How Helping Others Helped Him Survive: Terry’s Story

Terry Tucker is a motivational speaker, former college athlete, basketball coach, cancer warrior, and author of Sustainable Excellence. Diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of melanoma at the age of 51, Terry has endured over 13 years of treatment and continues to fight stage IV cancer. His message is rooted in the belief that adversity can be used as fuel for purpose, and that emotional honesty is part of true strength.

Segment Summary:
In this deeply personal and emotionally grounded conversation, Terry and host Kali explore the emotional side of living with a terminal illness—negotiating with grief, depression, and fear while still choosing to show up for others. Terry shares how, in the early days of his diagnosis, he bargained with God just to see his daughter graduate high school—and how that kind of personal mission gave him something powerful to fight for.

As he continues treatment to this day, Terry reveals the surprising way he overcomes moments of sadness and self-pity: by turning his attention outward, offering connection and comfort to others who are just beginning their own battles with cancer. He also shares a memorable social psychology experiment that proves just how deeply we can connect with someone through three meaningful questions—and why we don’t go deep enough with each other anymore.

Key Topics:

• Emotional bargaining and grief after receiving a terminal diagnosis
• Why setting a personal purpose can change your fight for survival
• The therapeutic power of helping others in the same struggle
• Using conversation and curiosity to connect beyond surface-level talk
• How small moments of kindness can pull you out of isolation
• The importance of vulnerability and emotional support during cancer treatment

Guest Contact & Resources:
  Sustainable Excellence: Ten Principles to Leading Your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life
  MotivationalCheck.com
  Follow Terry on Instagram: @sustainableexcellenceauthor

Find out more about Kali and the show HERE: https://humanityoffame.com/

Transcript

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Many people, they avoid going to the doctor, unless something feels wrong. Just imagining, you know, the switch that can happen in your mind, where the doctors are giving you a vision to fight for, to live for, versus saying, hey, this is all we can offer. You know, if it works, it works. If it doesn't, this is what you can expect. Words are so powerful. Words are. They are. And you know, I was 51 years old when I was diagnosed. So I wasn't young, but I certainly wasn't old either. And my father had died at 54 of end-stage breast cancer. And my dad was a classic example. Knew he was sick for months, but was of the generation that, yeah, men don't go to the doctor. And by the time he was diagnosed, it was too late. Wow. Now you have the news, right? And the doctor gave the diagnosis and what you can expect and what they can do based on what they, the information that they have at the time. So did you ever find yourself negotiating with your own emotions during your battle with cancer? Oh, all the time. I mean, I still have tumors in my lungs. I'm still being treated for that. And during those times I get down, I get depressed. I feel sorry for myself. I cry. I go through all that. Going back to the bargaining part, when I was initially diagnosed, and I went through every stage, but our daughter was in high school at the time. And there was literally a bargaining with God, like, look, just let me live long enough to see her graduate from high school. That was my big bargain. I didn't care whether I lived or died. I was more, I want to be around for her as long as I possibly could. So that was a huge part of it. So bargaining, yeah. I find an interesting way though, when I get in those phases where, woe is me, it's hard, look at me, look what I'm going through. I find a real easy way to get out of that to go help another person, pick up the phone, call somebody that I know that has cancer, or if I'm sitting in the waiting room waiting to be treated, somebody walks in, got the deer in the headlights, like, oh my gosh, I'm scared to death. I don't know if this is going to work. Am I going to die? What kind of side effects am I going to have? Is to just wheel in my wheelchair over to them and say, hi, how you doing? I'm Terry. What's your name? Now all of a sudden, I'm not focused on me anymore. I'm focused on another human being and trying to make their life better. And I'll give you a quick story. This is a true story. This is a professor at the University of Chicago, a psychology professor who does this experiment with his students. The idea is you go out, you get on a bus, and in three questions, you go deep with somebody. So you get on the bus, sit down next to somebody. Hi, how you doing? I'm fine. How are you? That's question one. And I'm just making this up. Question two, what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a doctor. Okay. Question three, have you always wanted to be a doctor? It doesn't matter how they answer. They could say, no, I grew up on a farm and I wanted to be a veterinarian, but X, Y, and Z happened. Or my mother died of breast cancer at 40 and she was a doctor and I wanted to honor her memory by being a doctor. Whatever they tell you, now you're deep with somebody. Now you understand their why. And we don't go deep with people anymore. Yeah. I recently, as in the last few months, have been going through helping a very close family member who's been dealing with cancer and just came out of radiation. And I never had the firsthand experience like that before, where I'm going into the oncology department. It's definitely, I will say inexperienced, but that doesn't even explain half of what it actually is. I just can't find the right words to really describe how you feel, but I definitely felt like I was in a different world.