Cate North: Fighting Cancer and Embracing Life's Challenges

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. You don't have to go through it alone, and you should not ever. If you start talking about the situation, people will say, “What can I do?” Or if you say, “You know what, I'm going to have this done,” or “I need to go to the doctor,” “Well, let me take you.” If you just talk about it, you don't even have to ask for help, really.

We should get up every morning and just kiss the ground and say thank you. Even if you're not a religious person, whatever your beliefs are, every day the one prayer that we should all be saying is thank you.

Oh my goodness. It was after I had joined a startup. I ended up in the software industry working for Lotus Development, which at the time, Lotus was a major software player. And this was at the time of Windows, when Windows was first being introduced. And then Lotus was acquired by IBM. And my very first reaction was, “Oh no, I can't work for IBM.”

I never saw myself in a big corporate environment. I never saw myself in any kind of a big structured organization of any kind. And so my very first reaction was, no, I can't work for IBM. I had that same image that everyone had. They wore the blue suits and all of that. I did end up staying with the combined company, and it was a great experience. But I think I've always been a bit of a wanderer, and I just felt like I wanted to do something different and just wanted to have more freedom and more control.

Right, that's what we all want, although we realize how elusive that actually is. So that would have been, gosh, when was that? That would have been back in the late 90s, I guess. So yeah, it was just feeling like, I don't want this corporate thing. I don't want to go up the ladder. I didn't want to manage people. That was part of it. And when I was at Lotus, I had a manager who said, “You're an individual contributor. You're a strong individual contributor, and that's an important role as well.”

Well, I started out at Lotus. I was in kind of a field marketing position.

Probably. You're right.

Lotus Development was one of the very first personal software companies, when IBM invented the PC and computing was going to happen at your desk, not on a mainframe where you just had access to some mainframe software. Once the PC was introduced, and DOS as the operating system, you had to have software on the desktop as well.

The big software applications at that time were, I'm going to forget. You'll have to help me. WordPerfect. WordPerfect for word processing. So every secretary used it, and that was when there were still secretaries in many offices. That role has kind of gone away. But any type of document creation was done on WordPerfect. In the finance department, spreadsheets, Lotus 1-2-3 was the software application.

And a little bit on a sideline, there was Harvard Graphics, which was the presentation graphics software at the time. And actually, I worked for that company, which was SPC, Software Publishing Corporation. They developed, actually, I think Harvard Graphics might have been an acquisition, a presentation graphics application. So these three software programs came from three different companies, and they all ran on DOS. And that was your desktop. Well, now of course, you're just

Yes, exactly. And so that's where Microsoft took over the desktop, because they offered the whole package. You didn't have to cobble together these software programs. And there was one fourth application, which was Ashton-Tate, the database company. Oh, gosh. So you had Ashton-Tate, dBase. Yes, yes. You had Ashton-Tate for your database. You had Lotus 1-2-3 for your spreadsheet. You had WordPerfect for word processing. And you had Harvard Graphics for presentation graphics. That is how old I'm getting.

Well, I started out in sales. When I started at SPC, I was in a sales role, and then I kind of transitioned into a pre-sales, like a field marketing role. Kind of did a little bit of everything. So field marketing, meaning, SPC was Mountain View headquartered. Lotus was Cambridge. So I was in Chicago, and I was doing field marketing support for the sales teams out of Chicago.

And besides writing, one of my first communications loves, I always say that I'm not a numbers girl. I'm a [inaudible]. Windows was already being developed, and Lotus actually had a suite that competed with Microsoft for a short time. And then I also joined Lotus when they had developed Groupware, Lotus Notes. It was huge at the time. And that was a collaborative software platform. It was kind of a document-based collaboration program. Now companies would use Slack or, well, there's really no analogy anymore. It was a big thing. But stepping back, now I've lost track of what you asked.

Yeah. So really, my writing was always kind of a side thing. My mother would laugh, because when I was little, I would always write little stories, and she'd find my little notebook and little stories that I was writing. Who knows what they were about?

Yeah, just little stories.

Oh, I wish I could. Just little details of, you make up a little story. Like David and John were a really cool father and son team, and they went on a trip. Just that.

Just a little story. You know, my friends or my cousins. I grew up in North Dakota and spent a lot of time with aunts and uncles and cousins. So it probably involved that, or going to their farms, feeding the hens, feeding the pigs. Who knows what they were about? So writing was always more of a side thing.

But what I really excelled at and did well at was presentations. So public speaking and doing presentations. A lot, a lot, a lot of seminars, where we'd get the hotel room, the ballroom. If it's Tuesday, it must be Cleveland. One of those things. I felt so envious of my colleagues. Now, this was when I was at SPC, Software Publishing, where my colleague out of San Francisco got to go to San Francisco and LA and Honolulu. And then my colleague on the East Coast got to go to all these cool East Coast cities. And I'm in the Midwest, so I get to go to Chicago. I love Chicago, and I don't want to denigrate any of these cities. But Toledo just can't hold a torch to L.A. or New York.

So it was literally, if it's Tuesday, it must be Toledo. At the time, I had a brother-in-law who was a pilot for United, and I clocked more miles than he did. He was limited because they couldn't. Well, I was like a consultant that gets on the road every week.

Yeah, the biggest ones that I remember doing, we were at a big Hyatt or Hilton by the airport, by O'Hare. And there were well over 500 people. And so I would get up and do the presentations in front of these big groups. Loved it. And then I sometimes went in to support the sales teams if it was a big client. So I remember, for example, Monsanto in St. Louis, where they were doing a competitive comparison. And so I would go in and do those presentations as well.

