Paul has come to appreciate everything he has like never before. Since being diagnosed with advanced skin cancer, he has taken his relationships with his wife and children to new levels. He has felt the warmth of family and friends as they have brought meals, helped with kids and pets, sent letters and emails or simply prayed for him. In a particularly touching gesture, Paul’s students raised over $1000 and made a donation in his name.

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Transcript

My name is Paul. I am 50 years old. I have metastatic basal cell carcinoma. It started on my face, went to my ear, and now it’s in my spine and ribs. After I was diagnosed with the metastatic basal cell it definitely forced me to look at a lot of things very different in my life. It certainly did, Provoke some anger fear of dying, things like that.

But there was also a sense of essentially happiness or a better quality of life in a degree. There was much more reflection time. There was much more time, especially with my wife, of thinking about our relationship and how blessed we’ve been and how lucky we’ve been. And, just a wonderful life we’ve already have lived.

We have two kids that are teenagers now. Audrey is my oldest daughter. She’s 19. My son, Evan, he’s 16. He’ll be 17 in just a few weeks. And, your typical relationship of parents with kids is you’re just so busy doing your job, racing around, doing all the kids activities, that you almost take it for granted, the relationship with your spouse.

And I would say that To a degree, our relationship was fine. We were a good marriage, but it was maybe shallow to a degree. And so this certainly, forces you to look at things and you become much more aware of the special relationships you developed over time, with a lot of different people.

And another part of it, which I guess probably all parents feel, is appreciation for the kids and just talking about the kids at a really a whole different level. I guess you don’t normally talk about the kids thinking that he might not be here in a while. So it does force you to, really appreciate, how your kids have grown up and, how that whole process is and, how wonderful it is to how fortunate we’ve been.

I’ve discussed these issues with other people who have cancer. A couple of friends of mine who have cancer, actually I’ve become friends since this time, and they said the exact same thing. Actually both of them made comments that, the best years of their lives were after they were diagnosed with cancer, in the sense that there was a much fuller life.

Now, one guy was diagnosed with cancer, So it’s been a long time, 25 years, but he would say once he got cancer, he just, his whole way of life changed and that he was much more meaningful and much, a better lifestyle. I have mentioned that to quite a few people. I say, I’ve told him before that, going through this, there’s just certainly a lot of, Unfortunate bad things about it, but there are certainly some good things, too.

And so I guess the main message is don’t wait until the crisis awakens you act when you’re in your normal life to let people know how you feel about them and appreciate, you know, the relationships you have.