Coffee with All4Cure - Patrick

I look at the world right now from a glass-half-full perspective, there is so much potential, so many big things to do! I was diagnosed with myeloma when I was 45 and my paternal grandfather lived to be 91, so I tell people I’m going to live to 91. That’s my plan! Maybe I’ll be the first myeloma patient to do it and hopefully accomplish a lot of great things along the way and help a lot of people. Though I always remember a piece of advice I got from a close friend of mine from law school who had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He said to do something nice for yourself every day. Whether it be something as simple as getting a milkshake, reading your favorite book, or going for a walk, do something for yourself. Helping yourself is sometimes the most important thing you can do. It’s easy to be caught up in doing all this stuff to help others, your work agenda, and the things that you think you have to do. Before you know it, the day is gone and you haven’t done a single thing for yourself and you start to feel resentful. It makes you feel good to take the time to do something for yourself every day.

The need to help others has been deeply instilled in me. It gets me outside of myself, gets me outside of my agenda and my thinking of what the world should be and what needs to be done. I try to help through a multitude of avenues, anywhere from the church to groups dedicated to fighting myeloma, Parkinson's, and Scheuermann's disease. I try to help with even more simple matters. I think of my wife and ask ‘how can I serve her?’ Can I take her car while she is at work, go wash it and fill it with a little gas and clean it out? Helping others has kept me from dwelling on my myeloma, the incurable status, the possible death sentence--I no longer think of it as such. At all. I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety, helping others has really gotten me out of that. Nine times out of ten the return is just amazing. A lot of times you’ll think you’re helping somebody and then you get more out of it than they ever did or you ever thought you could have ever imagined.