 Hi, my name is Mac Davis and I'm known by a lot of people who are associated with the kidney cancer association by the pen name that I write under which is press on regardless. And I've been asked to talk about what I've learned in the 14 years since I was diagnosed with kidney cancer about surviving it and claiming a life for yourself after you find out that you've been diagnosed with kidney cancer because when I found out, and I won't bore you with the details, but there came a point when I found out I had kidney cancer and my world came crashing in on top of me. I have a happy marriage and I have three wonderful children which I could go on and on about if you'd like me to, but thinking you probably don't. And the youngest of them was six years old when I was first diagnosed and when I went from my five-year checkup expecting to be what I had been for the five years since my radical and for it to be cancer-free, I found out it had come back and had spread to my pancreas and my lungs, actually just one lung then. And I was told that I had it was inoperable, it was incurable, it's still incurable, and that average survival was 18 months and my chances of living five years was one in ten. And I remember being in that room and my wife broke down into tears and started crying hysterically, but I didn't. It was sort of like surreal, you know, it was happening around me. But there came a time when I figured out I was, if I didn't decide what was going to happen here other people would decide for me. And so I decided that somehow or another I was going to survive. No matter what, no matter who, no matter who I had to go to, no matter who I had to see, I was going to survive. And I have. And I'm living large, I'll humbly tell you, and enjoying every minute of it. And I post a lot to friends on Facebook and in other places still and I have gotten to where now most of the postings that I leave end up with and to thank you I might have missed this. Because that's basically what life is for me now. You know, every day at least once, usually two or three times, sometimes every hour or every minute, I'm thinking, you know, this is bonus, buddy. You weren't supposed to get this. And I have. And I wanted to have happened what has happened exactly. I'm a very fortunate fellow. I don't say lucky. I say fortunate because a lot of wonderful things have happened to me and I wanted to hold on until the cure came. And I figured I would try high dose IL-2, which the wonderful Dr. Dutcher is about to present on here today. Or who was my doctor to have it. I'm not sure what she's going to present on today. But anyway, I tried that. It didn't work. By then the doctor that I had had heard about a new clinical trial, two new drugs, which I tried. I had to commute to Nashville, Tennessee every other week for two years, which I was able to do through the help of my family and my friends and my colleagues in the Virgin Islands Bar Association, who gave me between about half, three-quarter of a million dollars. I mean frequent flyer points. Three-quarters of a million frequent flyer points to help me do that. And a lot of other support to people cooking dinners for us, traveling. And you know, it was hard for me to accept help at first. And so one of the things I would suggest to you is learn how to accept help. Learn how to ask for it and learn how to accept it. It's hard, especially for men. And kidney cancer I think happens to men more than women. I'm not sure, but I believe that's true. And it's very hard for us to do that. You know, we're trained, at least American men, but I think most men are trained not to ask for help, not to need help. And I never needed anybody's help, really. Although that's a big lie, I told myself. I needed a lot of help, but I had to learn how to accept frequent flyer points and cash donations that people gave to me. And I was just telling myself, I just want to live. I just want to live. That sets it. You know, if you had my life, you'd want to live, too. You know? Another thing that helped me and it can help you, you don't have to have to deal with what I had to deal with. And that is that I had a child who was born with a heart defect. And when I found out I had kidney cancer, he had just found out at about age 16, I think, that the heart surgery that had been a hated word we didn't even talk about or think about to something that was real, to something that could be on the horizon to something that we'd just been told was going to probably be within the next six months or so. He was going to have to have open heart surgery. And as a parent, I did do and always will carry a burden of guilt for having him having this congenital heart defect, which he got because, you know, my genes were not all kosher. But anyway, I told myself, he's watching you. He's watching how you react to this. You're going to have, all of a sudden, you're going to have surgery. He's going to watch how you deal with having surgery and the aftermath. And just like he's modeled himself from every other good and bad part of you at the, by this age, he'll do, he'll model yourself, himself on that, too. And, you know, I don't know whether he did or not. He ended up having to have open heart surgery twice then and once again, and while he was in law school, he was a second year law student and he had open heart surgery. And, you know, if he lives to comb gray hair, which I believe he will, he may have to have it again. And I hope he might have learned something. So just imagine yourself, if you're having to go through surgery or something like that, or even just for procedures and things. Imagine that your kids are there watching you and it will help you discipline yourself to deal with these things and walk through them and get on the other side of them. And, you know, that's basically what I'm here to try and do is tell you the important things that have worked for me and have enabled me to fly in yesterday from the Virgin Islands, where I have a job that I love, living in a beautiful home with the beautiful woman that I've loved for 34 years. Actually, I've been married to her for 34. I've loved her for longer than that. And I'm sure your life is just as important to you as it is, as mine is to me. So you have to fight for it, because if you just sit back and relax, the odds are that good things are not going to happen. So as bad as you feel, and as much as your family's going to try to do for you, you are the vehicle for this saga, you know. And it can have a VN page sooner or it can have a VN page later. And my life is having one later. And you have to just remember that people are going to react the way you react. So even though you have to, like I say, accept help and ask for help, you have to also make sure that you keep this buggy on the road headed towards survival. Because nobody is going to do it for you. So thanks for letting me share.