Meet Jessica and Travis, Spreading a Message of Love and Happiness | My Last Days

i want everyone to know you don't have to find out you're dying to start living we're all gonna go it's how are you gonna go out so i'm dying [Music] faster than everyone else you're in the battle of your life i mean the 12 items in our last lane and that's okay i'm listening to the trees i'm living i'm alive right now [Music] happiness is not a limited resource i'm totally going to hell for this [Applause] you guys did that just happen hey what you figured it's about time thank you all so much for being here we have never done something like this we've kind of changed up the way we do my last days there is no longer a surprise element for a few different reasons most importantly uh the magic of the show is you and we realized over the years that there is no experience or grand gesture or present or gift or anything that can change the circumstances that you all live with every day and so for us it's far more impactful to allow you guys to actually meet and to watch your documentaries all together if you want to surprise me by bringing dave back i i'm okay with that i'm totally okay with all kinds of words i wish i had that ability i just have a question for you i don't mean to like jump on that but you've not seen this at all right no so do you feel like in a way you're watching a part of him like you like you've never seen before last night i felt like i was gonna see him today yeah like actually yeah [Music] it's very powerful oh and something that you guys should all know is this this guy had watched all the episodes and when his mom got diagnosed he really wanted this for his mother so he reached out and wanted his mom to have a chance to have a my last days episode amazing josh and um the reason she's not here is because she is in transition as we speak and he decided to come and be with us and uh make his mom and everybody proud so over the next three nights we'll watch all of our episodes okay we're gonna start with jessica your mom and then you tres and then we'll go to chanel and then shannon and we'll finish with dave's episode and then after that we're all just gonna sit and we're gonna have a chat and we're gonna talk and we're gonna go deep and talk about whatever comes up so you ready bud yeah all right let's do it this is jessica hey honey good morning so listen i have a call for you okay hey jessica hi [Music] i'm justin nice to meet you i've heard all about you and how amazing you are and how incredible you are and how you've overcome trial after trial don't cry you continue to just every day live for your children for your and i just wanted to family you and tell you that i appreciate you thank you so much i'm in new orleans right now so i i would come and be there myself if i could but i just wanted to give you a little surprise if that's okay okay is that okay jessica the most important thing i know to you is making sure that you're creating memories and leaving something behind so i want to welcome you to your own episode of my last days [Music] everyone is here for you so that you can tell your story the way that you want to tell it for your family and for your children and for the world okay all right okay this means um a lot um i can't wait for everybody to hear about you and your story and meet your beautiful family oh i can't wait either you have so much to teach all of us oh gosh you got this you're strong and this is so surreal i'm a phone call away i'm going to make sure you have my number okay okay please i don't know you can i already love you jessica i love you too you don't know it but i love you hello oh gosh bye bye [Music] it's raining [Music] hey everybody welcome to my home [Music] surprise oh i love you i love you i love you my name is jessica stancell iabussi i'm 42 years old and eight months ago i was given six months to live by my doctor but my story is not over yet i want everyone to know that choosing love is the key to unlocking everything [Music] my mom [Music] she is you answer it josh i don't know the greatest lady you'll ever meet and the craziest lady you'll ever meet at the same time and this is one time she called me jordan this is where i'm in the middle of the street there's this dog he was he keeps getting almost getting hit by these people i'm gonna i'm gonna get him in the back of my car he's a little brown dog he looks like like a like a small german shepherd i was like so i'm on my way over and i get there and she's just like somebody told me to get away from the coyote i told you it was a freaking coyote and i'm like what he would just look at me we have gotten into some stupid stuff she is crazy but overall she's caring she shares her breakfast with me and she gives me her breakfast sometimes and she gives me her smoothie sometimes and then daddy makes another smoothie and then every day i ask daddy yeah i'm making mommy a smoothie right now on sundays uh normally i'll make breakfast one way or the other whether it's pancakes or waffles or french toast it's you know it's one of those things that becomes a tradition it just becomes a part of who you are and i do everything around the house just as much as my wife does she'll tell you i probably changed more diapers than she's ever changed family means to me everything that encompasses love it's precious it's amazing it's beautiful it has its ups and downs and it has its uh moments of just happiness pure happiness so i got your food might not look good [Music] sunday breakfast i wish i would have had a smidgen