Cancer Didn’t Break Him—It Sharpened His Perspective (Terry Tucker PT3)

Terry Tucker is a former NCAA Division I athlete, basketball coach, cancer survivor, motivational speaker, and author of Sustainable Excellence. Diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of melanoma more than 13 years ago, Terry continues to battle cancer while using his story to inspire others to find strength, perspective, and purpose in life’s hardest challenges.

Segment Summary:
In this raw and introspective segment, Terry Tucker and host Kali dive into the mental and emotional toll of living with cancer—and how perspective can be the greatest form of resilience. From the overwhelming experience of sitting in an oncology department to the danger of assuming that everyone understands your pain, Terry unpacks the emotional isolation that comes with chronic illness.

He also walks listeners through the stages of grief he’s experienced—including the moment he had to accept that his battle isn’t going away anytime soon. But instead of letting despair take over, Terry chose to “embrace the suck,” take ownership of his mindset, and live on his terms, not a doctor’s timeline.

Key Topics:

• Avoiding tunnel vision during long-term illness
• Why most people won’t get what you’re going through—and that’s okay
• The mental shift from anger and denial to acceptance
• “I’ve done everything right—how can I have cancer?”: questioning vs. surrender
• The power in saying: “I don’t like the cards, but I’ll play them anyway”
• Choosing to live despite still fighting

Guest Contact & Resources:
📘 Sustainable Excellence: Ten Principles to Leading Your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life
🌐 MotivationalCheck.com

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

Transcript

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I never had the firsthand experience like that where I'm going into the oncology department and you know everybody's there is dealing with the same thing in some shape or form and it really puts you in another kind of puts you in another world. It is a different world but but it's also important you know to kind of not get that tunnel vision because if you think about it and this was the same way when I was a police officer you know as a police officer you think everybody's a bad the 99% of people in the world are good kind decent honest human beings but we deal with the one percent that you know and we do on a daily basis so everybody's a bad guy and the same thing with kids everybody's sick everybody's not sick most of the people in the world are healthy people you know they're they're not sick so it's important to kind of broaden your perspective broaden your point of view and realize yeah this is something I'm going through but it's not something that everybody's going through and so you got to be careful at least I felt I had to be careful not to project my disease or my sickness like well everybody gets what I'm going through right yeah most people don't get what you're going through so don't think that they do right you mentioned that you've gone through all of the stages and let me let me even go back further you said that you still have tumors you're still battling cancer currently yes oh wow I thought that it was something 13 years and then that was something that you fully overcame as far as I'm sure mentally and emotionally you know you've overcome it in some kind of ways well I wish it was my mistake my mistake my mistake um no that's okay that's fine but you did mention that you've experienced all five of those stages when it comes to the grief do you have one stage that you can think of that was probably the hardest or the most challenging I think the end I mean I certainly you know I mentioned my dad had had cancer and died and and I met when he died I made a conscious effort you know I'd always been an athlete so I I knew exercise was important I knew eating run I knew rest was important but it was like every year I'm getting a physical and whatever my doctor says we're going to do whatever test I'm doing and I had done that so you know first it was I can't possibly have cancer I've done everything right in my life and then there's anger you know I can't possibly have cancer I've done everything right in my life yeah and then as I mentioned the bargaining stage and then the the kind of the down the depressed you know this is this is terrible but I got to that point and I just I just there was just a moment where it was like this sucks but I'm gonna have to embrace the suck I don't like the cards I've been dealt but I'm gonna have to play these cards to the best of my ability and I am not going to let some doctor dictate to me when I'm going to die