We did Comdex, but the most fun show that I remember was one in New York City. It was at the Javits Center. And what we did was we hired an actor, and we did kind of an improv thing where the actor would come out. We took turns with me. It was me and some of my colleagues. So the premise, the setting, was that we were creating a presentation. We had a huge presentation sales pitch the next day, and we were pulling our hair out because we still weren't done with the presentation. We were getting it together.

And he came out as these different characters to kind of help us. So first, I remember him being John Wayne. He did a really good John Wayne, and I don't remember the other, and I think there were two other characters. So we'd be working, working, working, and be like, “Oh no, I don't know how to do this,” and then he'd come out as John Wayne: “Well, little girl, let me help you find that.” Oh my god, this was like 20 years ago, easily. But that was so much fun. So I started presenting presentations.

I guess it's the ham in me. It was just being up in front of an audience. It was interacting with the actor. I'm sitting next to another one of those. I think it was the actor. He was great. He did commercials. He did local stage stuff. Actor for hire. It was that energy. And the interaction.

I think it might have been some of that. But honestly, the larger the organization, the narrower they put you into a slot. And this is one of the reasons that I loved SPC. It was a smaller company, so we could do a little bit more. We could improvise a little bit more. There wasn't an "Oh no, you don't do that, that's Joe's role." Where now, when you get into a company the size of IBM, they have a much more rigid organization. Support, first of all, I mean, tons of people supporting you. You must do this specific role. Yeah, you do.

And that's why I actually love the startup as well, because then you're obviously building it. You're all pitching in. You're all doing a little bit of everything. And that works to a certain point. I mean, finally, you have to bring in people that really know particular aspects of whatever it is. But I enjoy just building things, making it up as you go.

I'm glad you finally brought it back.

Well, I had known... Are you talking about Rob? Yeah, Rob. Well, I had known Rob when he worked for the training company, Productivity Point. So we had interacted then. That's how I knew Rob.

So what happened was, after I became part of IBM, IBM was structured around what, at the time, they called ISUs, which were industry specific units. And I was in the manufacturing ISU. And I actually reported to a woman in Cambridge. I had opportunities to relocate to Cambridge, which is where Lotus was headquartered, but I didn't want to go there. So I was reporting to the marketing organization. And we were doing a show. I want to say in Raleigh, I think it was in Raleigh, maybe Washington, DC and Virginia, somewhere in that part of the country.

And I met a gentleman who's French, and he was looking to start a company. It's funny, we were talking about how computing moved from mainframe to the desktop. Well, now, fast forward 20 years, and now it's computing, like realizing, oh, we have these disjointed desktops. Let's get a little more centralization again. And he wanted to bring a Citrix-like concept where it would be thin client computing. But this was also the early days of the Internet. And so he had an idea to do a suite of business applications that he called Biz at Large. It was thin client. There was no software that sat on your desktop. It was all internet based. So it was the early days of internet computing.

Yeah, very early days. And in fact, I remember because we went to Comdex, and one of the marketing pieces we had, we had a graphic designer design a CD case. Remember, software used to come on a CD. You may not remember.

Yeah. So software came on a CD. So we actually had the designer create a CD. It looked like a CD case, and it was Biz at Large. We kind of made it look more like a music CD, but instead of songs, we had the benefits. You no longer have to download your software, no more CDs. And then on the back, we put all of these benefits, like no more distributing CDs, and you don't need a big expensive computer on every desktop, and whatever they were.

Yeah. And then he ended up changing the name of the company to ASP1. And ASP was an acronym that never really took off, but it was for Application Service Provider, because he decided that what he wanted to do was the provisioning of software. And then ASP1 ended up being acquired by another company called Apptix, and Apptix is now something else. And in fact, it's got European roots again.

But I went ahead, and I was the director of marketing, VP of marketing. It was a lot of fun. But then it was really tough, getting traction and getting started. That was the heyday of, we hired all these people and all these software developers, and then we ended up having to let many of them go, and we had to downsize. And that's when I decided, really, I'm going to go do my own thing. I can do this, I know I can, because I was doing so much with a startup.

Well, I don't know that I chose it. I just ended up doing a lot of it. I was able to do it. I guess I was effective at it. And so it just ended up happening that way. Because think about it. I've always been in the world of B2B sales, B2B marketing. Especially back then, we printed so much stuff. Now, of course, everything is online, but we used to print so many brochures and sales support sheets and all kinds of things. They all needed writing. And especially when you're in a startup, you have limited funds to hire someone. So you end up doing a lot of the work yourself.

So I think I just kind of... How did you get your jobs then? Well, through word of mouth. So I met Henri at this show, and I was an IBM employee. And I certainly didn't say anything, but we started talking, and then we got in touch. He was hoping to do some business with IBM, getting some support. So it just happened that way. That's how a lot of people get their jobs, right?

Well, so I was doing freelance work, and I reached out to Rob. I had somehow, through LinkedIn probably, reconnected with him. And I'm not sure, I might have gone to his website, to the LAC Group. This was the early days of LAC Group, and I went to the website, which, man, he had been doing some blogging. And I just said, “Do you need any writing support?” It's an easy entrée.

And also at that time, because when I was at ASP1 and, as we hired people, I did end up having to manage people again. And that's when I remembered, oh yeah, I don't want to manage people. I really don't. Not that I dislike it. It just doesn't...

Well, there was a little step in between, where I was off doing my own thing, and that was fine. I was able to do some marketing projects, freelance projects, really using my network. But also at the time I was still living in Chicago. So this was the early aughts, the early 2000s. And I had gone back to school, graduate school. I always resisted getting an MBA. That was another thing. My whole life has been like a battle between doing more creative, freestyle, freelance stuff and business. And every time I went to an MBA program, I was like, oh, I really... It felt like IBM. This just doesn't call to me at all.

