clay Individually and collectively. We can write our own song. See you next time you.