Season 2025. Episode 8. Getting through life's toughest challenges-- Andy Campbell

Author and Speaker Andy Campbell has been through a lot in his life. Any one of the things he has endured would be almost too much, but somehow he has fought through and even written a book (“Overcoming Life’s Toughest Setbacks”)  designed to help others.

Bio:

Andy Campbell is a resilient survivor and inspirational author who has overcome numerous life-altering challenges - a victim of childhood sexual abuse and bullying, the loss of his mother at an early age and the eventual estrangement from his father, his battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and the loss of his youngest son to suicide. Despite enduring multiple surgeries, grueling chemotherapy treatments, and the tragic loss of his youngest child, Andy has demonstrated remarkable strength and perseverance. Through his experiences, he has developed a unique perspective on resilience and the power of his 15 core beliefs.

Andy lives with his wife and remains actively engaged in the lives of his three remaining adult children as he continues to support his family while managing his own health challenges. His book “Overcoming Life’s Toughest Setbacks” shares the principles that have helped him navigate life’s darkest moments, offering hope and guidance to others facing adversity.

Core Beliefs:

• No One Outruns the Universe: Embrace humility and acceptance, knowing you are part of a larger plan.
• There Are No Hard Decisions, Only Hard Consequences: Follow your heart and face the consequences with courage.
• Always Fall Forward: Keep moving toward your goals, even when you fall.
• Have an Insatiable Curiosity: Let your desire to find wisdom guide you through life.
• Compete Only With Yourself: Measure success by your own progress, not by comparing yourself to others.
• Thinking vs. Knowing: Distinguish between assumptions and knowledge.
• Every Challenge Has a Chewy Nougat Center Made of Opportunity: Persevere to find the hidden lessons in every struggle.
• Never Be Waiting: Always find work to do and remain proactive.
• Never “Try,” Always Work: Commit to action and avoid complacency.
• The .38 Special Rule—Hold on Loosely, but Don’t Let Go: Balance control and freedom to foster innovation and growth.
• Be Religious Only About Religion: Apply flexibility and open-mindedness to all but your core faith.
• Equations Are Constant, Variables Are Constantly Changing: Adapt your strategies to meet evolving circumstances.
• History Doesn’t Repeat Itself. Humans Repeat History: Learn from the past to avoid repeating mistakes.
• The Necessity of Perseverance: Embrace resilience as the foundation of all other beliefs.
• Finishing: Commit to completing what you start as the ultimate testament to perseverance.

Author Andy Campbell has faced and overcome so

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
Check out my Facebook group -- The Storied Human.

The Storied Human is on YouTube now-- check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIHYKJ0fBDIF7hzWCu7b396GMJU-2qb7h

Have a story? DM me on instagram: lthompson_574
Drop me an email: thestoriedhuman@gmail.com

See all my links on Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/StoriedHuman/

Also see all episodes on my new website: https://www.podpage.com/the-storied-human-what-is-your-story/episodes/

Keep in touch!

Original music "Saturday Sway" by Brendan Talian (for all interviews before 2025)