But of course, everyone was getting an MBA. And if you wanted to get ahead in business, that was kind of a requirement. Not anymore, by the way. Thankfully so. So again, it was just, I want to get out of the business world, I want to do something more creative. So my sister and I actually started a little business. She's a very good seamstress, and I created these little stories. We had a series of little characters. We had Lola Ladybug, Fattiest Turtle, oh my gosh, we had a butterfly, Beatrice Butterfly. There were like four or five of them, and we just made little stories about them. And then I did the sketching for all of them, and then she made these little pillows, with a pocket, so the tiny little story, because they were very short little stories, could go into the little pocket. And we did that for a while.

Honestly, looking back at that, I wish we had either given it more time, gotten some outside help.

I'm sorry?

Yeah, exactly. That really would have. And what we did was a lot of trade shows. We did craft shows. So that was really the biggest part of our sales. Like in Denver, for example. Now, at this point, I had moved to Colorado, because she was here. And I decided, yeah, I want to be in Colorado. I love skiing. I love the mountains. And so, for example, I think it still goes on, there's a big Christmas show at the convention center. It's open to the public, and anyone who makes anything could go in and get a booth. So we did things like that. And we did okay. We did pretty well. We kind of broke even at the end of the day.

But we never turned it into a business. In retrospect, if we were really serious, and I don't think she was into it that much either, in terms of actually turning it into a business, we would have tried to network more closely with buyers of children's goods, that kind of thing. We did go to a couple of small gift shops, and we were able to get product in there. But we didn't really support it. It wasn't immediately successful, in a way that encouraged us.

But one thing I've learned is it's one thing to have ideas, and it's a whole other thing to bring them to life. And then it's yet a whole other thing to keep that life going and to sustain it and to grow it.

It's very easy to... So we had this idea for the, we called them IMI kids. So we had the idea for the little stories and the little pillows and all that. We got them made. And then we actually went to some shows. We sold them. It was a tangible, physical thing. So we got to step two, right? The idea came to life, but we didn't sustain it. We didn't think about, okay, what do we do now? What's next? We didn't really have a plan. We just kind of went into it, and some other things happened, and it just all kind of, well, we deserted it. Quite frankly, we deserted it.

I don't think you need 20 pages. I guess it depends. So I think it starts with a vision. You should have some idea. I mean, you could get started and say, let's just see where this goes. But I think that's too hard. Especially now, because now you have many more routes to market. You have many more resources. You don't need to hire anybody. You go to Fiverr. You go to any online service. You go to Etsy to sell. But there's so much. So how do you break through? A vision and then a plan. Otherwise the vision just stays a vision.

So the plan might be one page. It might be three bullet points. I don't know what it is. It depends on what you want to do with it. But yes, you need a plan, and no, you don't need an MBA, 25-page document with accompanying slides. Well, I don't know. Maybe you do if you're trying to build, I don't know, Facebook or something. But you do need a plan. You need some kind of a written roadmap. Okay, here's where we're going to get started. Here's the steps we're going to take. Here's what we're going to do. Here are the benchmarks. If we hit these benchmarks, okay, then we'll go on to this. If we don't hit the benchmarks, what do we do? Just some kind of a working document.

Well, it's funny, we did have that conversation. And again, I think it was more my dream than hers, honestly. That was part of it. [inaudible] going to have any kind of a partner, you have to both be in it. So I think she thought it was kind of a fun thing. She never worked in the business world. She got married out of... She was a teacher. She taught for one year. She married, her husband was in the Air Force. She became a housewife. She had kids. She didn't really work. So I just don't think it was her thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's true in any relationship. You have to be together if you're going to stay together. But certainly for any kind of a business, even if it's a small business. It's not like we were trying to build anything major, but maybe, but again, that's where part of the planning is. Well, gosh, do we want Mattel to buy this? Do we want this to be a big thing?

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah, I think a roadmap, a compass, a roadmap. We're willing to have some side trips. We're willing to take the seat.

Yeah, exactly. But that said, I think if you are serious about building something, you have to have some kind of a plan.

Have you been in Colorado? This is a shout-out to everyone in Colorado. Bishop's Castle?

You've got to go. It's in, I think, the San Juan Mountains. It's south of, if you go south out of Colorado Springs and then head west. It's a guy who owned this land, and I don't even know the full story, but he started building this kind of whimsical... It is castle-looking. It looks like something out of King Arthur. And now it's a tourist site. You can go tour it and go into it. It's not the sturdiest. Not the sturdiest of castles.

Although when I was there, and it's been many years, I think he was actually building a moat. And he did want a bit of a drawbridge. But here's a guy who was just a dreamer, and he was a builder, and he just started building this. And I don't know if he even thought about where it was going to go. So I think you could build something and just say, hey, let's see where this takes us. But I think if you have some vision... Well, first the vision. Again, that's the idea. That's the vision. But then some kind of compass, roadmap, plan, mind map. Just something tangible where you're like, oh yeah, okay, let's do this. Let's get started this way.

North Dakota, a small town in Park River, North Dakota.

Well, we never lived on a farm directly. My father grew up on a farm. One of his brothers took over the family farm. My mother grew up on a farm. But we never lived on one. And then I had aunts and uncles who also farmed, and these were small family farms. They were nothing major. But that's another business that has really changed. Now it's become corporate. [inaudible] family farmers anymore. So I grew up in a small town.

That's interesting. I don't know that I ever thought about it. Now it might have... and my friends to this day will joke about that's the North Dakota girl in you, because I'm a bit of a "do it, I can do it, I can do that." Even when there's some things, like some of the graphic design stuff, I could do that. So even when there's some things, okay, no, it's fine, sometimes you've got to bring in a professional. But I have this, you can do it yourself, you can do it. So that probably came out of a, again, a small town, got to figure things out for yourself. You're not going to pick up a phone and call someone to come in.

