Stage Four Cancer Survivor Chuck Keels on How to Get up and Live | Ep. 67
Every minute you get on this Earth is a gift that you can’t take for granted. This is the living reality for our podcast guest this week, Chuck Keels. He has a miraculous story of surviving in unimaginable circumstances, even when all odds were against him. He now utilizes his inspiring story to effectuate change and to motivate people like you to “Get Up and Live” while you have the chance.
You won’t want to miss this transformational conversation with one of the most positive and tenacious guests we’ve ever had on our podcast! Tune into this interview that will be sure to shift your mindset and the way you go through life.
Click the links below for more information on the Living Hope Cancer Foundation or to reach out to Chuck.
https://www.getupandlive.org/
https://linktr.ee/LHCF
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Transcript
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I can promise you that you will not have dry eyes after hearing today's guest, Chuck Keels.
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But it's not just about sadness. He speaks about the hope to come.
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Listen now.
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te. You're a cancer survivor.: ::Unknown
2015 Yep.
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together because of cancer. Yep.
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Mm hmm.
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right? Absolutely.
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let's back up and just go to: ::Unknown
I'm assuming that was a shock to you like it is to most people. How did the doctor break it to you?
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So. I just turned 50 years old.
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I had a landscaping business where I was designing, landscaping and swimming pools all over the valley and I started out just feeling a little bit tired.
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I have pretty good energy. And I started out getting get getting some getting some aches and pains. And
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have something that I call the mail mentality.
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I'll be okay tomorrow.
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Yeah,
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but the problem was every day I got up, it was worse, the pain got worse, the fatigue got worse. I started losing some weight and
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or months.
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over a couple of months, a couple of months even started taking aspirin, which I don't like to do. And then the pain started outrunning the aspirin. And there was a Thursday and Friday night where I was during the day.
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I was actually carrying my briefcase into my office and and just from carrying a briefcase on one side of your body, my spine was was, was just it was so painful. And so it was a Friday night. And I actually took my two boys downtown Gilbert for some food trucks, and I couldn't find a comfortable place to sit.
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And I was blaming all the chairs, you know, not thinking it was my body falling apart. And when we got home that night, I told him, I said, I'm going to I'm going to go and go to the E.R. and see if they can figure out what's going on here. And so that night, I headed over to Gilbert Mercy Hospital, and my to say my life changed to one in a different direction is an understatement.
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Is that did you find out that night or do they, did they send you for some follow up
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or so that night?
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What happened was they took a bunch of scans and X-rays and tests, and as the results started coming back in the air, Doc would poker head in my room and say, Your x ray just got back. You've got to fractured vertebrae in your back.
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Like what? I'm like, wait a minute, I haven't fallen. Who walks around with a broken back? And she says, Well, there's more to come, but I've got an idea what's going on here. And at about three in the morning, the door opened and closed, and she came in and pulled a chair up next to the the the the little hospital cot that I was laying on.
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And she said, I got bad news. Everything that you're going through is cancer related. And that was the first time I heard the C word. The little C word.
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Well, so what was the date of the final
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So, yes, the specialists were brought in to do all the biopsies into the bone marrow and the nodes and everything. And I was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer that I let go for a long time.
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And it goes to where it's fed and it got into my bones in my lymph nodes. And the reason why the the specialist was in shock when I walked back into the room to hear the results of these of these tests, he actually said, I can't believe you just walked in here.
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was he was surprised you were even walking.
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And I said, Doc, you know what's up? And he says, Well, I've never seen a scan like this. And the guy's still walking around. You have cancer in 90% of the bones in your body, man. 90%. Wow. Yeah.
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So what was that? I mean, that had these three in the morning. Then you find that out. How old are your boys at the
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14 and 15.
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so you have a 14 year old and a 15 year old boy and you find out you have cancer and it's progressed a lot like that.
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Yeah.
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Oh, absolutely.
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You know, my head spinning, you know, the big tears are going down my face and I'm thinking in my head, is this a short journey or long journey?
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I have two boys to raise. All these things are going through my mind. And so, you know, you you plan for a lot of things in your life. You know, you plan about your kids graduation or somebody get married and you plan for things like that. You don't plan for things like this.
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That's so true, because a lot of the people that I've talked to that go through something like this, that's exactly what they say.
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They they go, I just always assumed I'd be at my daughter's wedding.
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Yeah,
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Yeah,
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Absolutely.
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meant that that did change the whole trajectory of your life. So didn't. Didn't it? Because, I mean, first of all, you've experienced amazing things since then.
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But
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talk a little bit about how that changed
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everything.
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Okay. So
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basically, I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do with my boys? Because I just was told by a cancer doctor that I had stage four prostate cancer and maybe three months to live, and there was nothing the medical industry could do at that time. So they are going to send me home just to be at peace with my family.
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And that night I get a knock on the door and it's to hospice nurses. So not only was I diagnosed, it was terrible. Stage four. Nothing the medical industry can do. But two hospice nurses are sitting on my living room couch and I'm thinking it doesn't get any worse than this
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there to try to make your last months comfortable
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Yep. Yep. And that's what they were doing. Writing prescriptions for pain meds.