Transcript

Unknown: 0:33

Hello and welcome to The Storied Human I'm Lynne Thompson. My guest today is Andy Campbell. He's a resilient survivor and inspirational author who has overcome numerous life altering challenges, a victim of childhood sexual abuse and bullying, the loss of his mother at an early age and the eventual estrangement from his father, his battle with stage four pancreatic pancreatic cancer, and the loss of his youngest son to suicide, despite enduring multiple surgeries, grueling chemotherapy treatments and the tragic loss of his youngest child, Andy has demonstrated remarkable strength and perseverance through his experiences, he has developed a unique perspective on resilience and the power of his 15 core beliefs. Andy lives with his wife and remains actively engaged in the lives of his three remaining adult children as he continues to support his family while managing his own health challenges his book, overcoming life's toughest setbacks, shares the principles that have helped him navigate life's darkest moments offering hope and guidance to others facing adversity. Adversity, undefined, welcome. Andy, I cannot believe, welcome. Thank you. Lynne, pleasure, one of those things would put somebody under. I mean, one of those things would be tough, and you somehow have not only gotten through those things, but you've written a book to help others. So really excited to dig into this with you. Thank you. I'm glad to be here, and I hope that it's my sincere hope and prayer that something in our conversation will encourage someone who is going through a difficult situation and wondering if they can continue, or, you know, can they put it back together again? So that's my hope, and I appreciate the opportunity. I'm so glad to hear you say that, because I really like the idea that our words go out there and we don't know who's listening, and that we can help somebody be inspired by your story. They can hold on listening to what you've been through. I'm really glad that you that you said that. So where do you want to start? Oh, well, you know, I guess maybe I just kind of set the context of how, okay, these, you know, these 15, what I call my core beliefs, but these kind of 15 principles that I over time, just collected, you know, I would look at a situation that I had been through and let's say, Well, what, how did you Get through that? Like, what, you know, what were you doing? And I'm kind of, I'm a visual learner, you know, so I have to kind of think in pictures, and I can't remember, you know, like, it's hard for me to remember, like, long stories, but I could remember a phrase, and so I could kind of have this metaphrase That, to me, represented something, you know, a lot more information. And that way, when I ran into a problem again, I could kind of refer back to it. So somewhere along the way, I just started writing them down. And so good, you know, it it ended up with, like, five, and then somehow it kind of grew to 10, and then when I got to 15, I was like, I'm not writing down anymore. Everything needs to fall under those 15. Anything else I experienced needs to go into those 15. You know, some I've learned decades ago, and some I've learned in the last two years, you know, just and some I learned a long time ago, but then they took on different meanings over the last few years. You know, like that is like, ah, that still applies, but it just has a different meaning to me today than it did then. So think one of the things that I hope that your listeners will take away from this is when they if they look at the 15 core beliefs or principles, they're really kind of, they're designed to fit you where you are, and to use them the way that it comes to you, that they apply, right? So there's not a one size fit all. It's not like do this, follow these steps. The idea is that someone could be. In their situation, look kind of down the list and say, oh, you know what? I'm not being curious enough. I need to, I think one of the things I need to do is I need to move from what I think I know to what I really know. And to do that, I need to be curious. And so that's what I'm going to be curious right now. I'm going to go try to find the answer. I'm going to work to find the answer to this question and but they may have a different take on what that means. And I think it's I think that's great. I don't just think it's fine. I think that's the way it should be, you know. So I won't give step by step. I think it just is contoured and customized in its definition and its meaning to the listener and the reader to apply as they see fit. So when did it occur to you that this would make a good book? Probably last summer. So you know, you know how things kind of stack up on you over the years, and sometimes, like, you kind of get to a point where the situation you're dealing with is not enough to make you like to kind of make you bend the knee. But the weight of all the things that have happened when this one last thing so I'd had to, where I work, I had to do another round of layoffs. Was, it wasn't a big one, but it was. It was people that I knew and that I cared about the people who care about the people who work for me. I say work for me, report to me or in my organization that I'm responsible for. And for some reason, that one just really got to me, like it had been a number several of them in a row over a year or so. And I decided that just mentally, I needed to take and you know, you stack up all these other things, the cancer treatment, the loss of my son, I was just like, I gotta have a break. I gotta have a break. And so luckily, our benefits package allowed for a a medical leave of absence. And that got approved. And so I took about 90 days. The