Or not even an option. So yeah, maybe just that, oh, I can do this.

Well, I did literally do that. I moved to Chicago. And, I'm sure I've never told you this, I wanted to do something creative. And so I decided I wanted to be an interior designer. So I went to a school that's not even... I'm sure it's not open anymore. It was a little design school called Harrington Institute of Interior Design, right on Michigan Avenue. Cool building, cool old building, the Fine Arts Building. And there's a little theater in that building. And the school was small. I don't think we took... I know we didn't take more than one floor, and all the other tenants were architects and designers and creative people.

It was a funky, beautiful old building. In fact, at the time it had an elevator person. It didn't even have an automatic elevator. You'd get in and you'd tell the guy, “Yeah, I need to go to the fourth floor.” It had these beautiful big windows that overlooked Lake Michigan. And honestly, I should have stayed in a creative field. But I think I decided, I'm going to get this little interior design certification. But I don't know, I was kind of scared. I was like, I don't know if I can make a living doing this. And this is too narrow.

Well, looking back at it now. [inaudible] dying to be an interior designer anymore. But I think I wished I had really committed to that path, at least a little bit longer.

What makes me feel that way now? You know, if I think about who I am and what my strengths are, I think it is kind of a creative side, whether it's with words or images or putting things together. So I don't know that there was an epiphany or anything that happened.

Well, I felt at that time, I moved from a town of a couple thousand people to Chicago. And I wasn't getting a lot of financial support from my parents. And I just felt like I have to be able to take care of myself.

Rhoda lived in the building. She had this cute little apartment.

Oh, I did. Definitely.

Yeah, no, I just felt like, I don't know if I could do this. I don't know if I could continue on and support myself and finish the school. And I think it was a three-year program. And I thought, what if interior design is kind of a fluffy thing? What if I can't get a job? So I just felt like, I think I need to do something that is more marketable. And so right next door to Harrington was Roosevelt University, which is an urban college in Chicago. It's famous for the Auditorium Theater. It's a Louis...

No, no, no, no. The architect, Louis Sullivan, designed that building. So it's a significant building. It's probably on the Register of National Historic Places.

And I ended up getting a scholarship and got a degree in speech communications, which essentially was, not so much marketing. It was kind of a marketing communication, speech. That's where I started speaking and writing. And in fact, it was one of my professors who said, “You should consider going into sales.” Because I realized, okay, well, you're getting a bigger degree, but it's still kind of ethereal. It's not like you're getting an accounting degree and then you become an accountant. So she said you should consider going into sales. So that's what got me on that path.

I would say you can do it. You are capable, and you will find the way. I remember so distinctly, my class was almost all women. There might have been one or two men. One of my classmates, who I became really good friends with, grew up in Lake Forest, which is a very well-to-do suburb of Chicago. So she didn't have to worry about money. I did have another friend who's also from the Midwest. She was from Indiana, and she worked. I got a job too.

So I would say to that person, the young Cate, you can do it. You're young, you're resourceful, you're bright, you will make it happen. You will figure it out. Things will fall into place one way or another.

Again, I would say, yeah, it's scary, but you're not going to be homeless. You do have resources. You're going to call mom and dad. I'm not going to be out on the street. And I think we all have to remember, really, what is the downside? How much exposure do we have? What resources can we tap into? I'm not rich, my parents don't live in Lake Forest, but I'm not going to be out on the street. It's not going to be so dire.

I think it's human nature to go to the very worst possible place. The very worst possible place. And I think that's just our reptilian brain, right? Trying to protect us. And we have to shut that reptilian brain down a little bit.

Okay, so let's bring up the cancer story. Just so people know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. Now, about that, I had lost a sister. She was diagnosed in her... we don't really know, and now we don't have the ability to get the number. But she was diagnosed in her mid-30s, so she was diagnosed young. And she died at 39. And I remember so distinctly being with her at 39 when she died and thinking, well, she took this bullet.

I have two sisters. Well, I had three sisters, so Carol died. My other two sisters, I remember saying to them, “Well, Carol took this bullet.” Because I thought, no, cancer is not going to happen again in the same family. Well, that was a lesson hard learned. So that was in '89, and in 2000 I was diagnosed. I was 39 when I was diagnosed. She was 39 when she died.

So when I found out in 2000, I had a lump in my breast, and I found it at my first mammogram. It was kind of a diffuse lump. It wasn't a typical lump. Usually a tumor, and I actually shouldn't say this because I don't know, but most often tumors are very defined, they're kind of rigid, they're firm. This was more of a mass than a tumor. And my first mammogram actually came back negative, so even my diagnosis was kind of crazy.

I was in Chicago, yeah. Actually, what ended up really getting to the cancer was at the time I was taking flying lessons. And I was at the point...

Flying lessons, yeah. No, just general aviation. And I was kind of doing it for a guy that I was seeing at the time. It's one of those things that's not like, oh my God, I want to be a pilot. But what happened was I was getting close to doing my solo flight, and you have to do a physical. And the FAA doctor found swollen lymph nodes in my neck. He asked me if I had been sick, like had a cold or flu or anything. And he said, “Well, I can't give you this until they clear. You need to go to your regular doctor and let's just make sure. I'm sure it's nothing.”

And then there were some other things going on. I don't want to get into a lot of detail, but that's really how the breast cancer diagnosis came about. So that was in 2000. And I had a mastectomy, went on a drug regimen, and just thought, okay, this is fine. I'll put it behind me.