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They wrote a prescription for a hospital bed to sit downstairs in my house so I wouldn't have to climb a flight of stairs. And so I'm thinking, you know, I need to get my boys to Ohio, where I'm from, so that when I melt away, my family can take care of them.
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So I bought three plane tickets for seven days away. So the following Sunday, I'm going to jump on a plane with my boys and get them back to Ohio. And my family's waiting on the other end. And what happens is I started thinking about it and I go, Well, you don't move all of your stuff across the country if you got three months to live.
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Right? And so all that stuff that I worked my tail off my entire life to get that big screen TV and the leather couches and the really cool furniture and stuff, all that stuff, I worked so hard all of a sudden became absolutely nothing to me. Nothing. And as friends called and said, they wanted to swing by and give me a hug, I said, Bring your truck or bring a U-Haul and take anything you want.
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And people are like, What are you talking about? And I'm like, You don't you don't move your stuff across the country if you've got three months to live. Anything that's here on Saturday that's not out the door is going to go out on the curb and anybody can have it that wants it.
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that's not a lesson on what's really valuable, Right.
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Yeah. With
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Yep.
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meant absolutely nothing. Yeah. And I watched it drive away happily. I was glad it was going somewhere. Somebody got it. And so on Saturday, my boys kind of joked and they said, Dad, where are we sleeping tonight? You gave away our beds. And they said, I don't, I don't know.
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And so I said, Let's just get a room down down at the Hilton Tapatio Cliffs. You know, it's close to the airport because tomorrow we're just jumping on a plane to fly out of here. So we get we get a no, they don't get there. Yeah,
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talked to them. Do they know that you maybe only have a few months?
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Yeah, That was. That was when I came in and sat him down on the couch. And that was probably one one of the hardest days of my life, you know,
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like you. What? Nobody plans for this. And to tell your boys that the doctors say I'm really, really sick. It was really hard.
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Yeah. Yeah. And so they knew. And so we stayed at the Hilton. The next morning, I get up and down the hallway and I heard something pop, and I landed on my face on the floor, and I'm laying there and I can't move. And the pain through my back and my neck and my head was so excruciating that the hotel security came nine one.
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One was called eight firefighters get me onto a hospital gurney down the steps and into an ambulance. And the ambulance gets me one mile from there is John C Lincoln Hospital in central Phenix. And that Johnson Lincoln Hospital, they're running their own scans and tests. And they said the popping sound that you heard when you hit the floor was your spine.
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Your bones are so fragile from the cancer that you just had a compression fracture, which means your your back broke in two places just walking down the hall. And so and so at that time,
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they brought in two spinal surgeons, a house doctor and a cancer doctor. And these these these this this group became my medical team. And they're running all the scans and the tests and everything.
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And when all the scans and tests came back and they're looking at them, they walk into my room and they say, we're looking at all this and we want to fight this. And I said, I was already put in hospice. You know, how do you how do you fight something like this? And they said, we want to do two surgeries tomorrow.
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We have to stop the feeding of the cancer and then start killing the cancer. And so the surgeries were going to be an orchestra me, which stops the testosterone production in the male body. The other surgery is called a port, and that's a little guy that goes under your skin. And what that port does is it's in place so that when they stick the needle in there with the chemo coming through, they have a place that it goes it straight into an artery.
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And so they said, we're going to do the first the first surgery, the Yorkie, Artemis, then we're going to do the the port. And then the next day we're going to start chemo. So stop feeding the cancer, start killing the cancer. You
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you're on your way to Ohio and all of a sudden they're talking about doing two surgeries
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Yeah. Yeah. And I said, let's go. You know, this is this is the best thing I heard in weeks, you know, Let's go. This is this is pretty amazing. We got some positive things. We're going forward here. We're at least fighting back a little bit, you know,
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And the next day I was rolled into two surgeries, back to back surgeries.
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And I remember every light in the room, nurses names, everything, all the way to the point where they actually administered the anesthesia into my IV and knocked me out for the surgeries. And I'm waking up. It's 2 hours later, I'm in the recovery room of this old hospital and I'm looking around. And LG, remember was it was kind of a long room and there was a lot of curtains and they were getting a lot of people ready for surgeries, bringing people back out from their surgeries.
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And after the nurses realized I was awake, they brought over some water, said your your family's upstairs waiting for you and then the two doctors that did the surgeries came in one by one and explained the surgeries went perfectly. What my follow up would look like once I left the hospital and everything. And so I said, okay, we're moving forward.
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You know, this is pretty good. So I'm laying there, I'm just waiting to go upstairs. And the nurses said it's going to be any minute now. And as I'm laying there watching everything going on around me, the whole room turns weird, cold, weird, cold for no reason. And I'm thinking the air conditioning. Somebody left a door open at the end of the room.