first 90 days I, I mean, the first 30 days, I kind of wondered why I had taken the leave, you know, like you know. And then the next 30 days, I just fell into this deep exhaustion where I think I did nothing but sleep for like, it was like everything had caught up with me. So I don't even think it was the lay. I don't think it was the layoffs that really did it. It was just like that was the straw. One more thing, right? One more very impressed that you that you knew you needed, that that's unusual. I think that's so good. I think I had come to the place where, um, it was one of those decisions that it was, it was like that quiet voice in your head, and it kind of goes to this, this, this principle of, there there are no hard decisions. There's only hard consequences. And what that means is, you know, humans will take consequences, their perception of hard consequences from making a decision. They'll take that difficulty and they'll put it over on the decision, and then they'll say, Well, this is a really hard decision, when really it's not a hard decision, right? It's just you don't want to live with the consequences of making the right decision, right? And I felt like that was one of those, actually, that I looked at that and I said, well, like this still small voice is telling me, you've, you've really pushed you, you know, I worked all the way through the cancer treatments. I think I took off maybe. I think I may have taken off a week when my son passed away, you know, like part of it was just working. Kept me, you know, kept my mind on something, especially like during the cancer treatments and stuff, I needed something to kind of, I mean, yes, my family was enough to live for, but I needed something to kind of Occupy me, give me a reason to get up out of the bed, you know, because your family will say, hey, you need your rest, when what I needed was something to say, No, you need to get up, you know, and do something and feel normal as much As can, right? Oh yeah, I remember my wife just recently told me that she understands now why I did it, but my hair was falling out from the chemo. I never lost all my hair, but, but it had fallen but enough of it came out that it reminded me I was on chemo. Now, you'd say, but don't you know you're on chemo. There was this visual thing of, yeah, like, running your hands through your hair, and your hair would just be in your hand. So I shaved my head. I was just like, I'm not dealing with that. My wife's like, why don't you shave your head? You haven't lost all your hair. And I said, it's the process of losing the hair that's getting to me, right? Go ahead, you could take control of it. That's what I love about that, yeah, right. I needed to do something and and I knew that it was giving me a negative mindset watching that happen, yeah? So what I could take control of was, was getting rid of those negative thoughts by just shaving it off. That may sound silly, but it was like to me, yeah, yeah. I was like, I gotta some. I. Have to have some level of control over this thing, and I don't want to be negative. And it does like you see your hair in your hands. Oh, my God, this stuff is killing me. But if I didn't have hair that, at least, that was one more thing I wouldn't think about, you know. And so look, and you controlled it, right? It was me. So I think what happened was I really had just gotten, I had pushed too far, and then when we did these layoffs, I think that was just like the straw. And so I had that little voice that said, Andy, you you're going to need to take some time. Like, you need to take some time. And I, you know, and in the conversation I had like, Well, what I'm, what am I going to do? You know? Like, I'm going to leave, I'm going to make less money, I'm going to have these problems, I'm not going to have my team. I'm, you know, there's work to be done, you know. And but this little voice just kept saying, you know, there are things to do, and it's not that you need to do these other things. I don't know what that was really but after a few days of thinking about it, I said, you know, I'm gonna go do this other type of therapy. And if I do that, I'm gonna schedule twice a week, and I'm gonna make that part of my, part of my, you know, time away. Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not just gonna lay around. I'm gonna invest in, in, in working to do something for my mental health, you know, like, if so the first 30 days, I mean, I started doing that, started going to this, a different therapist for a different kind of, kind of, like a hypnotherapy, kind of integration with the MDR and hypnotherapy, that kind of stuff like that. So I was going twice a week. First 30 days, I was like, why did you even take off? And then the next 30 days, I realized how exhausted I was, like, it just hit me, because I wasn't working, all of a sudden, you know, I went to bed and just didn't feel like it like I couldn't get out, like I was just I started thinking, Okay, you actually are exhausted, so you really did need to take the opportunity, because I paid for benefits for 20 years, and I never really used those, like use the benefit. And then in the last two weeks, I decided, determined the date that I was going to go back. I felt good to go back. And my general physician and some other folks who said, You ought to write a story about all this stuff. Well, I don't really think about all that stuff, you know, because, like, a lot of stuff, you put in a box, you stuff it down, you think you're dealing with it. You just, you know, it's like, I don't really know, it's not that big a deal. That's just life. Lot of love stuff happens to a lot of people. That's just life. But in the last couple weeks, I kind of