Oh yeah. Yep. It ended up being what would be like a stage two, because I did have a couple of positive lymph nodes. And I think part of it was, breast cancer in particular, but cancer is so hard because it can be detected super early. You can have cancer cells that never develop into anything. You probably have cancer cells in your body. Cancer cells are just cells that have gone awry, essentially. And oftentimes immune systems take care of it, and it doesn't develop into anything. Or it can develop into a disease.

So what ended up happening was, because we were kind of going in circles, and the first mammogram was negative, it just took a little more time. They discovered when they did the mastectomy that I did have a couple of positive lymph nodes under my arm. Kind of a stage two. I don't remember the exact staging, but I did chemotherapy. And I remember at the time, so this was back in 2000, there was a suggestion that I should maybe do radiation as well. I got a second opinion at a different hospital, and it was kind of a could-do-it-or-not. There was no strong recommendation to do it. And I thought, I want to do the least amount of damage possible to my body. Chemo treats your entire body, whereas radiation focuses just on a specific section.

So I went into chemo, and then I was able to take a drug called tamoxifen, because my cancer, like many breast cancers, is hormone-driven. So I was able to go on tamoxifen, which is a five-year course. And then I'm like, okay, I'm done with this. And I was fine, and the cancer hadn't come back. I remember at one point my oncologist saying, “You're starting to get boring,” because there was nothing going on. I'm like, yay, that's what every cancer patient wants to hear. You're getting boring.

But what ended up happening was I had a recurrence in 2007. So seven years after the initial one. I found it myself, a tiny little lump in the incision line of my mastectomy. So I went to check it out, and sure enough there was cancer there. And they think what happened, so in retrospect I probably should have had the radiation, because the radiation might have just nuked all those cells. So I did end up having radiation in 2007.

At that time I was living in Colorado, up in the mountains, and I had to drive to Edwards, Colorado, which was probably about a 45-minute drive from where I lived, but a beautiful drive, literally driving through the mountains. And thankfully it was in the summer, so I didn't have to worry about chains on your...

Exactly, yeah. So that was 2007. And then it was recommended that I have my ovaries removed, because again my cancer was hormone-driven, and many breast cancers are. But I didn't want to do that either. That seemed kind of drastic at the time. And so I didn't do that.

Anyway, what ended up happening was in 2016. I always get to this. They say in cancer, if you make it to five years, that's a great milestone. If you make it to 10 years, okay, now that's really a good milestone. So from 2007, I had radiation to 2016, almost 10 years. But that summer, I started to feel two things happen. I developed this hacking cough, a persistent, not just a dry, irritated kind of hacking cough. My regular doctor thought that maybe it was acid reflux, because that's a common symptom of acid reflux.

And then what also happened was I just got really tired. Physical activities that I used to be able to do, I just couldn't do anymore. So for example, this was in the summer, a bike ride that I could take from Dillon to Breckenridge without any problems, I couldn't do it. I couldn't finish it.

Oh no, no, it was maybe... no, no. Just a regular ride. But yeah, I couldn't even do it. It was maybe, I don't know, 15 [inaudible]. Something that I used to do easily, and I'm like, oh my gosh, just...

Yeah, no, and this was fine, but the point is that, okay, there's something wrong, because all of a sudden I wasn't doing it. It wasn't an 80-mile ride. It's not like I was going out doing the Courage Classic. I wasn't riding over Vail Pass or anything. So I'm like, okay, there's definitely something wrong.

And then also what happened is I started to lose weight, and I wasn't trying to lose weight. So my eating habits were the same. My exercise habits were the same. And I came to learn that if you are experiencing weight loss and you're not trying to lose weight and you're not doing anything, it could be a symptom of something. It's something to pay attention to.

Yeah. And honestly, especially for women, although men probably too, everyone likes to lose weight, right? Oh, jeans that used to be tight, oh, these just really fit now. So you don't think about losing weight as a problem ever.

Yeah. And so, with finally this hacking cough, my doctor had me see a pulmonologist, and it turns out I had fluid on my lung, in the pleural lining. And that's the reason I was coughing. And that's the reason I was so tired, because I would get winded. They ended up draining close to two liters. Which is, you think, oh my gosh. Think of a two-liter bottle of Coke.

It's kind of remarkable. So it was close to two liters.

Yeah, no, it was. And the good news is that when they said, okay, the fluid is clear, because sometimes when they drain that fluid, it's cloudy, there might be blood, there's other things. But they thought, oh, whatever, there's some irritation. They knew my cancer history, but that had been several years. But at any rate, they biopsied it and discovered cancer. So that was when I discovered that the cancer had come back and it had metastasized. So it moved away from my breast into my lung. And then when they did a scan, they found a little bit in my lower spine as well.

Now, isn't that interesting. I certainly remember telling the marketing team.

I don't remember making it bigger than that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of...

No, honestly, and I blame... I call it chemo brain anymore. Those are the kinds of things. I mean, it's always a balancing act. I do talk openly about it. A lot of cancer patients do not want to talk about it at all, and that's acceptable. Just with anything in life, every person has to make their own decisions about how they want to handle it.

It's not that I want to wear it on my sleeve or anything, but honestly, it's become a lot... I mean, it's a part of me, just as my eye color and my height. And I just feel like at this point, it's that much of a part of me.

I would say to that person that you're already carrying a heavy, heavy burden. And I know her. She's also a stage four. So, not that I want to diminish other cancer experiences, I'll tell you, anyone that hears those words for the first time, “You have cancer,” it is a punch in the gut. That's exactly how it feels.

And thankfully for most people, particularly if the diagnosis is early enough, and now cancer treatments are so sophisticated, there are so many options for treating cancer. So the sooner it gets diagnosed, the better. And you'll be treated, and for most people, you will put it behind you. It'll be done. You'll move on.