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What's going on here? And I look down at the door at the end of the room to see if it was left open and it was closed. And so then I start to kind of pan back to my left. And as I get over my left shoulder, somebody's standing there and I kind of jump and I'm thinking, it's a doctor or it's a nurse.
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And the person that's standing there, the right foot steps out towards me. The right hand reaches out and touches me on the left shoulder physically. And but when it touches me on the shoulder, in my head, it says, You're in the presence of Jesus. And I'm laying there and I look up again and he's gone 3 to 4 seconds of my life.
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According to what I just heard in my head, I was in the presence of Jesus and I'm flipping out. I'm like, What just happened? What was that? And why me? And so I was wheeled upstairs to my room and the nurses come in and they say, It's time for some meds. And they've got these little paper cups full of drugs.
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And they're like, Okay, here's your steroids for a shrink in the tumors. And they'd hand me a cup and I would take that and take some water and down it. Here's your bone strength, inners. Now your pain meds are as needed. And that morning I was on liquid morphine and they hand me. They say your pain meds are as needed.
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So on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the worst, how bad is your pain right now? And so I'm sitting there for a couple seconds and I'm thinking about this. And then I sat up in the bed and I'm looking at him. I'm like, I don't feel any pain.
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And they said, Order something. You just, you know, broke your back and had two surgeries or something.
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And I said, I don't like taking aspirin. I'm not I'm not going to take a drug if I don't need it.
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,: ::Unknown
I didn't need them. I never touched another pain med and and the the the whole experience. There's so much detail. There's so much, you know, stuff in this journey. And of course, with me just being like that problem solving guy, like what happened, what was this? Why did this happen? What was going on here that night? Laying in bed?
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I couldn't sleep. Our my, my, my, my, my head was spinning and I was like, What was that? And why am I not ordering pain meds? Because this morning I was on liquid morphine
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and normally I go to bed at 830 or 9:00 because I'm an old farm boy from Ohio. Right. And I'm up at four, 430 ready to feed the animals.
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And so what happens is I'm laying there and I didn't wash my face and I didn't turn off the lights. And I'm laying there just thinking, what is going on here? And and also a part of that is that that thing that I think every cancer, any person that hears the word you have cancer, the feeling sorry for yourself.
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,: ::Unknown
That was my prayer. What gives? I've got two boys at home. You know, I haven't achieved the things in life that I want to achieve. There's so many things I want to do yet. Is this a short journey or a long journey? And as I'm laying there, just, just, just like just can't believe what's going on. All of a sudden I hear something in my head and the first thing I heard was, you've been a fighter your whole life.
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What are you doing? And I'm like, Whoa! And a couple seconds go by and then I hear, as long as you're alive, be fully alive. And I was like, Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I needed to hear. And so I set up in the bed and my feet hit the floor. I grabbed my IV pole, which had all my fluids and stuff, and I was going to go to the bathroom and wash my face.
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And instead of going in the bathroom, I went on to the hospital floor and I started walking and the nurses were flipping out. You shouldn't be out of your bed without physical therapy. What are you doing? I said, I actually feel pretty good and I end up walking two laps at a snail's pace, just walked slow, but I two laps I get back to the room, I wash my face to turn off the lights and I get in bed and I look at the ceiling and I go, Oh, God, thank you.
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That's exactly what I needed. I was always the I was always the guy that made everybody else laugh. You know, I was always the guy who made everybody smile. You know, I was that guy. And through this cancer mess that was going on in my head and around me, I missed that guy. I missed. And I said, God, I miss.
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I missed me. And right now I'm going to be me no matter what's going on around me. As long as I'm alive, I'm going to be fully alive. And that night was that that whole day was, was, was as you can imagine, just just so unbelievable. Beautiful, scary, crazy to me, you know. And it and the reason why it's just something I talk about a lot is because what I realized in the next couple of days is when I was touched on the shoulder, I was completely healed of terminal cancer and broken bones in my body.
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Wow. Wow. And then that night was the first time at 50 years old that I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I'm like, It's me and you now, buddy. We're in this together, you guys, you orchestrate. I'm just going to I'm just going to follow your lead. I've been bumping my head into the wall my whole life, trying to figure things out.
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Chuck's plans. Okay, It's cool. It's good. This is okay. And I'm exhausted. And so now I'm just going to do your plan. And I started doing God's plan that that day, that night, the next day, the next week, the next month, the next eight years. And the the blessings that poured out are almost unbelievable.
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yeah. Regret it.
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You know, you hear a lot of people talk about cancer
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and cancer is a teacher. And what I mean by that is it makes you stop everything. What what what is everybody doing in life? Their kids, their job? You know, the months blow by the year blow by. I was that guy. I watched my time go by to have the nice furniture and all these bank account and this house and pool and trucks and wasn't really living life.
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Cancer stops you in your tracks. And so cancer stopped me and made me realize, am I? I'm not achieving what I really want to achieve in life. And and I know I know the reason why I love talking to people and telling my story is because I hope you don't go through cancer. I hope you learn from me.
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Yeah, we can learn that without
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going. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, but in
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Yeah. Yeah.
