Steve is an all-around family man. He describes himself as a husband and father first. When he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer with an 80% chance of dying, Steve had all the motivation in the world around him to beat those odds. Watch the video below to hear from Steve and his remarkable story.
At age 48, I contacted my family doctor and went to see him and told him what was going on, and he said, OK yeah, definitely time to send you for a colonoscopy. When I came out of the colonoscopy and was awake and the doctor came over and he put his hand on my shoulder, that's when he broke the news to me, and he said,” Steve, unfortunately I found a tumour and it was quite large.”
He said,” I've taken biopsies, but I'm positive it's a large cancerous tumour.” Obviously when you get that initial news, everyone's hoping and praying for the best, that, there's been no spread, nothing, and that's what you're hoping for, and you're hanging on for that hope. The news we got was that it had broken through the colon wall, it had spread to the lymph nodes, and it had spread up to my liver where there were 23 additional tumours. And so I had to sit my kids down and tell them all that.
Along with the prognosis, that there was an 80% chance I'd be dead in three years or less. I had all the motivation in the world around me, to beat those odds. I said, I have a lot of unfinished business. I can't leave yet. When it came to seeing my oncologist for the first time, I said to him,” We're going to push it to the limit, and that's what we're going to do.”
So after, you know, 21 rounds, they decided in September to give me a bit of a break, just to see what happens. We are waiting for this call and we know it's going to come any moment. And my phone starts ringing. I answered that call and said “Hello”, and right away she told me the news that it was the good news we were all hoping for, you know, the emotions are just— what a whirlwind, what a rollercoaster of emotions where you go from this.
I look back and go, how Ironic I was given this awful diagnosis on Father's Day weekend, because I'm a husband and a father first. For me it's felt like cancer’s this bully. And I'm being picked on by this bully. And this bully wants to take my kids’ dad away from them. It wants to take my wife's husband away from her.
And what I've always said was, boy, cancer picked the wrong guy, it just picked the wrong guy. You have no idea what you're capable of until you're in a situation where, you know, it's live or die. It’s fight or flight. You just - you don't know. And so don't underestimate yourself. Don't sell yourself short. And believe in yourself.