But when it's an advanced case of cancer, stage three or stage four, where it's moved into your lymph nodes, it's moved to another part of your body, now we're talking, it's common sense, now I've got to treat something that's moving around. And cancer cells are so sophisticated. They change. They mutate. They're like, “Oh, I'm on to you, chemotherapy version number one. You're not going to kill me anymore.” They adapt. They mutate. I mean, in some cases, in advanced cases.

So back to the young woman's story. And this is another thing that I hate. And you know, and I know, because I was diagnosed at 39. I lost a sister when she was 39. And breast cancer is happening more and more in younger people. Another cancer that's happening more and more in younger people is colorectal cancer. And it's...

Well, it's in your colorectal system. They used to say that you needed to start getting testing for that in your 50s. Now more and more adults... Cancer used to be really a disease of aging, and now more and more people in their 30s, 40s, even breast cancer, late 20s. It's sad that it's happening more.

But what I would tell anyone is, you don't need to go around wearing it, “I have cancer,” but it's such a burden. Why would you want to bear that by yourself? Why would you want to put yourself through that when you can get a support system, your family, your friends? And if you don't have a strong natural support system of family and friends, you can connect with other cancer patients. You don't have to go through it alone, and you should not ever.

Well, I don't either. It's about vulnerability, being willing to be open and being vulnerable. And it's not necessarily that you're going to be a burden. We all are burdens. We all have times in our life when we're a burden to our loved ones. And I think what happens is people want to help. They really do. People want to step in and help, and that could just be emotional support, whatever it is.

I think in the case of your young friend, first of all, her age. It's different now for me. I'm 63, turning 64 in two days, so it's a whole different mindset and a whole different thing, because I know that my life's journey is getting shorter anyway. It's a whole other thing because she's in her 30s. And so that makes it a whole other thing.

But I think honestly, David, to your point, I don't think it's... it might be where they feel like, “I'm going to be a burden.” I think it's more that they just fear their own mortality. “I am getting close to death. I may be close to death.” This is a reason that a lot of people don't go to the doctor. They have a hacking cough that doesn't go away. They have blood in their urine, and they ignore it, and it doesn't go away. Anything that's not normal that doesn't go away, you've got to go check it out.

And I'll tell you that if you're afraid to check it out because you're afraid you're going to hear something like you have cancer or you have something else, it's a lot more fearful to hear that you have cancer at stage four. You'd much rather hear that you have it at stage one.

Well, I think we have to tap into our own resilience and our own courage, I guess I will say, that we all have. Some have more than others, right? There are some people that become firemen because they're the ones that go running into a flaming building when everyone else is running out. But we all certainly have reservoirs of strength and resilience that we could tap into.

And I would just say that ignorance is bliss, to a degree, depending on what the consequences are. It all comes down to, what are the consequences? Let's say you've got a leaky faucet at your house and you kind of ignore it. Well, what's the worst that could happen? Whatever, you have a huge plumbing incident, it's going to cost you some thousands of dollars, but you're still going to be alive. But you know what? If you fix it early... If you wait and you let that leak continue to drip, now you've got to rip out plumbing and you've got to rip out your flooring and you've got mold.

Problems don't get better. No problem gets better, right? In the business world, if you're losing market share, it's not going to just magically get better. So no problems get better. They either kind of go away. When it comes to your health, it's true that some symptoms, if they go away on their own, our immune systems are amazing. Our immune systems take care of a lot. So if whatever it is you're experiencing goes away, you have a lump or a bump and it goes away, great. Your immune system took care of it. But anything that doesn't go away, and that's certainly if it gets worse, right?

And so, pushing through the fear, I guess what I would say is, this is a case where I'd rather know, because also the other thing is it's not necessarily going to be a horrible disease. It could be something relatively benign, relatively easy, and the sooner you take care of it, the easier it will be, the better it will be.

Yeah. Well, first of all, how would you even know? Unless it's somebody like a spouse, significant other, how would you even know?

Right. Well, have you checked it out? That's the very first question. And getting back to your point, David, too, about the baby steps, I think some of it, there's all kinds of obstacles. So, for example, especially the younger you are, the less chances, you may not even have a doctor. You may not even have a relationship with a doctor. So a baby step might be, okay, I'm going to go to an urgent care center and just say, “I've had this bump and it's growing and it's not going away. I've had it for three weeks now.” And so start there.

And then it would just be asking questions. “Have you checked that out? And I'll go with you. I'll help you find a doctor. I'll go with you to the doctor.”

Oh yes, gosh, Dr. Google. But we all do, right? And it's not necessarily a bad thing. If you go to legitimate resources, you go to a major health institution, Mayo Clinic or that kind of thing, you can get some good information. But let's say you're like, oh gosh, I'm losing weight, I haven't been dieting, I haven't been exercising more than usual. Oh my gosh, I'm going to Google, and I'm seeing this could be cancer. Well, it could be any number of things. The point is, ignorance is not bliss in this case, but it's easy to...

It's easy to catastrophize. But this is where knowledge is power. That's what you have to do. You have to replace the ignorance is bliss with the knowledge is power.

Yeah, that's interesting. It probably is contradictory. I guess I would have said to the young Cate, you can do this. But yeah, you do need to figure out, okay, how are you going to do this? Okay, so you're worried about money, you're going to get a job, you're going to find a living situation, you're going to get roommates, you're going to do all those things to help you maximize your resources. So that is a good point, to have a plan again. And the plan could just be sitting down and thinking it out, three bullet points, like, okay, this is what I'll do. I'm a bundle of contradictions.

I'm thinking, watching the Olympics now. As we're recording this, it's the summer Olympics, and we were watching last night the men's gymnastics team. It was so great. Oh, that guy was awesome.