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Yeah, but. And how about. How about the fact is, stage four cancer. You have three months to live. Are you. Are you not thinking this is a dead end? Like I was thinking this is a complete dead end done deal. And I left Jesus out of the equation.
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You still weren't thinking that until
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I still wasn't thinking that.
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But I had a lot of people around me praying for me. I had a lot of people around me praying for me. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't that I wasn't thinking about it. I wasn't thinking about it because I didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus at that time. I did not have that. I didn't realize how important that was in life.
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the crazy thing about it is it's important in life. But life here is like minute compared to eternity. You know, that's me standing in Hawaii last week looking at the ocean gone. This is eternity with you. This is our little life here. How important is that? How many people can I take with me? Yeah,
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That's where your mind started shifting,
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Yeah, I can
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night and day. Night and day. It can be pre-cancer, post cancer or it can be pre Jesus. Post Jesus. Yes. And see with me I say pre Jesus, post Jesus. But when you talk to anybody else,
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just your teacher.
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Yeah, but if you talk to anybody else, they're like cancer. You know, they they flip out, you know? But for me, it was like, man, Jesus stepped in and look at my life. Now I'm a different guy.
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So let me fast forward, because I want to ask you a really
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tough question right now.
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and but I have to fast forward in the story a little bit, test this tough question because you meet your wife.
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I'm we're going to come back some this, but you meet your wife as you're going through the cancer treatment and you get married and you guys have this amazing story. We're going to come back to that because here's my tough question.
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She just passed away in November.
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Mm hmm.
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Mm hmm.
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Well. Well, I have to. I have to correct you because I said the same thing.
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You know, I was the guy rubbing essential oils on Hannah's spine and on her head and praying three, five, six times a day for complete healing from head to toe.
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Right. And and she passed away. And that next day, when I took my dog for the walk, I was just talking to God and I was like, God, I was praying. So hard. I was praying for complete healing. And then I hear her voice and God says, I gave her complete healing. It just wasn't the way you saw it.
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So, so, so in that was that was I was like, whoa, you know, Wow. And it was crazy because I do a lot of my things now through social media because of my story and my journey and other people watching that. And and a couple of days after she passed, God said, you know, do a live on social media.
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And I was like, no way, I'll be crying like a baby. And God says, Do alive. And I said, okay, I promised you that night in that bed. I would I would say yes to everything you say. I start alive. And I talked a little bit about what I was going through. I cried a little bit. And then I told that story and I said, you know, God said, she's she's completely healed now.
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She's dancing in heaven. You know, she's with me. She doesn't have a port in her chest for, for, for chemo. She doesn't have broken bones throughout her body. She's not in pain. And and I said, wow. And I and I and I said that in the live. And I didn't realize it until I got about 40 or 50 messages over the next four weeks of how that statement changed somebody's life, because the way they were looking at losing their loved one.
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And if you knew Hannah's life, Hannah was the one that was much smarter than me. You know, she she was versed in the Bible. Somebody would start a phrase, she would finish it. And I was standing like, how do you know that? You know, it was so cool, you know? And so I was I was she always she was like it was it was the it was the chemistry.
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God put us together because I was the guy on fire. Just love Jesus. And and she loved watching me go and tell my story. But I loved listening to her because she was she was definitely educated in the Bible. And we started our days with a cup of coffee and a Bible study. And so it was a it was a it was a divine it was a divine relationship.
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And we we seen that almost right away when we first met and start talking about cancer. And that's how it and falling in love, getting married. And the two of us together started the foundation started Living Hope Cancer Foundation together because we had so many calls coming in with people going, What do you do for this? What do you do for that?
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And one day she's like, I think we should start a foundation. And I'm like, I got a landscaping business over here That's, you know, that that's really given me a hassle. You know, I don't know how to do that. And so we started we started reading about it and asking some attorneys for some advice. And it's kind of a cool story because the attorneys wanted like 12,000, $14,000, and they guaranteed that we'd be off the ground in six months with a5a1c3 nonprofit.
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And we looked at each other and start laughing like, we don't have $12,000. So we go on, we start watching on, we start Google and stuff, watching YouTube videos, how to how to do a mission statement, how to, you know, everything to do with the nonprofit. And so then we downloading the paperwork and we actually sat there and we read through and prayed through every page and every every single page, and you pay a fee.
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I think it was like 185, 150 bucks, and it goes off. And then what they do is they go through it, and then when they find the things that they need corrected, they send it back. And so this is why it takes six months, a year to get a nonprofit off of off the ground. You don't have to repay that that money.
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You just have to keep fixing it until it's right. Take some time. And so 30 days go by and we're sitting out front. We took our food out there and have a table in the driveway saying hi to all the neighbors and everything. And she walks down to the mailbox and comes back and she's flipping letters on my lap.
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This is for you. This is for you. She goes, This one's definitely for you. And she flips it over. And I look down and it says, IRS on it, and I open it up. This is 30 days after we send it in and it said, Congratulations, you're a5a1c3 nonprofit. 30 days later, 30 days later, you're out. The attorneys and everything you would hear.
