Last week I lost someone very close to me.
Cancer was the killer.
My good friend fought it hard for two years, but cancer
is a relentless enemy. You can be the greatest warrior
of all time, but cancer keeps sending fresh troops into
battle until you wear out and just can't fight it anymore.
Up until very recently cancer was something I kept at a
distance. It is always around, but it only affected other
people. I would hear that so and so had cancer, or a
business associate had cancer, or someody I met once
had cancer.
One of my early mentors got cancer a few years back. He
taught me a bunch about how to make a sale profitable, and
how to make sure I got paid. Every Friday he would look over
the record of my sales and find commission errors, money
that should have been in my check. He would fill out all the
corrections, and I would take them to accounting. One time
acccounting roughed me up, basically telling me I was creating
extra work for them.
My mentor blew his stack when he heard this. He walked
down to accounting with me, and cursed out the whole
department, from top to bottom. I remember him screaming,
"How would you feel if there were this many mistakes in
your check?"
I left that company after a few years, and so did he. We
would bump into each a couple of times a year at trade
shows. Then, at the largest show of the year I went to his
booth looking for him, and a colleague of his pulled me aside.
"Jim has cancer."
I went to see him the following week. He told me the doctors
gave him a year to live. I never spoke to him again because
he died less than three weeks later.
I didn't go to his funeral.
I wanted to push his death away, like it didn't happen. From
his diagnosis to his death less than ninety days elapsed. His
cancer was voracious.
We have made a lot of progress against cancer over the years.
Some cancers can now be stopped almost immediately. Others
can be reversed over time. We can even stop stage three and
four cancers with some cutting edge treatments.
But we still don't know the root cause. We don't know why it
strikes one person and not another. But we're getting some
good ideas.
We have identified a slew of carcinogens, and more are
discovered every day. Did you know, for instance, that sunscreen
has four carcinogens in it that are activated by the sun?
Did you know that high fructose corn syrup, which is in
almost every packaged food, and trans fats, which are i
n literally thousands of food products, are killers?
I pay a lot more attention to the so called health nuts
these days. I eat a lot more green food than I used to,
and have found that eating vegetables and fruit is a
good thing.
If you want to, you could easily design an anti cancer
diet, and eat very well.
Cancer has taken one of my best friends.
I can't do anything about that, but I can try and help
some of you. I'll be providing more anti-cancer information
in the future. They more all of us know, they better off we'll be.
From the big saddle,
Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board
P.S. I'll be out of the office for a few days, but the staff will
be taking care of things as normal.
Contact: thejamesrwhelanagency.com, or call 206 407 3124.
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