It's like, who is this computer nerd? And then he's like, oh my gosh, he's the most amazing athlete. Save all the energy for one moment. All expended. He was great on so many levels. But it did make me think, and we touched on this a little bit, about having a vision. I love when they show the stories of these athletes in their young days and they get into it. But how many young kids get into sports? Tons of them. And a lot of them just drop out for whatever reason. You no longer have the passion.

And so I think that's part of what I've learned, is sometimes you've got to give yourself a break. I think some people, it's very easy. I was so envious during the time when I was switching, decided I didn't want to pursue this interior design thing. I remember I had a friend who was going to a different art school, and he knew what he wanted to do. He had always done sketching and things growing up, and he wanted to work for an advertising agency. And he did end up going to work for an advertising agency. He was very clear about what he wanted to do and how he was going to get there. So just having some clarity.

But if you don't have that clarity, and I think a lot of us don't, we don't have any strong feelings about something one way or the other. I guess what I've learned is, first of all, just give yourself a break. Don't pressure yourself so hard.

I'm very hard on myself. Everything turns into kind of a battle, and, well, am I going to do this or not? And you're a failure, those kinds of messages. “You're a failure.” I think that's the number one message. Or if you're not an outright failure, “You could accomplish so much more.” Those are my two messages. My negative... the ANTs, the automatic negative thoughts: you're a failure, or you could do so much more.

Well, and you know what? Yeah. And I think that's a part of it too, is when you have a lot of different interests, where you're not so focused on a narrower...

Yeah. So that adds a little more, makes it a little more challenging. So it's about, for example, with the writing, I've done a little bit of writing now for cancer. I've had a couple of articles published in some publications that are for cancer audiences, people who are cancer patients or cancer caregivers. And I got a little website, a little blog going, but I haven't updated it in months. I haven't been doing the work.

Yeah, the website is Stage4Living, and you could get to it either way.

Yeah, I have both. So either the number four or spelling out “four,” dot com. stage4living.com. And it's about resources. Every single cancer has an association, multiple. And in the case of breast cancer, multiple associations where you can go and get all kinds of resources. You get financial help. You can get emotional support. You can get information on doctors and facilities and just all kinds of great things.

But I just haven't really done the work, and I was really beating myself up because I'll find myself sitting down and scrolling through whatever. And how many of us do that now? Honestly, it's kind of endemic among kids that they're just constantly scrolling through TikTok or whatever. Stuck in our phones, and we're scrolling through whatever it is we're scrolling through.

And now that I'm dealing with advanced cancer, and I just started a sixth treatment plan... When I found out that I had metastatic breast cancer, of course I went to Dr. Google, going back to that. And the data then, which was in 2016, was that fewer than 25 percent of people, mostly women (men do get breast cancer, but it is overwhelmingly mostly women), less than 25 percent would survive for five years. And so I made the five-year mark and the eight-year mark, and now I'm at eight years this year. So that's a remarkable thing there.

But I mean, my road is narrowing. My options are narrowing. My treatment options are narrowing. And things just become a lot clearer. So one of the things is, you know what? You're not going to be a... You don't have to... I guess I feel like I somehow need to leave my mark on this world. And well, this is part of the mark that I'm leaving. And we all leave a mark. Some of us leave a huge mark, good or bad. Most of us leave marks that we don't even realize we're leaving. Good marks, the influence that we have on people. We don't even realize it.

Yeah. Well, I think those are little choices. But I think this is another lesson that just comes with living. If you've heard the expression ANTs, automatic negative thoughts, we all have them. We all go to our dark places. And I think that just comes with age and experience, and knowing that most likely the worst thing that we can imagine won't happen, or if it happens, you get through it, like cancer. And again, if it gets diagnosed early and treated, you will be able to put it behind you. Most cancer does not come back. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but you're going to be okay.

Knowledge is power. Know it and treat it. And you'll realize just how resilient you are. You'll realize just how much support you have. So you'll get through it. Even if you go to a dark place, it's rarely as dark as it could be. I say that for all of us and anyone that might be watching this. Anyone that's living in the Western world and has any kind of... you don't have to be rich, but you're not poor. So if you're generally educated and you have a home and you have food, you have shelter, really, we should get up every morning and just kiss the ground and say thank you.

Even if you're not a religious person, whatever your beliefs are, every day the one prayer that we should all be saying is thank you. Thank you. And we just don't do that enough. And things could be a lot more dire for most of us.

Well, again, what's that old adage, happiness shared is doubled and a burden shared is halved. So when you have people in your life that you love and care about, the goodness is even gooder. And yet the burdens are less. And I think that's it. But one thing I've also learned for me is I'm okay being by myself. And I see that as a blessing. I'm perfectly fine being by myself too.

And it's happening more and more now because my physical capacity is being reduced. It would be hard for me to do a bike ride on level ground for any distance, let alone hills, let alone at elevation. And so as my physical capacity diminishes, types of physical activities I've given up, skiing, those things that I'm not doing anymore, that's an adjustment, and there's a sadness there. It's a loss, things that you love doing.

But I'm opening more doors, again wanting to get back to more writing, getting back to more sketching, drawing. I want to do collage art. Those are things that I can do. I can sit and do them, and I can do them by myself. So if I don't have somebody, I'm okay there too. But yeah, I really love that, and it could go on a poster or something, but when you put

On the poster. Well, again, it would be, when you have the support, you have people that love you and support you, and you love and support them. It's a two-way street. As you know, you double your happiness and you decrease your burdens.

Yeah. Well, that's difficult. And I think the lesson here is, things are not always easy. I think we've come to a point where, if you take a look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you're in the Western world, if you're American, European, Canadian, you are at the top of the hierarchy, right? You don't have to worry about what are we going to eat today. We don't have to worry about, oh my gosh, do I have shelter. Our basic needs are covered. And so now we're getting to this point of, what's going to make us happy? What's going to fulfill us? It's a challenge.