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We met not in: ::Unknown
And it was staying stable. And then about five months after we got married, it started falling apart. She they found cancer in her neck. Her neck broke. Emergency surgery, broken bones in her lower spine. Seven hour spinal surgery traumatized me. I was like they said she was going to be in there 2 hours. 7 hours later, this surgeon comes walking out and he looks like he just ran a marathon.
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He was pulling off all his scrubs and stuff and he was covered with sweat. And he says when we opened up her back to to destabilize that area, there was so much cancer there that we didn't expect. We're going to run into that. And and so this is the kind of stuff that we went through and we prayed through.
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And constantly Hannah would say this is temporary, that that wheelchair you got me temporary. And four months later, after a seven hour spinal surgery, she's jet skiing on the Colorado River. So she wasn't just saying it was temporary. Her goals were it was temporary. And she would get in our pool with a floatie because she couldn't walk down the sidewalk, but she could walk in the pool.
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to Saint Augustine, Florida,: ::Unknown
And it was a personal goal of can a guy after stage four cancer and at 58 years old do this. You know so that's what was on my mind and support and she was the support crew. She was driving the RV she was had my dog in the RV behind us. Just you to just us two.
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didn't realize that
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miles a day for: ::Unknown
the people that God was putting in our path and I forgot all about me like this 58 year old guy trying to see if I could even climb these mountains coming out of San Diego.
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It was all about God's plan that day and who he was going to put in our path. And we did that for two and a half months. You just
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people would be showing up and in your story and
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everywhere. Everywhere. Could be a laundromat in some little town in California. It could be in an RV park, you
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remember or can you give us an example
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Oh, which one you want to hear about? I mean, it was it was insane pulling up in a in a town and getting gas, talking to somebody at the gas station and tell our story, hugging them. And they're like, I'm going to come and get you tonight and take you to dinner.
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And then we some total stranger come and take us to dinner and take us to the grocery store to buy groceries and at dinner and at the grocery store, we're talking to people about our story and that person got to see it happen like that.
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All over the country. All over the country. Yeah. So what happened was some ups and downs through the bike ride, there was a pretty nasty wreck in Louisiana where I hit a metal grate in the road, went over the handlebars and was in a hospital in Baton Rouge for three days and they came back and said, Nothing's broken.
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You probably got some nerve damage because you hyperextended everything. I'd probably stay off a bike for three or four months and the next day I was back on the bike riding again and the first two days were kind of shaky. You know, I'm looking at sticks on the road and bumps and stuff, but on day three, I started riding pretty good.
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And I mean, this is just the way I looked at it.
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We already rode: ::Unknown
It was absolutely incredible. There was like four different news stations there buzzing around. It's like BS. And we were laughing like, look at this. This is crazy, you know? And and so what happened was when we got back from that bike, that incredible bike journey, Hannah started having some migraine headaches, got some tests done, and they found three tumors in her on her brain.
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And the suggestion at the time was that she get full brain radiation because we don't want this stuff popping up. You know, we want to just stop it right now. While some people's bodies can take radiation in, some people's can. Hannah got full brain radiation and hers, she couldn't take it. Her body started melting down. And so the next four months was nothing short of a nightmare, you know, of the pain and me being a caregiver and taking care of her.
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And and I lost her on November 29th. And and and if I didn't have faith, I'd probably be drunk right now. That's not a joke. I mean, I've I've you know, I thought about I was like, reach for that bottle and just numb yourself up or just pray through this. God, you got me. You got me. And the beautiful thing that happened also right after she passed away was thousands and thousands of letters from emails, text messages.
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And these were coming in from all over the world, people following our foundation. This is this is international now because we're on YouTube in places that don't have any boundaries. And we're getting emails from Germany of groups of people that are following our story and that were heartbroken because of Hannah. You know, Hannah's passing and were telling me how much Hannah inspired them.
::Unknown
t couple of days, it was over: ::Unknown
It's we're in the cancer world. We're in that industry. So so what happens in that industry is you lose somebody that you became very close to. And it's it's hard. It's the hardest part. It's the hardest thing that I do. And and the another thing was after the person passed their loved ones being really upset, why they didn't know the why.
::Unknown
Why did this happen? He was going to retire next year. We were getting an RV. We're going to go around the world and now he's gone. Why? And I seen people stay mad for years. And and within a few days after Hannah passed away, God's and now you know the why.
::Unknown
So, you know, gift is like a gift.
::Unknown
And it's hard, you know, the waves hit me and stuff. One of her favorite songs comes on, you know, or or just in Hawaii and one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been on in my life, looking at this crystal clear water in the sun, in the mountains, in the volcanoes and the tropical plants around me. And I'm sitting there by myself.
::Unknown
And I said, man, I didn't you know, I wasn't ready for this. So that that trip, even though I had an opportunity to speak to a lot of people on the big island about my cancer testimony and what happened was also a healing time for me.