felt this motivation to start writing stuff down. And I had the 15 core beliefs like that was I'd already jotted those down, you know, like I had those on paper. And I'm not a writer. That's not my thing. And I don't really know what happened, but one thing led to another. Next thing I know, I had hired, like, an editor, and then somebody to do a book cover, and then somebody did the format. And next thing I know, it's like it was done. And so literally, from, like, start to finish, I think it was like 12 days, you know, and put it up on, I put it up on Amazon, and, you know, something like that. It was, it was a very, it was before I went back to work. So, wow, less than, certainly, less than three weeks. And so I, you know, I didn't want to write about particularly every instant, like every event, or everything that had happened as I started to work on it. I thought, you know, a lot of people go through a lot of things, and it doesn't matter whether, you know, somebody has stage four pancreatic cancer, or someone had a back surgery, of which I've had two, or they have a, you know, they've had a physical disability, or something like, don't get into the thing, the event, get into the principles that helped you. You know, there was a point at which in my cancer treatment, I was, I'm in a cancer trial, still, but the first part of that was I did an immunotherapy along with a drug, and I still take the drug, but the immunotherapy kind of a funny story. The immunotherapy, they said, You're gonna, you're in the trial of the arm of the trial where you can do, you'll do four rounds of the immunotherapy, and then it'll stop, and then we'll see what happens. And so in the other round, they just keep going on and on, like I do mine once every three weeks, but it's only four times, and they do theirs every two weeks, and they just keep going. And the doctor said, yes, yeah, yeah. I said, Well, why? Why do I got to stop after four rounds? Why can't I keep going? And she said, Well, you know, after four rounds, you know, we lose some of the, some of the trial participants. And I said, You mean, like, like, they just quit, like, you lose them, like you don't know where they are or what? I said, No, we know where they are. They're just in the morgue. My god, oh, so like, force that I got a five is we don't have a lot of people that come back. From five. So it determined force, like, okay? And they said, Well, you know, most people, you know, don't be surprised if you get past one or two and like, we have to take off of it. Don't be surprised. Okay. Well, I got to the third one. I was feeling fabulous. I mean, like, I felt like that. My immune system was just jacked. And I was, I was getting up in the morning, I felt the best I'd felt in a decade. Literally, I felt that. I mean, I was like, I'm feeling great. And the last week, go to the week, just before I went to do the fourth one, I had a little bit of like a stomach bug, you know, but not enough to even mention to the doctors. I mean, it was just like, and it was like, there, and then it was gone, and, like, whatever. So I did the fourth round. Well, what it turns out is that during at the latter end, before I did the fourth round, it had started attacking my intestines. I didn't realize that. And it wasn't that big, it wasn't that bad. Was just like, you know, and it had kind of gone away. It was like, there, and then it went away. Well, when I did the fourth round, it turned on me and almost perforated my intestines, and, oh my gosh, I I ended up with, I guess, I guess it's like colitis, but basically it's like this, your immune system's attacking your own intestines. And they didn't want to put me on IV, didn't want to put me on IV and steroids, because they, you know, it's kind of like, well, your immune system is actually working. We want your immune system to work. We just don't want it to work this well. But I ended up by I ended up having colitis, which meant going to the bathroom between 15 and 20 times a day for over for four months. That will change your life. I actually had a surgery to have to repair like because you're not designed to do that. Honestly, no, but I guess what I'm saying is you go through those things, and then you start, you start thinking about, I didn't want to relive those in the book. I didn't want to, like, go through all those details. What I wanted to say was, without going into all the details, here's some of the big things that happened. There's a bunch of little stuff along the way that went along with these big things. But what matters is, don't quit. That's what matters. Yes, don't quit. Whatever your big thing is, don't quit. Whatever your big thing is, and it doesn't have to compare to mine. It doesn't have to compare to somebody else's, right? It's your big thing. It's in that moment you've had a setback. Whatever that setback is, yeah, don't quit. And here's some ideas for you to help keep your mind facing toward the objective, right, the goal. So that's how I started. I love that. So what is it that makes somebody go through these things and want to help others? And somebody else might not decide that, not that it's bad if you don't help others, but I'm just so struck by people who take the adversity that came into their life and they want to use it to help other people. Where does that come from? Well, so this, that's a, you know, I've never been asked that question. I appreciate that. That's a great question. Thank you. So let me backtrack just a little bit and come back and I think I will answer it, but just let me weave a little bit to get there. Okay, that's okay when I went through the cancer treatment, I had kind of documented and is that on my website? So if somebody has