of what i have with our family here as a child my mom had addiction issues she went in and out of being homeless and you know things like that so she would take us in the back of grocery stores and she called it dumpster diving and made it into a game you know and kind of told my brother and i you know if you just dig a little bit deeper there's a box of snickers down there she came to me one day and said i can't take care of you i'm not able to in total i was in three foster homes and my last foster home it was my last year in high school and my foster mother everyone calls her granny and um she taught me how to do so many things um and she loved me unconditionally which i felt and i felt love and i knew what it was to be in a family all of a sudden it was like aha i got it so i had that in me she just lit the fire and kept fanning it you know life just kind of started from there so um how did we get together so i was out hanging out with some friends at an old club in l.a she came walking by with her friend i i was like god you're one of the most beautiful women in here listen 10 feet down they get better looking and i said so just keep on trucking i thought it was a great comeback two days later we ended up going to dinner in santa monica and we just sat and talked and talked and talked and we're talking and the waitress are you guys ready to order yet no no we're still good so we talked we sat there they were sweeping around us at the end and then we went and walked on the beach and it was just i knew him and i both we compared notes later but we both knew i know i was in trouble dad let's put it like that we went on a couple more dates and then finally i called him and i said hey i need to talk to you and she's like well listen i'm i was married before i have two kids the best thing that ever came out of course was jordan and sydney from that relationship i made this decision for them you know to get out of that marriage they will not meet you know anyone unless that is the person that i'm going to marry and then looked at me and [Music] he held my hand and he said if this is how god is going to put you in my life and this is what comes with it he said okay you know i i can't remember a day in almost the last 17 years i haven't talked to her we've been together pretty much ever since suddenly i had another family i had these amazingly beautiful kids looking up to me trusting me and trust is a big thing so far so bad it turned out good oh we'll cut now okay it's like get up and go to the bathroom [Music] [Music] okay people help her because she can't really get herself downstairs because she has pain is he why is she a pain i don't know see it's fine okay yes so i went to get my physical my yearly physical in november they were like there's a lump i said okay they said you know it started out maybe stage two stage three shouldn't be that big of a deal hopefully it doesn't spread so they did a double mastectomy um and when they did the double mastectomy is when they found out that it had spread to a lymph nodes it's in your bones it's in your liver it's it's spread out of you know 28 lymph nodes i think eight were cancerous this is kind of the end game [Music] i know lou was sitting there and i remember looking at him and i said this is going to kill me you know the day you when you grow up and you meet a girl it's not in the manual that hey she's going to be 42 and fighting terminal breast cancer and this thing is just going get just cut it off you know the knees there's it's not in the manual at all the wheel's on the bus goes [Music] do you know what is killing mommy her pain [Music] it's not just happening to her it's a piece of you that's dying so they're gonna be those kids that don't have a mom izzy being four she understands that i'm gonna go away she's like mommy i'll look for you he said i know i have to find a way to deal with it in the moment and i have to find a way to help my kids deal with it he's putting up a pretty good you know i'm good i'm fine i'm okay he's gonna be a single dad overnight i'm okay [Music] i don't want to leave any of you guys [Music] i want you to remember me [Music] if ever you doubt life i want you to talk to me because i'll be listening okay saying goodbye but it's a blessing because i'm able to say goodbye so that's the gift and you guys keep tabs on my kids please if they get out of line just one no two one okay we're having one one she grew up in foster care if she could make every child's childhood as great and fulfilling as it could ever be that's that's the world she would create helping them find a way to be the best of themselves that's how i've dealt with it listen we'll find a way to deal with it right mom loves kids and she's always wanted this huge family you know we've got five kids of our own but we've got all these other kids that are partly housed to a great extent that's why our house is open on sundays sunday dinners are really important it's really everyone getting together it starts your week off right it's like oh you know someone bring them over just no matter what the only stipulation is that before we eat we gather in a circle and we go around and everybody says what they're thankful for it's 15 years we've been doing it and there's just this huge love exuding just like the level of pain for her gets worse every every day [Music] she doesn't stay in bed she's down she comes downstairs when it's something dinner watch me get this rug it pains me to see her struggle because i never wanted to be in pain yeah but she doesn't care me [Music] sustain me [Music] oh god and make me a shining light [Music] oh welcome to sunday dinner everyone uh once again for those of you who haven't been to sunday dinner before um we go around the room and we say what we're thankful for so who wants to go first i am thankful that jessica is here for another sunday and i am thankful that my son-in-law is who and what he is because i'm not worried about my grandkids i'm not to so many kids out there you guys are the second parents if it wasn't for you guys we don't know where half of us would be we don't know the support system we would have and yeah i don't want to kind of worry so i love you mama i love you too i'm thankful for billy i'm thankful for chemo i'm thankful for everyone in this room i'm thankful for um all my children that are here sound is rolling mom i want you to know that no matter what happens to you you always stay with me and every time i see a an animal on the street i always you know pull over there's always cat or dog food in the back of my car a little bit of her goes with everybody she's been through so many adventures with us that those are like the main things i feel like we're gonna remember and it's all because of her love is the great equalizer it really is it's the strongest thing in the world and i don't care what you say and don't care who you are it'll get you through anything hey izzy uh do you know what is heaven it is beautiful and and it has waterfalls you can win with love every time every time [Music] tell people you love them don't be scared to like tell people i love you [Music] give people the benefit don't judge them they got 10 things wrong with them focus on the one thing that's right this is a dream come true not to die of cancer but to die like this [Music] so um can you tell us why you're here in place of your mom and what's going on with her right now well hospital is our house and she's not able to move at the moment she's mostly asleep but when she's awake try to talk to her as much as you can but after a while it kind of gets confusing for her to speak and like try to compute like what we're saying to her so that's why i'm here for her just continue to tell her how much she means to you yeah it's really important well you gave your mom a big gift because it was because of you you wanted her to have this this is real stuff like the fact that we're able to do this and have real feelings and emotions and like having something like this for people to watch it may help them i mean understanding how they can handle living every day with an illness or a loved one who has an illness well i don't think there's a better transition to your episode all right guys here is travis this is dying it's a realization of oh i've been here before and we all return back to that place whatever you want to call it whether it's heaven or the universe or matter and energy you could have an army trying to hold me down and it wouldn't have mattered i would have gone and continued on which would have been death i had to find reasons to keep wanting to fight to be with my family and see my brother have his first child to be in love again to be happy and to live a happy life grab it try to stay with me you're ready he's breathing [Music] my name is travis flores and i was born with cystic fibrosis i've had two double lung transplants in the last three years and what i want everyone to know is that they should embrace their scars because sometimes the best medicine in life is to live your truth [Music] hey mom i'm here hi how are you oh my god do you remember this one i drove a whole car full of your crazy friends up to the hospital on their engagement photo yeah justin and chelsea they're such a perfect couple they're right there and now i'm gonna be an uncle when i first saw him he looked confused and then once he started crying and they felt comfortable then they gave him to me um and i was able to hold him for about five minutes and it was just there's there's just nothing like it three and a half four months old yeah i found out that he had a genetically inherited disease i don't know how you've done it for all these years terry i i will never forget when you first had travis and they almost arrested you yeah over malnutrition because he was so skinny i've got social workers come into the apartment wanting to investigate me and then that next day they call and say oh by the way over the phone your son has cystic fibrosis you need to go see the pediatrician right away everyone says that you can walk outside get hit by a bus right like anything could happen but for me it was on paper you could open up a book in a dictionary and read cystic fibrosis a terminal disease cystic fibrosis is a genetically inherited disease and it creates a sticky mucus that blocks up the lungs and before long the stickiness of the mucus in your lungs starts to form and harden and you end up needing a double lung transplant and most children don't make it to five years old [Music] we had three children that needed us and one that was special needs so we agreed that we all were gonna battle and we were gonna fight this he was probably one of the toughest kids i knew being at the hospital from a young age with him it made me more aware and it made me appreciate the time i had with him he's always kind of had this roller coaster of health you know we really had to enjoy the time we had because we didn't know how much time we had with him so i was eight years old i was being hospitalized for the first time and meeting patients that had different conditions