Joel Pautsch’s melanoma diagnosis had him feeling down and questioning his faith, but the support of his friends and family helped him continuing living “Live Until You Die.”

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Transcript

My name is Joel Pouch. I’m 53 years old. I live in Anne Arundel County. I’ve been diagnosed with stage four melanoma metastasized cancer, and have been battling it for just about two years. What I’ve been learning during this whole uh, journey is really to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.

That could be a blessing to to me or to others. I don’t know it all, Where to start. It’s the first day, I guess, is when you get the phone call, and they say it is melanoma, and you start processing that very quickly. What does that mean? And you go through all the emotions of that. But early on, I guess I was blessed by the fact That where I am, in my faith that I had to come to terms with, okay, God, what are you doing?

This is not in my plans. This is not on my agenda. Why is this happening? And so the big question was why that I had to struggle with. And I think that’s probably what everyone struggles with. And what I came to the conclusion is I may not understand the why but I could understand the who was going to walk with me through it.

And for me, it was the sense that God was going to walk me through it. and it wasn’t like he was going to be there necessarily right there, but He sent God in skin, so to speak to walk with me. And so, um, I quickly gathered a lot of family and friends around me who knew about what I was going through, and they became Jesus in the flesh, so to speak.

And help me to start walking this through because there’s no way you can process this by yourself. There’s way too much information and it’s way too overwhelming. And I couldn’t have done it without all my friends and family just gave, giving me perspective. And probably the best thing that they told me is Joel live until you die.

You’re not dead yet. And if you give up now, um, you’re wasting your cancer. It says, don’t waste your cancer. Is really the line they gave me. Is you’ve been given this opportunity. It’s not a mistake. Use it to the best of your advantage. And live until you die. Because no one knows when they’re going to die.

So that gave me some hope. I said, okay, when I’m feeling well, I’ll take advantage of that. When I’m not feeling well, I will I do what I can to feel better again. But the biggest thing I did is as I was going through the treatments, is I continued to engage in life, whether that be going to church or visiting friends.

It changed what I could eat, how often I could go, how long I could last, but I stayed engaged in life. So I had my family over, they had to visit me more frequently than I could visit them, but everyone adjusted very well, and so I stayed. engaged in life. And then when I got to a point where I was on a bit longer period of, how would you say uh, stability, I’d finished up the Interleukin 2 treatments, I’d gone through the surgeries, I was on a stable platform the opportunity presented itself to go on a trip to the Midwest.

And of course, people were saying, Oh, Joel, you can’t do that, you’re sick and everything. I said, yeah, but I’m feeling good now. And if I don’t do it now, if not now, when? And if it turns out it doesn’t work out, I’ll come home. But I haven’t been to the Midwest for years. I’d like to see these people.

I’m going to go. And so I started planning the trip. And it turned out that I know a lot of people in the Midwest. So I worked it out quite well. So I was able to plan out my trip. So I had short hops to different states. Visited an uncle I’d never seen in Ohio. Stopped by and visited uh, dear friend in Indiana, went to Illinois to see my mother, drove to Iowa to visit my brother, went to my hometown where I graduated high school, and wandered around there for a couple days and met all these people who knew my family from when we lived there and had the most glorious time just visiting with these people.

I wish I would have stayed longer. I met four or five different families that knew my dad who had been a pastor in this town. And I just went from house to house and visited. It was just wonderful. They shared stories with me, I shared stories with them. I met people I never knew when I was a kid.

So from there I went up to Minnesota to visit my other brother. Went to Wisconsin to a cabin to play on the water. Came back down to Illinois to visit my mother again and then headed home put on 3, 000 miles in the car Enjoyed myself immensely so glad I took the chance to do something. That was a chance because I didn’t know how I was going to react And I got home safely and I don’t regret it It took about a little over two weeks. You forget how big a country.

we have and what a rich country we have and what a diverse country we have. I was saw just mile after mile of corn and soybeans and then the farmers, who are producing it and the railroads who are hauling it and the elevators who are processing it and the trucks who are delivering it.

And I was just amazed what a truly rich country What a incredibly beautiful country and seeing, uh, even the new things on the horizon on the Midwest are these gigantic windmills that produce energy from the wind that rolls across the plains. And so that was new from when I was a kid and seeing those things for the first time going, Oh my goodness.

And these ethanol plants that are popped up all over the place that are new from when I was a kid and producing ethanol. And So it was just a very educational thing that reminded me of how big our country is when you drive 3, 000 miles.

I guess some of the people in my hometown were surprised to see me, but they go well, is this your death tour? I said no, not at all. This is my life tour really. Cause it’s reviewing my life. It’s reminded me of where I’ve come from, what shaped me, both in environment and in people and it was just to remind me why I’m here. Why I’m alive, and so it just gave me a vision beyond the next doctor’s appointment.