solid tumor, cancer and they want to know what I did, not a doctor, I'm not recommending anything. It's just information, purpose only. These are the things that I did. The reason I built the website was because, not because I'm a website designer, or I wanted to have a website. What happened was people would come and they'd say, wow, you're still alive, and you had state four pancreatic cancer. What did you do? I would tell them what I did. Yeah, I do acupuncture every week when they take the port off and I feel awful. I do guided imagery every week to help me deal with, you know, clearing toxicity out of myself, you know, to and it doesn't matter to me if all these things are in my mind, to me, that's kind of the point my mind needs to, like, be unlocked and do some things that medicine can't do, right? Like, do its own set of kind of healing and things that we don't even understand what the mind can do. Because I had a doctor, an oncologist one time say, but Andy, I say, you ought to tell your patients to do some of these things. I'm doing guided imagery, acupuncture. And he said, Well, what if it's all in your mind? And I said, the outcome is more important than the process. So if it is all in my mind and I'm getting better, isn't that the point? Yeah, but you know, what does it matter? But I would do all these things I was had to acupuncture. I do, got an imagery, I do Reiki, I do all and then I take, you know, these 40 supplements, or 35 supplements a day. And I take these on label medications, then these off label medications, I do the standard of care tree, you know, so, like, there's, and then people would say, Andy, that's just too much. I'm not doing all that. I'm not doing. I. I'm not doing it. And I said, Well, you know, look, you've got, you've got stage four pancreatic cancer. And I'm not saying this will work, but one of the things I have on my website is, and I believe this, that we were lied to as children, whether it's a fairy tale or it's a horror story there nowhere wolf was ever killed with one silver bullet. That's a lie. It takes a lot of silver bullets, okay? And you got to put a lot of you got to put a lot of silver into a werewolf to kill it. And that looks my approach to cancer. Cancer is a werewolf. I'm going to use everything I can. I take an approach that says I'm gonna do everything I can that will weaken the cancer cells. I'm going to do the standard of care therapy that will help kill the cancer cells in a weakened condition, and I'm going to do all these other things to help my own energy levels get up so I can so I can sustain myself through the treatments, right? Like that. That was kind of the three pronged approach. So I got tired of hearing people tell me that they didn't want to do all the things that I did. So I did a website, and now when people say, What did you do? I go read the website. You got questions. Call me right that way. If they kind of reject it, I don't have to deal with the rejection Right. Like, right, because I kind of, I want them to live too, but you know, it's like, can't solve everything. So I was actually kind of resistant to doing this. I've been a few people that told me, You should write it down, and I was just resistance. Not that I didn't want to help people, but I had, I had tried. I thought I'd work to help people, and they just said, No, I don't want to do all that. So I was like, Well, I don't, I don't want, I'm struggling to keep my own self positive. I don't need to hear your negativity in this thing, right? I don't want that. That's when it dawned on me that I could, I could do this without talking about the things that I did right. I could just talk about the philosophy of why I did things without getting into the things right. So I could talk about being insatiably curious. Instead of saying I found all these supplements that would weaken cancer cells, right, I could say, you know, whatever, whichever one you know, thinking versus knowing, I could say, well, I worked through curiosity to know how a cancel shell worked, and what was needed, and how the you know, how the mechanics of it worked. But instead of saying all that, I just kind of say, you know, one of the principles is, if you think you know something, then that means you don't know it. So work to know it, right? Like know as much as you can to help yourself. So that's kind of how I decided I wanted to share it, but I needed to find a way that I could share it, and someone could say, well, that doesn't apply to me. I don't want to do that. And it didn't, it didn't kind of bother me personally. And so this was my way to say, Okay, we won't talk about specific things. Doesn't matter which what your setback is. Let's just talk about the principles. Yeah, I like that. It's like, you raised it up a level so that everybody can relate to it, right, right? And I don't have to, you know? And if somebody doesn't want to do one, then it's not like, we're having a direct conversation. They go, No, I just refuse to do that. I'd rather die. And I'm like, I'm trying to stay alive. I want to know about you dying, right? I don't want to hear you tell me there's just too much because that, you know, that kind of I'm I'm working to stay in the game, you know, and so, and I want to help other people stay in the game. Yeah, I think it's especially important with something like pancreatic cancer, because it's such a devastating diagnosis. So when they hear about someone who actually tried all this stuff and it worked, I think it's super inspiring, and people can be more positive about maybe their outcome can be different. Because we all hear pancreatic cancer, we get really scared, you know, because the cure rates are not great, and stage four is