::Unknown
You know, you've been so transparent with this journey. I been following you and you
::Unknown
posted recently if I can get through the sentence that you posted recently, You said after my loved one passed away, I used her towel in the bathroom for two months.
::Unknown
I can't get through it.
::Unknown
Yeah, it's
::Unknown
I think because we were so close, we did everything together. It was so beautiful that God put her in my path that I was. I mean, I. I asked her to marry me.
::Unknown
And driving home, I was like, God, you had this plan for me.
::Unknown
Wow.
::Unknown
I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe I was that blessed. And we did so much stuff together. And it's been five months now, and I'm still reaching for my phone to her. A text. I just miss her and I. I know. I don't know if it'll get any easier. It hasn't yet. Five months, you know, but I don't know how people get through this without faith.
::Unknown
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
::Unknown
yeah.
::Unknown
Because like you're saying, even even within days God gave you a gift for it and with it giving you a y. But I imagine how it comes in waves. Um, I imagine. And, you know, I,
::Unknown
may be able to do this now that you said after my loved one passed
::Unknown
Yeah, we did a lot of a lot of videos because we have a cancer foundation. We did a lot of videos on the bike ride and I still, five months later and my day with a little prayer time and I watched one of her videos. A lot of people tell me, Oh, I can't go, I can't look at the videos, I can't look at her, you know, pictures.
::Unknown
I have to that's my memories. And at first, I couldn't look at the last year because she had lost her hair from chemo. She had you know, her physical body started to change. At first, I couldn't look those ones because it was just too hard. So I'll go look at the ones when we first met and she had this long, dark hair and, you know, and that's the ones I went to, you know, and and it was kind of interesting.
::Unknown
I started watching these videos and they started
::Unknown
picking up things that I didn't pick up in the past. Yeah, there was one where we were on our honeymoon and the last night, Oceanside, we wanted to take some pictures a while the sun was setting behind us and I was waiting for her on the beach and she come walking down with her wedding dress on and these little girls were talking to her and.
::Unknown
And I said, What do they say? And she says, They said, We love your dress. And she told him, I just got married. And then she turned to me. I don't remember ever seeing this. And she says, This is every girl's dream. This is my dream dress. And she got to experience her dream dress with me. Yeah. So it's the videos.
::Unknown
It's the it's the it's all the things. We've worked on so many projects for the foundation that are
::Unknown
launching now. Yeah. You know, And I'm like, Here you go, babe. We're doing it. We're doing it.
::Unknown
how do you, you know, even with our audience listening, I don't know. I'm asking you this question or you're in the process of it, but how do you deal with your grief?
::Unknown
Because as you said before, in the in the thing that you're dealing with, you're dealing with more just a grief for the loss of your wife. You you were telling me before we turn the mics on that you make friends with some of these cancer patients
::Unknown
Yeah. And
::Unknown
then some of them pass away. So you're having to deal with grief.
::Unknown
A lot?
::Unknown
Yeah. You know, the
::Unknown
first couple of times that happened early in this, I don't even know if we had a foundation. I was just loving on cancer people and lost somebody. And I hung up the phone in tears and I said, God, you want me to do this? This is hard. And God says, Keep on going.
::Unknown
You're getting stronger, you're getting better. And so you just keep on going. You know, like you said, I don't just because of the person that I am, I will never be comfortable. I could not be a hospice nurse. You know, I'm not I'm not good at that. I can't be around the end of life. What I just experienced with Hanna and just looking in other people's eyes and seeing what they're going through also.
::Unknown
But it's so hard. But all of the rest of my journey and my purpose that God had set for me is so important. And it's so amazing that this old farm boy, this old landscaper, pinches himself because I'm I'm talking to people about my testimony and I'm changing lives. I'm touching lives. And and I see them and I've got people.
::Unknown
I'm telling them my story in the park, mom walking my dog and they're in tears. And I give them a hug. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm going to make you cry. And they're like, I've had a really tough three years. And I was kind of thinking recently, maybe I should go back to church. And I just heard your story, and this Sunday I'm going back to church and I give them a hug and I walk away and I start crying.
::Unknown
I'm like, You want me to bring people to you? Yeah. I didn't know all of this was before for that reason. And then I started maturing into that of what that meant, what that looked like, what that felt like, how hard it is sometimes. But is it worth it every second, every second.
::Unknown
So tell us about the the tattoo right here on this this arm.
::Unknown
Oh, my gosh. Well, so
::Unknown
me and Hannah were sitting side by side. We had our desks next to each other at our house. That's where we ran our foundation from. And I was talking to a guy going through cancer on the speakerphone, and he just said, I haven't been out of out of bed in weeks. The diagnosis, you know, the aches and pains, I don't know how I'm going to deal with this.
::Unknown
And Hannah sitting next to me and she says, you got to tell him he needs to get up and live. He's he's not going to live life. He's not going experience anything in that bed. And I told him, I said, you've got to get up and live. And I just after I hung up the phone, I tore. I said, I love that phrase.
