The Terry Tucker Story - Discipline = Freedom

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Speaker 0 (0s): <inaudible> of my friends. 

Speaker 1 (22s): Terry can I tell you a good morning? And I hope you're having a great day. 

Speaker 2 (27s): I am George. Thank you. I appreciate you getting up at this hour in the morning to talk with us, 

Speaker 1 (32s): Man. For those of you that don't know, my friend Terry here is an amazing man. He is someone that I've read his story. And while I can tell everybody listening Terry story, Terry, I would like to turn it over to you and my friend. And can you tell us, I was hoping maybe you can start with something about a little something similar to the Monday motivational moment, and then tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Speaker 2 (59s): Sure. I, you know, it's funny cause I've, I've taken the Monday morning V a C for AMS. You can even say it it's a great alliteration, but you can't talk about the Monday morning. Motivational message was always, when I started, it was a, what was kind of a Story where people can read it and, and I've kind of gotten now into doing videos with people, you know, were, were kind of life lessons, animated things to stuff like that, because I think, you know, the visual part of it is, is so important to people. 

So I it's funny because years ago, I, I mean probably 25 years ago, there was a radio station in Santa Barbara, California when we lived out there and they had the Monday morning motivational message. And that's, that's really where I got that from and in that. So, so that's kinda kind of the message, you know, so you kind of got to go to my site, motivational check.com and, and every Monday morning I'll have either a video or a story or something like that out there for ya. So a little bit about me I'm I was born and raised in Chicago. 

I'm the oldest of three boys. I'm six foot eight and I played college basketball at the Citadel. I've got a brother who's six foot seven that pitched for Notre Dame. And then I have another brother who's six foot six who was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1983. And then my dad was six with five. So if you sat behind our family and church, when we were growing up, you weren't going to see a thing that was going on there. So athletics specifically basketball is an important part of my life growing up. 

And I attended college at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, on a basketball scholarship, despite having three knee surgeries in high school. When I graduated from college, I moved home to find a job. This was old. So this was a log before the internet. I was in the first person in my family to graduate from college. And I was all, you know, set to make my Mark on the world with my newly obtained business administration degree. And I quickly realized, I didn't know a damn thing about business, you know, so I was fortunate to find that first job I worked in the corporate office of a Wendy's international, the hamburger chain in Dublin, Ohio and the marketing department. 

But I also ended up unfortunately, living with my parents for the next three and a half years is I helped my mother and my grandmother, or I helped my mother care for my grandmother and my father who were both dying of different forms of cancer. And then finally my wife and I had been married for 27 years. We have a daughter who's a graduate and the United States air force Academy, and as a Lieutenant in the, a newly formed space force. And that's pretty much a me in a nutshell, 

Speaker 1 (3m 43s): It's interesting. It's M in, in a way, it's the Story of all of us. It's the story of, you know, you live in your life and it's a story of taking chances and, and making the most out of what you can out of life. And is it fair to say Terry that along the way in your life, you've met with a little bit of a constraint, is that fair to say, 

Speaker 2 (4m 10s): So are you sending me off there at George? I I'd say that's a fair to say. 

Speaker 1 (4m 14s): Nice. Can you tell the people a little bit about maybe to define what you think a challenge is? And then maybe you, could you explain to some of the people that maybe the challenges that you have been through along the way? 

Speaker 2 (4m 27s): I, I think it's a challenge. I don't know if I can give you a good definition of a challenge that I can probably describe to you what, what I think a challenge is, but I mean, it's certainly something that, that you're faced with, at least in my circumstances, that, that you're not sure that you've got what it takes to, to deal with or, or to overcome. And that's certainly happened to me in, in early 2012, when I was diagnosed with a rare form of melanoma that presented on the bottom of my left foot. 

By the time the cancer was detected, it had metastasized to a lymph node in my groin. And because my cancer is so rare, you know, you, you learn more about this crap, then you, are you ever want to learn? You know what I mean? We all think of melanoma as a, you know, a mole or, you know, a dark spot on our skin. Well, and that's the vast majority. And then there's a second time that is similar to what I or not similar. It is what I have, which is melanoma that appears on the bottom of your feet or the palms of your hands. 

And then there's even a third type of melanoma that appears in the mucus membrane. So when your nose or your mouth or something like that, I didn't know any of that stuff. When I, when I first started and I didn't, I didn't really know anything about melanoma itself. And like I said, I'm old enough to remember that when we had acne, as kids, we were taken the dermatologist and put under a sunlamp, you know, that's how we treated. They didn't realize how bad that was for you. So anyways, so I, I got this rare form of, of, of melanoma for about 6,500 people in the United States are diagnosed with it every year. 

And so it was recommended that I be treated at the world renowned MD Anderson cancer center in Houston. I want you to know your audience to understand that the one I'm going to describe to you is what I experienced during my cancer journey. I realize that there are thousands and thousands of people out there who are suffering terribly with their diseases, whether those be mental or physical diseases. And I make no claims to have the market cornered on suffering. But one thing I've certainly learned during my cancer journey is that suffering is one of life's greatest teachers. 

So at MD Anderson, I had two surgeries to remove the lymph nodes, to remove the tumor and the lymph nodes in my groin. And then I had a skin graph to close the wound a on the bottom of my foot. And after I healed, I was put on a weekly injection of a drug called interferon to help keep the disease from coming back to my oncologist use to describe it as kicking the can down the road. Now, interferon for me was a horrible, nasty, debilitating drug. And I took those weekly interferon injections for four years and seven months before the medication became so toxic to my body that I ended up in the intensive care unit with a fever of a, a 108 degrees, which usually isn't compatible with being alive. 

But I was fortunately at a level one trauma center, and they were able to kind of stabilize me. So I was ...