pretty terrifying. Yeah, it's, you know, my physician. I just love the guy. I really do. I mean he's, he really exemplifies all the, all the characteristics of of you know, of these principles. And he told me one time, he said, Andy, you've got about a 1% chance, as it was then, on the total population. You got about a 1% chance to make it five years. You got about 3% chance to make it three years. But every individual has got a 5050 chance. Andy, so your chance is 5050 if we do this, if we do everything we can do, you've got don't pay attention to the population, because we don't know what all they did. I thought that chance is every individual has a 5050 chance. You make it or you don't. If you don't, then you go into the bigger population, right? But he said, discount your chance is 5050 Yeah. I thought, you know, I'll take 5050 that's pretty great. You had a good you had a good attitude, and you were curious, and you were willing to try all kinds of things. I had breast cancer in 2018 and it wasn't really very. Bad. I almost feel funny sometimes saying I had breast cancer, because people, you know, they go through radiation and then they have chemo, and it's a long, drawn out thing. I was very fortunate. It was caught really early, but I did some of the things that you're talking about, like I, I definitely did, you know, mindfulness, and I I talked to my cells, and I drank smoothies that were immune boosting, and I had a great positive attitude. I was able to because of where I was in my life. I mean, I think about that a lot. I was able to meet this challenge with this really upbeat, positive attitude. And the the radiologist in particular, said, You know, I've seen people do so much better when they have your attitude. So there's like, a whole, like, laundry list of things that you can tell people that really do help. And I also learned people say, How do you get through this? Or, you know, recently, somebody was diagnosed, one of my friends, and I said the only piece of advice that I had was, the thing that worked for me was because I'm a worrier, and I was worrying way ahead and thinking of all the things that could happen, and somehow I was okay. I was like, able to say, like, no, no, just worry about the next appointment. Just the next appointment. We're just going to do the next step. We're not going to worry ahead of time. And that's really shocking, because worry is my middle name, you know, so did you? Did you have that approach, like, you know, just one step at a time? So Lynne, it like that is this almost like synchronicity, okay? So, because when you say that, it it literally is like, I too. Like, I'm I think of myself as. I prefer to think of it in positive terms. I made I am a risk mitigator. Okay, I don't worry. I'm a risk mitigate. I mitigate risk. A lot of people, a lot of people, you know, translate that to so you worry a lot. Sounds like, well, pretty much, you know, but this really kind of, this, the diagnosis for me was so overwhelming, like, you know. So when I got it, I had had some stomach pains, and it's actually a blessing that I had the stomach pains, because otherwise it would have gone undetected until there really was no, there would have been no coming back from it, right? But I had these stomach pains, and I went in and busted. She said, Well, I think you got a gallbladder problem. He gave me some medicine. I think it's gallbladder problem. Let's go get an ultrasound. We got the ultrasound, and I could tell by the tech space that something wasn't right, but of course, you wasn't gonna say anything that afternoon, they called me. They said, Andy, we found some lesions on your liver, and so there's liver cancer, so we're going to send you for an MRI. And I messaged my physician, and I said, Well, this is bad, but at least it's not pancreatic cancer, because that's really bad. The next day they get the results from the MRI. They're like, well, it's really bad. And and I went to his office, and he was explaining what happened. And Lynne, I'm telling you, I just, I just, I turned into like a puddle. I couldn't he gave me some medication. They took me to another exam room, had me lay down. I mean, like I was it all just hit me one time, like, I'm going to die a horribly painful death. I'm never going to see my wife or children again. Like everything I'd hoped to accomplish in my life is off the table now, like I was 53 you know, like I and my mother and two sisters had died in their 50s. My mother died at 53 so I had this thought in the back of the mind that I was going to die before I turned 54 I just had this thought. And so when he gave me that diagnosis, it just like I just felt, I mean, I just completely fell apart. But what happened, I think, after that, because it was so overwhelming, I kind of ended up with what you just described. It actually, to a certain extent, took a lot of weight off my shoulders. Yeah, I was like, well, for the first time in my life I literally have no control. That's called the old control thing. And, like, the semblance of control doesn't even exist. Yeah, I can't control how my cells function. I can't control, like, you know, so what I could do was, I could, I could go to the I could go to the appointment. Yeah, I could listen to my doctor. People say, you know, if you're fighting cancer, and I said, you know, that's the one thing. Is, the first time in my life I haven't fought something. I actually didn't fight it. I was just like other people and other things will have to fight this. It's too big for me. Like, I can't, I can't comprehend it's I understand what you're saying, but I can't comprehend it, right? Like it's just, it's too much. And so I kind of came to that, I, you know, it just