::Unknown
I love that phrase. So we started saying, get up and live and at the moment, at the moment of dealing with somebody going through cancer, it's a physical thing. You got to get up and live. And we started seeing it so much that me and Hannah went and got matching tattoos that say, get up and live on them.
::Unknown
And and, you know, we got all kinds of pictures of us together showing our tattoos, or people would ask us and we would show them our tattoos. And what I realized was, when you say get up and live, it's the physical thing, but the mental thing has to really kick in fast. Okay, I'm going to start getting out of bed today and taking a shower and being human again.
::Unknown
The women say, I'm going to put on my makeup for the first time in months and just feel good about myself. I'm going to go for a walk with my husband or with my wife tonight. They start out these little baby steps and these mini goals, but they're getting up to live. And what happens is they realize that cancer is a situation, not a sentence.
::Unknown
Everybody thinks it's a sentence when they hear the C word and they flip out and they start shutting down in fear. And so we step in and say, you know what? You got to give and live. And what we realized was it wasn't just get up and live physically and mentally, but on a huge scale. How about get up and live spiritually?
::Unknown
And if we can start hey, can I say a little prayer for you right now? You know, and that's where it started. And encourage them to get up and live spiritually as well, because it sure helps you get through this, too, this journey, this journey called life, right? Yeah. Well,
::Unknown
and that's where when you shared a little bit about that before and then watching your journey online, it it's definitely in your world you're dealing specifically with cancer patients but that is that's a message we can all take.
::Unknown
You get up and live it. It's God's heart
::Unknown
Yeah. And you know, when you see social media, you know that there's probably going to be maybe 25, 30% of the people watching and following and really into this journey of of of of us being completely transparent. But who are the other 70% people that didn't have cancer but are exactly what you just said. If they can do this going through stage four cancer, maybe I need to get up and live a little bit myself.
::Unknown
and it's it is it's touching people's lives.
::Unknown
Yeah, it absolutely
::Unknown
Yeah.
::Unknown
Yeah,
::Unknown
foundation is called Living Hope Cancer Foundation and that's something we prayed through also. And that's what came to us was Living Hope Cancer Foundation. So that's what we're registered get up and live phrase is so easy to pass around in the park, at the grocery store, you know, anywhere I'm at that we say it all the time.
::Unknown
We say it so much that we patented it. We actually own Get Up and Live Now, which is a hoot. You know, I can't even believe it, you know, but basically get up and live, Dawg was so easy for for us to give out and just to tell somebody. And they're like, How are you going to forget that?
::Unknown
You know, get up, get up and live? I can remember that. So even if I didn't have a business card or a sticker or something on me, I could give them Get Up and Live Dawg is our website and it's all free cancer coaching. It's there's a Bible plan on there. There's an event that I did last year when a movie crew came to Scottsdale and shot me and my story for the 700 Club and all that stuff's on the get up and live Dawg Sight.
::Unknown
Yeah.
::Unknown
Well, tell us a little bit about these things. You brought these for me and that that's that comes
::Unknown
from, well, actually, I only brought one of them for you. I brought, I brought you a coffee cup that has me and Hannah actually from our, from our honeymoon that night when we were at the beach we jumped and did the old, you know, in motion shot.
::Unknown
And I kept looking on camera and all these places to to find somebody celebrating. And one day Hannah was like, What about us? What about this thing of us? And so are us. US jumping became our are living hope cancer Foundation logo. And then on the back I put it, we found a Bible phrase that we love about living hope.
::Unknown
So that is for you. That's a coffee cup. And then I've got this other little guy here. So I've got a dog at home named Jack that came into my life through my cancer journey, and he was the little guy saying, Take me for a walk, you know, get off the couch. Let's get up and live. Let's let's go.
::Unknown
And so Jack's is just a little rock star in my life. And so many people loved him. And they kept saying, I want to take Jack's home with me. And I kept laughing, You're not taking my dog home with you. And I'd get home and I was like, How could they take Jack's home with them? And I came up with this company that duplicates your animal.
::Unknown
And we made these little Jack's dogs that look exactly like my Jack's. And we send these to cancer patients all over the country. And a little tag by his tail actually says, Free cancer coach you can get up and live dot org. And so I'm giving this to you, but it's not for you. It's for when somebody comes into your life that has cancer, I want you to give that to them.
::Unknown
I
::Unknown
will do that, my friend.
::Unknown
Yeah, get up and live dot org
::Unknown
so, you know, through this it's growing so fast that I wish everything was get up and live or living hope Cancer Foundation but it's not so Chuck deals on Facebook and Living Hope Cancer Foundation on Facebook. I've got 30,000 followers on TikTok under Chuck Kiehl's follow up following my journey, which is blowing my mind.
::Unknown
I'll post something and get 600,000 views and it's like, What is this? What is this? But it's a platform. And so that's under Chuck Keels. And then our Instagram, it's both Chuck heals and and Living Hope Cancer Foundation. So YouTube Living Hope Cancer Foundation so it's not one set thing because it kind of all grew so fast that we're still working on getting it down to one thing.
