This is About Life

Paul was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in May of 2013 he was working at the time as a neurosurgery resident and I am your began to have some of the classic symptoms of a cancer patient something was going wrong he was starting to have a lot of back pain and he was starting to lose weight much more than would ever be usual and both of us were pretty worried my wife and I was also a physician knew something was wrong and I checked myself into the hospital and had a big worked up and and found out I had lung cancer which was a big surprise obviously that was a huge huge shock to everybody when you think about a young person with cancer especially a nonsmoker you're thinking about lymphoma testicular melanoma I don't understand the smoking stigma anyway I mean if you have a heart attack no one says hey did you smoke they just say I'm so sorry to hear about your heart attack and that's actually the same way that I've always felt about lung cancer as a doctor and as a person in the world and when the diagnosis came back as lung cancer we were completely shocked Paul got diagnosed with cancer in 2013 and our daughter was born on the 4th of July in 2014 and she's kind of an example of you know it just because you have cancer doesn't mean you stop trying to achieve your goals and stop trying to grow your family or all of those things that are important to you so I think she's the very best example of living your life the way you want to even though you have cancer yeah I know telling her now what to say about it except you know I could sit and hold that girl all day long and and you know I couldn't be happier we learn about team draft because I'm ultimately Chris invited us to represent team draft at a couple games and it's just been so fantastic I love what they do to raise a raise awareness of lung cancer and be just kind of get people out and help them kind of celebrate what's most valuable to them which is being with their family and friends being out in the world doing something positive and then on top of that raising awareness for such a good cause so it just it feels amazing and and the kind of love and community that comes out of Team draft is really spectacular and important we are very supportive team draft but once you saw the contest and saw that we could come to Tish the NFL and Super Bowl on her birth today there was the knife thing that was going to stop her from winning the competition it's a contest where people who are lung cancer survivors meaning people who have lung cancer can enter and they need to create a fundraising website and then circulate it among their family and friends and there's a spot where you can write in your own story and where you can put up pictures and so we wrote kind of a short thing about why we wanted to win it and you know what this has meant to us and we just got a lot of donations on that site so this is the first time that team draft has done the Super Bowl challenge and I really wanted to win it and so I posted it on Facebook and then what happened was a lot of our family and friends started reposting it and sending it around and so it just kind of started spreading among people who knew about team draft who knew what a big fan of football paul was and who knew what a great cause this was and it just kind of took off and I actually had to keep raising the goal so initially I set a fundraising goal and we got so close to it that I raised it we got so close to it that I raised it and so it just felt amazing to keep raising it and I'm thrilled that we raised that money for team draft four in Arizona we're here for Super Bowl xlix it's crazy yesterday we were in the locker rooms down on the field I can't even believe they let us go on the field we took our baby we put her on the grass it was just incredible I felt like we were celebrities this whole weekend we haven't even and we already left lung cancer he left it over in the car construction have a great time just thought they can I have let's make sure all the people on supported all the people with darling thank you guys really believe in the Super Bowl challenge knowing where this fight we have to celebrate Bob Hope's in a woman stand up our survivor athletes review realize this is about life so it doesn't matter none of this matters unless we're talking about life when you have a terminal illness you end up making a decision about whether you're going to be living or whether they're going to be dying and you realize every day you wake up you're alive and and even if you're dying until the day you actually die you're actually alive and and you know you've got to go on doing all the things that that matters to you and that could move into your life you you

Channel: Catch it in Time

Views: 71,249

Rating: 4.9379845 out of 5

Keywords: Paul Kalanithi, Team Draft, Stanford University (College/University), Cancer, Health, Lung Cancer (Disease Or Medical Condition), Football, National Football League (Sports Association), Taste of the NFL, Super Bowl 2015, Super Bowl XLIX, Chris Draft, Catch it in time, CIIT, Super Bowl (Sports League Championship), American Football (Sport), Nfl

Id: vmPKAQWsJoI

Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2015