things that could potentially take their lives within months and and i and i understood that this could be what my future is then he was writing poetry as we were driving back and forth from cincinnati it's a four-hour drive to the hospital he had all this time and he started just writing so my solution was to somehow take something i was terrified of what scares me the most that i could turn into a positive because it's what my mom's always telling me to do and i went oh a spider one hot summer day there lived a spider named sparky sparky wasn't an ordinary spider he did not know how to spin a web what's the matter honey ask sparky's mother curiously well you see i can't spin a web and this is the joke that he wrote at the hospital stir fly instead of stir fry and he just thought that was the funniest thing at seven years old you know it became this almost game to me to achieve more than most people do in their entire life in the lifetime that i was given go all the way don't stop and whatever you do never ever give up on what you want to do or on your dreams so when i wanted to go on a three-year book tour they managed to make that happen and we'd arranged to have him motivational speak at the schools everybody loved it he let me come along with him on every book tour and be his security guard then before i knew it it was really affecting people on a worldwide basis [Music] i was given a prognosis of a certain age this is how long you have this is the cap no no no don't no i don't want to hear that i plan to be the longest living cystic fibrosis patient imagine waking up and you take a breath but that breath doesn't feel like a full breath so you take another breath and all of a sudden you're like breathing what feels like water so you cough naturally to get that out and when you cough it's blood that was the defining moment of cystic fibrosis and the only way out of that was to be transplanted yeah i hid this for myself until today i went and i dug through tons of boxes for you guys to find this and i'm glad i did after my first transplant i really wanted to acknowledge my donor somehow and um i haven't worn it since because my um first transplant um it didn't work and now if they were to reach out to me um to meet me i i would have to tell them that i don't have their loved one's gift anymore [Music] you know the first set of lungs went into rejection it really impressed upon me that with travis i can't control if he lives or dies most of the time he has such a positive outlook on life and you know travis is still fighting for his life and having that idea that it may never change was a hard thing to face you know people talk about men having strength and and all of you know it's crap masculinity doesn't come from the the muscle in your body it comes from the heart it comes from the mind it comes from the soul like you have to have the courage to look at these things and look at the chest tube that they're about to put into you and you have to take it and you have to embrace it you have to go with it and then you have to put that mask on and lay on that table and when they're saying they're about to put the anesthesia in for you to go into your transplant you have to be able to say okay here we go i'm gonna wake up i'm gonna wake up it's gonna be okay i'm gonna wake up that's strength that's masculinity that's power and it takes a hell of a lot more courage to do that than it does to lift a weight i can tell you that trouble connecting i'll keep trying i'm not having problems connecting flex is weird you know i went home in july of 2017. and now my pulmonary function is at like 14 it's like suffocating it was getting to a point where he may have to be chronically hospitalized again until his next transplant and then september 1st it was hospitalized because my lungs had collapsed he was losing lung function he was on oxygen and kind of went into this paralysis of not having any strength to move not wanting to move my aunt gets me on facetime the nurses were asking for my permission to intubate him because i was in this medical power of attorney i remember one of the last things i said before everything happened i said mom i'm dying and then i went into like this comatose state [Music] i felt this pull i saw all the people that i loved in my life my brothers having children i saw my parents becoming grandparents and i was angry but then i pulled again it was higher that time and all those feelings didn't exist and then i pulled again and all of a sudden time doesn't exist it's irrelevant places don't exist you're everywhere all at once i realized that i was going to see my family again i came back to my physical self and i became conscious again and i started fighting again and i and i had to literally tell my mom to hold my body down and i was clenching the sheets because i was afraid that i was going to be pulled up again we immediately transferred him to icu he was stable enough to move 12 hours later the doctor calls and says we have a set of lungs the person that uh my lungs came from was a middle-aged man when someone is passing away and they're not an organ donor they still come to you if the organs are healthy and they'll still ask you if you as a family would like to make this gift and from what i understand that's what happened it was the family's decision this is why i'm here to do this and to share this story with people and i believe that's why i kept fighting there was a reason i know we talked about it a little bit when he was going in for his last transplant how are you prepping for