What would you do if you were told you had six months to live?
Feb 18th, 2008 by Don Ray
If you have been visiting Chiriquí Chatter for some time, you may have noticed that I sometimes get a little philosophical about life and living. I think I have said before, that I think that people, my age, sometimes get so concerned about the possibility of dying, that we forget to live.
But what if you were told that you really and truly had only six more months to live. What would you do? Why do I ask this? Well today, I received an email from a good friend, that included a link with the caption saying “it was really worth watching”.
I did watch the link and I have to agree. It was a taped portion from an Oprah show, where Oprah asked Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon professor, to give his now famous “Last Lecture”.
To see the Oprah video, click here.
After watching it, I did a little more googling on Randy Pausch and found his website.
I continued to search for the original lecture and found the following YouTube video. This is 76+ minutes, so if you want the “Cliff Notes” version, stick with Oprah.
If you watched either of the two videos above, then you know that Randy Pausch created the “Last Lecture” as an instructional video to leave behind for his three young sons, because he was told that he had three to six months of good health left, before pancreatic cancer would take his life.
I continued to read other information and read his entire journey fighting this disease. His most recent post was on February 15th from his health update page.
That post follows:
Today is a pretty important day. It was August 15th, 2007, when I was told I likely had “three to six months of good health left.”
Today is six months from that day. Just to prove I’m still alive, here I am, holding today’s New York Times!
I rode my bike today; the cumulative effects of the chemotherapy are hurting my stamina some, but I bet I can still run a quarter mile faster than most Americans.
The doctors weren’t wrong; they always said that if the palliative chemo worked, I’d buy more time, but that it was a long shot. And the doctors have done a brilliant job of tweaking my regimen to help my odds. How much longer this will work is hard to know, but I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left, no matter how many or how few of them I get.
Randy Pausch is living a condensed version of the “Thousand Marbles” story, I have posted before. He took his last marble out of the jar a little sooner than would be considered fair.
The good thing about Randy’s life is that he has been, and still is, living every day to the fullest. I hope his story can inspire you or your children or your grand children the do the same.
Thanks, Don Ray. Some things are truly awesome; that presentation is one of them. I’ve sent it on to our kids.
Hi Frank. Glad you enjoyed the video.
Don Ray,
Thanks for sharing such an inspirational message about living.
Randy Pausch has a general idea of how much longer he will live, and is making the most of his final moments. KNOWING you will die, perhaps soon, tightens one’s mind and changes one’s priorities. My own diagnosis certainly changed mine.
Randy, I think, got it right.
Monte
(Still feeling strong, eight years after being diagnosed with lung cancer, and in 2000 given a low chance of survival beyond the next five years.)
Hi Monte. Glad to see you are still with us. I do believe that living each day is better than worrying about dieing.
[...] I was just reading USATODAY and noticed that Randy Pausch died. He was the college professor that became famous for his “Last Lecture“. [...]