happened. I can't tell you how it happened. I can't, yeah, like I went through some deep thought process. It was just like, all your worry is for nothing, right? Now, you don't control it. You. You're not going to be the one that you all you're going to you're going to receive the chemotherapy, you're going to receive the acupuncture, you're going to receive the guided imagery. But look at all these people are going to be fighting the cancer. Yeah, so good fighting the cancer. You're just going to be a participant in the process. You know, they tell you to take some supplements. You'll take the supplements. If they say, do this treatment, you'll do that treatment to the best of your ability. But I really found it. It was so strange. Lynne, it was like the weight of the world somehow went from crushing me to like, one day it just kind of floated off. And it was like, either you die or you don't dust like you got 5050, shot, but you the only thing you can do is decide to participate or decide not to participate, yeah, but you will not be actually fighting the cancer. And I don't know why, but that just that did it kind of makes me emotional still, you know? But it was just because I didn't plan it. I didn't try to I didn't go to meditated it. It was just like it was. I never had something that was so overwhelming that I just had to kind of go with it. And I thought nothing could ever be worse. I have learned to never say things cannot get worse. Because then I found my son, and that was he had told us when he was nine, nine years old, that he had decided he thought, he thought the best thing for him to do was kill himself. And you know, Lynne, he didn't. He'd never been on the internet at that point. He didn't know. He'd never had friends that had killed themselves. He didn't have friends whose parents had killed themselves later in later in the years. It's like, how did you come and they said, I just it, just, he was one of these highly intelligent people, high IQ people. And, you know, before he died, he was fluent in Latin, writing, reading. You know, he when he did the ASVAB, he thought he might go into the armed services. When he went did that, they said, Man, you scored off the charts on language and Arabic, Mandarin and Vietnamese. And his grandfather had spoke Vietnamese. That's his grandfather was this big corn fed farm boy from South Alabama whose life was so bad he volunteered to go to Vietnam. That's how bad his life was. And when he when he did the ASVAB, they said, Son, you don't know a lot. You haven't even graduated high school, but we think you got a propensity to speak Vietnamese, so we're sending you. And so he did, he Wow. I don't know if he did it with a deep southern accent or not, because he was from South Alabama, but he did speak Vietnamese, and probably saw some things that scarred him for the rest of his life because of the things that they used him for, because he could speak Vietnamese. But my son was, my youngest son was the same way, and which is a blessing and a curse, because to him, his level of intelligence made him so black and white. About everything was no gray area. Lynne, it's all black and white. And so he to him, he looked at it, and it was like, well, you're going to die, right? Yeah, eventually, and in between, there's going to be a lot of pain. Could be some pain, yeah? So why don't I just skip all that? Why don't I just skip all that? I'm going to die anyway. So why don't I just skip all that? And to him, that was so logical. There was no reason he thought I was being illogical that, you know, it's like, why, why? But we held on to him by the ankles. His mother and I and his and his siblings held on to him until he was 18, and then, you know, when he was 18, it really came down to, he had to make his own decision. So that became the worst moment in my life. So now I say, I don't want anything worse than that. I know there are things worse than that, even if I can't imagine them, I just don't want it, you know, like so I don't say things can't get worse, but I use but the same thing happened. Then it was so overwhelming, so overwhelming that in some ways, you know, it became just get to the next grief counseling meeting. Just make sure one of your other children doesn't get so depressed that they take their own life. Make sure your wife doesn't get so depressed from losing her own her young her youngest son. They were very close. He had made a promise he would never do that, even though he talked about he said, I will never do that without talking to you, to give you a chance to talk me out of it. But he did one day, just impulse, did it. And so there was a lot of anger there. My wife thought feelings of betrayal plus just the grief of losing a son, right? I mean, a child, any child. So, you know, my focus kind of rotated to that, but it was so overwhelming. I. You have to take it one step at a time, you know? Because if you looked out and you said, Where am I going to be four years from now? Oh, my God, that would just be then you would want to kill yourself. You know, you're like, I don't want to. I can't comprehend that, right? So it was really like, back to the cancer exactly as you described it. It was like, it just, it's like, I can't, I I can't. I can't do this all at once. I can't even think. I can't. I would have to think out past the day to worry about it, and I can't really see how I'm going to get through today. So I can't worry about it. So I'm just going to focus on right now. It's probably the only time in my life I was ever in the moment, you know, because I was prevented from it, right, right? So I know that's a long winded answer to your question, but I hope that, I hope that gives you the answer, or I just