the day i can't even i've been prepping i've been prepping since he was diagnosed when he passes away i'm going to miss him tremendously but i also know he doesn't have to battle anymore he doesn't have to constantly be okay you're talking you're talking about him i'm talking about you i can't even say how are you gonna feel losing the sun i'm not gonna even go there till i have to no matter what you do it's not curable and it was hard at first to get into the mode of i'm healthy i got to embrace that and i have to live but what happened is when when you've been through what i've been through there's a gift that comes with being in love and being with someone you realize that body and gender and race it doesn't matter because despite everything that i have been through and all my scars and all my bandages and wounds and baggage if they can look at me and say i love you i love you and i want to be with you who the hell am i to say sorry you're a man or a girl or it just doesn't make sense to me so i just opened myself up to love just love is love you know i just i allowed myself to be free you know i i'm dating a guy now so by the way i'm like sweating from saying that yeah that was the first time i've ever said on camera that i'm gay so that was very that was a big moment i don't know terry you want to get the juice out yes for me the most unfair part about this whole situation is um falling in love again i'm in love and i don't want it to end and i don't want him to be heartbroken i want to have kids and i want to have a future and a career and share these things with someone and there's this thing in my future that might prevent it all and that freaking sucks i don't want to have that's your answer how do i deal with it it sucks i mean maybe yeah maybe that is what it is and i guess you have to i mean i i shouldn't be giggling but you have to just you have to giggle in the future god forbid i'm not here this is what i want to remember it sucks my tombstone will read that let's go sydney sometimes when i think about our family i'm like we have the worst luck but we have the best luck we have the worst luck because we go through terrible things but we get through them because we have each other yeah it's like we have the best luck because we have the best family yeah you know we had we had a really rough upbringing with ten brothers and sisters do you know how much grandpa made 30 000 at his height can you imagine i didn't even realize that was what it was yeah because i felt like we always had what we needed because we had each other and that's called debt um i wanted to go visit grandpa and grandma's grave because i know you haven't done that in a long time she hasn't been in a long time i've been in years i know but as a family i i really want to go and be together i didn't really get the chance to know grandpa he loved his grandkids he loved his family don't mind me while i put my smiley faces on the grave yeah what's that all about every time he'd send a letter or birthday cards or anything to us he'd put the little smiley face stickers on him i see you know the dates like 1927 to 1997 and 1930 to 2005 and it's like that's a lot of time but it's not it does bring that reality we're all going to be in this position whatever the dates are between the little hash thingy there for me it doesn't matter anymore because i just feel so grateful for what i have achieved and what i'll continue to do [Music] and it's because of people like you in my life i have kind of reached a point of comfort i wouldn't say acceptance but comfort i don't want you here before i get here no okay i don't want to come visit your grave no well i'm being cremated so you wouldn't have to i know what you used i know it's like forever in our hearts is like the perfect thing [Music] i don't feel that i've put on a mask for people at this point i want people to know that i'm happy i want people to know that when you want something bad enough strength hope love you'll find it i put it out into the universe and it came back to me that was so emotional for me to watch because you know on camera when we were doing this i didn't know the stoner's name and now when i see myself talking about my organ donor his name is aldo i know who he is and i know his family and i've spent time with him and his kids and it was a really incredible gift that his family gave to me well i think something you guys all have in common is is this ability to take tragedy and turn it into something beautiful and you're all doing that in your own ways and speaking of like kind of a new lease on life which is what your lungs have given you you my dear i just felt with a lot of that i was really emotional over here like just the parents and like dying and just having that second chance i just want to live it yeah i do the most i just make the most of whatever time i have and it's like it was really cool to watch somebody else go through that well now you're going to get to watch her go through more crying because we're going to take a little break and then tomorrow night we're gonna watch janelle's episode and then shannon's and then we're gonna conclude with dave's so thank you guys so much for being here let's take a little break you

Channel: SoulPancake

Views: 279,255

Rating: 4.9267302 out of 5

Keywords: soulpancake, soulpancake channel, soul pancake, rainn wilson, inspirational, my last days, justin baldoni, terminal illness, my last days soulpancake

Id: lRkb-SCiqvg

Length: 42min 43sec (2563 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 26 2021