So I think that's part of it, we're up at that top level, and civilization has gotten so much better, medicine has gotten so much better, everything, technology. And yet we're still not satisfied. Because we have more time to think about the things we don't have, we do a lot more comparison, which is just an evil thing.

Yeah, start there. And anything that you're suffering through, any burden, whether it's disease, whether it's financial issues, whether it's feeling like you have no friends or struggling making friends, first focus on what you do have. Focus on what you bring to the table, focus on what your strengths are, and just get out and see what's out there. It takes some effort. And that's the thought that I wanted to complete. I think also we've come to a point where we expect things to be easy, for things to fall into place. And that's not always the case. It's often not the case. Everything worthwhile takes some bit of effort.

And I think on the comparison, the issue is that we always compare ourselves to people that have more or appear to have more. And we're lesser than. I'm not as pretty as that girl. I don't have her clothing, or I don't have that person's smarts, or whatever point of comparison. We always compare ourselves to people who have more, and we have less. And we forget that, oh my gosh, more than likely there's people that have much less.

But I think if we did get back to it, if we had to deal every day with how am I going to eat, what am I going to eat, things might change. Our perspective might change. But I think for any type of... and I say this for cancer as well, you really realize how adaptable you are and how much you can put up with. So many people have cancer or know people who have had cancer. I was just with some friends over the weekend, and there was a woman that I had... she was traveling. She was a friend of one of the friends, and so we were together. She had colorectal cancer, in fact, and she has to wear what's called an ostomy bag. So all of her digested food, everything. She doesn't pee or poop in a toilet. It all goes into this bag, and she has to take care of it. And I have another good friend who's in a similar situation. And they adapt and they live, and you would never guess.

And I think about, if we could all be kinder to each other, if we realized we're... I can look at the two of you right now and say these are two guys that really have everything going on. David, you just bought this great house, and John, you're getting back on your feet after your issues. And you guys have friends and you have skills, and you're smart, good looking, and you have all these great things. But I know that both of you have stuff going on underneath the surface. You have turmoil, you have issues, you have problems, and every single one of us does. And if we would just look at each other and see a human being that's got stuff going on that we don't even know about. So let's just be kinder to each other.

Well, and you know what I found, and this goes to being willing to talk about cancer or whatever else, is you don't even have to ask for help. If you start talking about the situation, people will say, “What can I do?” Or if you say, “You know what, I'm going to have this done,” or “I need to go to the doctor,” “Well, let me take you.” If you just talk about it, you don't even have to ask for help. Oftentimes the person will just say, “What can I do?” They'll ask, “What can I do?”

Wow, that's remarkable. So I think to ask for help, that just takes a minute. Again, it takes digging in, because a lot of us, most of us, and this is part of that American, independent, “I can do it, I can do it, I can do...”

And I think it is a part of our culture, right? We're a very individualistic culture, more so than some others. Asking for help means you're lesser than. Which is just not true at all.

There's so many different areas, but just hitting on the things we've talked about. From a health perspective, I would say pay attention to your health. Don't approach it as ignorance is bliss. It really is knowledge is power, and you take care of things, the better. But also just take care of your health. Take care of your health, people. Exercise, eat well, get sleep, all those things.

And then I would say, we haven't touched on it too much, but the whole concept of mortality and befriending your mortality. We don't talk about death. That is the one thing. Death and taxes, right? But death really scares us all, even though it is our inevitable destination. So to remove the fear of death, what I like to do, I guess the unconventional business, is see your mortality as leverage. I have a limited amount of time, limited meaning, it could be decades, but it'll come to an end. And this is it, as far as we know. None of us know what's going to happen in the great after. And so this is it, as far as we know. Use your mortality to check in with yourself on a regular basis. Is my life going where I want it to be? How can I course correct if it's not?

Again, just knowing that, for those of us that dream but don't put the dreams into action, we put things on the back burner. “I'll get to this then. I'll get to this then.” Again, you may or you may not. So knowing that you're going to die, knowing that your body will weaken, even taking care of it, your body will weaken, and how do I manage that? So leveraging it in the sense that, okay, I have a deadline, literally I have a deadline. I need to get this done, and whatever matters the most to me, I better get that done.

Well, and be easy on yourself, for sure. And realize, hopefully we all have bucket lists that we won't get to all of them. Your bucket list should be more things than you can even get to, because there's so much.

But it is a balancing act, because you also... “Vienna waits for you,” as Billy Joel says. It's all about a balancing act, because some people just push, push, push. So sometimes you've got to let up on the accelerator, sometimes you've got to put on the brake, sometimes you've got to just do nothing. It's all a balancing act.

My message now has really become cancer. I'm kind of retired, essentially, from other work.

But I really... it has become a part of my life. And so I would say, and this affects everybody, there used to be a commercial: “When you have your health, you have everything.” You probably don't remember. And I don't even know what the commercial was for. Some vitamin or something. It wasn't a very good commercial. It was one of those things where it was a great tagline, but you don't remember the product. So it was, when you have your health, you have everything. And that is so true.

So protect your health, first and foremost. Secondly, push and realize you have potential. And this is it. You're going to die. We don't know what's beyond that. This is all we have. So use that and use your mortality as leverage. But also give yourself some space. And you don't have to do it alone. You don't have to do it alone. Be willing to be vulnerable, be willing to share. And even if it means you start out and you share with just a few people, you don't have to be broadcasting anything, but share, share, share. Don't rob anyone else of their joy. But I would just say again, your burdens are going to be much less when you've got someone to help you.

Thank you. This ended up being a lot more enjoyable. I was a little nervous.