::Unknown
But for someone that needs the cancer coaching, we put 40 videos on Get Up and Live Dawg. That is free cancer coaching for any type of cancer. And then we put 16 more videos that Hannah did about breast cancer. It's called the Cancer Roadmap Project. It's on Get Up and Live, dawg. I'm at the bottom of that website is my email and I encourage people when.
::Unknown
They told somebody, Oh my gosh, I met a guy today that has cancer and I told him about your website and he's going to go on it. And I tell him I encouraged them to go to the bottom, drop me a message. I really want to have a one on one conversation with that person and chat with them about, you know, their journey and their life and how they're how they're planning on getting through this.
::Unknown
And hopefully I can be a little bit of a navigation and guidance and support. And I absolutely hate the thought that there are a lot of people out there that are going through a cancer journey by themselves, and that is a really, really tough one. So I'm hoping that we can get enough awareness so that people know who Living Hope Cancer Foundation is, so that when the word when the cancer word comes down, they're like, you got to you got to get on the site, you got to get ahold of Chuck.
::Unknown
And this is what. Yeah, So get up a live dawg
::Unknown
Chuck, are no couriers no great areas team we commend you because you are certainly living out that message to get up and live. I mean even in the midst of your grief now and in this journey that you're on, you are getting up in your living and you're making a difference.
::Unknown
One of my favorite passages of verses in the Bible is is Ephesians two for just the first two words of it were says, But God,
::Unknown
Yeah. You know, the foundations. Three years old, I think we're still a baby. I have no idea what God's plan is next. And I know that it's just it's just it's a beautiful thing. And
::Unknown
blessed, you know, I'm humbled.
::Unknown
I'm a servant, you know, I'm a humble servant. I'm an old farm boy from Ohio. You know, I'm just pinch myself as like me. I cannot believe I just went to Hawaii and talk to people about my cancer journey. But this is the purpose. This is where he's got me. And so it's you know, it's it's it's I always tell everybody I'm all in for God.
::Unknown
I'm all in. Yeah,
::Unknown
love that about you, man. And thank you. Thanks for being an example to all of us on that. So, two truths in a lie. Do you think you can stop us now? We've audience gotten
::Unknown
so tell you tell you three things and you got to find out which one is a lie to
::Unknown
try to figure out which one is the lie.
::Unknown
Okay I got some pretty cool stuff. Do you guys know who Bob Golf is? Yeah. So I spent
::Unknown
couple of hours with Bob Golf on on the beach in in actually in San Diego where he lives. Another cool thing that happened was I was meeting with a group of political advisors. One of them heard my story at a funeral from a friend of mine was like, tell me the story.
::Unknown
And I got called into to a meeting and got a chance to fly out to Washington for a meeting. And while the meeting was going on, President Trump walked in the room. Wow, that was really, really cool. And then something back in my younger days when I was in much better shape before cancer and everything, I was a fitness model for 15 years and I was in Muslim Fitness magazine and did a lot of fun stuff with that.
::Unknown
Also,
::Unknown
you're good, you're you're
::Unknown
Okay. I saw that. Yes, I
::Unknown
Yeah.
::Unknown
Who's
::Unknown
No, we've
::Unknown
planned it, you know, through some people and stuff, and we said we're going to be in San Diego. And he says, Give me a call. I'm going to be busy, but I'll make it happen. And he showed up and it was so cool.
::Unknown
And Bob, you know, he's an attorney, but he took his money building schools in Uganda and stuff. He's done some amazing things. And if you see him speak all over the world on stage in churches and and that's what it was my question was, Bob, you're an attorney. You didn't go to school to be a pastor and you're you talk about Jesus just like it's, you know, And I says, So what is your title?
::Unknown
And he says, I'm just a dude. Yeah. And I said,
::Unknown
I'm just a dude, too. Then
::Unknown
yeah, yeah,
::Unknown
yeah, yeah.
::Unknown
it is true. Really? Yeah. Muscle and fitness and did I model for, for 15 years and I was told the agency I was in such good shape I said you don't have to give me a three week warning.
::Unknown
I'm ready today because I just stay in shape. I love fitness and that was part of it. So I modeled in Ohio and I modeled out here and I did some stuff in California, and it was just fun. It was this cool. It was fun.
::Unknown
So was the middle one. Was there any of that? That was truth. Like. Like, did you speak to a political group and Trump just didn't walk in?
::Unknown
right?
::Unknown
So. So I didn't even speak to the group. I no, I didn't speak to the group. But what happened was
::Unknown
gentleman and he basically is one of the highest political officials for for President Trump heard my story at a funeral and called me and said, I want to hear the story. And so I did have the conversation with him, but I had a little bit more to it.
::Unknown
So but
::Unknown
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank thank you so much for inviting me today. I really appreciate it
::Unknown
Well,
::Unknown
Chuck
::Unknown
left us with a lot of things to think about, but certainly the question that you and I need to wrestle with is how we're going to get up and live. I encourage you to think through that, maybe even leave some comments below or email us at info at no gray areas dot com and remember to like follow and subscribe
