Strategic Discipline Blog

My journey through Acute Myeloid Leukemia continues with Chapter III from CANCER CURED - Why Did I Get Cancer?

(Previous segments of CANCER CURED are available here:  CANCER CURED BOOK -to read these from the beginning you’ll need to scroll through to the bottom to find CANCER CURED – What do You Feed?, which is the first in the series.)

This is the sixth section of Chapter III

“Superstition is like a magnet. It pulls you in the direction of your belief.” - Master Po, Kung Fu

I can still remember the deep hurt and despair my brother felt on an afternoon in the spring of 1960. Even though I was only 6 years old, the image is vividly painted in my mind. 

My oldest brother Jim  (17) had come home that afternoon after school crying.  He was overcome with emotion; tears were streaming down his face. He was distraught.  I didn’t know what was going on, I just knew my brother was hurting.  He ran upstairs and fell onto his bed.

I grew up in Princeton, Wisconsin.  The upstairs of the home my dad had built for us consisted of two rooms. One was my parents’ bedroom, the other a large room next to theirs with room for our 3 beds.  Jim’s bed was the largest and closest to the door, the headboard bumped up against the door sill.  Gary (8), my other brother, and mine were aligned parallel to Jim’s. 

My brother Jim had been driving home from the new Princeton High School when a young boy ran out onto the highway (23) and Jim’s car struck him. 

The young man, only a freshman, was badly hurt.  An ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital. Accidents like this didn’t happen in Princeton Wisconsin (population 1509). The scene was chaotic, traumatizing, and intense.  My brother was at the center of it, trembling with fear, shock, and dismay over what happened.

Jim was inconsolable.  He lay on his bed moaning and crying. 

I attempted to speak to him.  He wouldn’t or couldn’t answer.  He kept repeating, “No, no, no!”  I asked him what was wrong, yet he just continued to cry and sob.

First, my mother came up, and then his girlfriend Diane Stanton arrived.  For a time both my mom and Diane tried to console him.

I heard Diane repeatedly telling him there was nothing he could have done.  It happened so fast; the boy just ran out in front of him without looking. 

My mother hadn’t seen the accident.  Her words were reassuring, “Jim it’s going to be okay. God will take care of him, and you!”

What I didn’t know then, and discovered only much later, the boy Jim hit would be paralyzed for the rest of his life. 

I saw the devastating impact this had on my brother immediately after it occurred. What impact did it have after? Could Jim forgive himself?  Did he hold himself responsible? How did hitting this young man, and learning the accident would paralyze him for life, affect him?

The accident was rarely discussed in our family.  It was almost as if it hadn’t happened.  I was never told any details, perhaps because the facts were too upsetting, to Mom, Dad, and Jim. Perhaps they feared it would be too distressing for Gary and me.  I was 6, Gary 8.  Maybe it was something they simply wanted to forget or pretend didn’t happen.

Most of what I later discovered was from my brother Gary, and then my brother Jim when I got to know him much better as an adult after his accident.  I didn’t explore it more.  Either I was afraid to ask, fearing it was too sensitive to Jim, or I simply never considered how to discover more.  There were too many other things to discuss once Jim was quadriplegic.  Mom and Dad were not good sources for questions like this.  Mom would have spoken about the emotions she felt, and what others felt.  Dad would have avoided the topic altogether. 

Dad was not one to express his emotions, unless it was anger, when his temper flared.  A loud cussing outburst from my dad was enough to shut down any further discussion. The only person I ever saw break through my dad’s emotional shield was my mom.  When she felt she was right about something she could move mountains.  My dad’s angry temper could be melted through persistence and passion.

Did my brother Jim’s thoughts eventually cause him to be paralyzed as well?

My curiosity explored this sometime after my brother’s accident in 1973 which caused him to become quadriplegic.

Jim had been a drag racer. He was good enough that Mopar (Chrysler) sponsored his vehicles, two 1965 Plymouth Barracudas. During the Spring Nationals in Columbus, Ohio on Mother’s Day 1973, his vehicle's oil gasket failed, shooting oil underneath it.  He flipped over 7 times and was pinned under the vehicle.  This was before roll bars were required, and Jim struggled for a long time because the ambulance at the raceway had just taken a child with a bee sting to the hospital.  When it finally arrived the damage to his spine was too serious.  He would be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.

My curiosity engaged when tragedy struck a family member, relative, or friend.  I often wondered if consequences came for something known or unknown.  The Law of Cause and Affect at work.  It was something I thought about in my moments of stillness, attempting to make sense of the world and how it works.

Jim went through an agonizing recovery. He had a tube in his neck that prevented him from speaking unless someone covered it with a card to allow his vocal cords to work.  The doctors told him he had to have this to keep breathing since he was paralyzed from the neck down. 

It was painful and uncomfortable.  One day he had enough and demanded they remove it.  They told him he would suffocate without it. He said he didn’t care; living was too painful and frustrating with it.  Intuitively he felt something was wrong with the functioning of it, and as it turned out he was right.  After removing the tube, Jim was able to breathe and for the first time since the accident, talk without someone being able to help him.

He went through therapy, learned how to drive a mechanized wheelchair, even restarted Jim’s Car Shop, and started a Midwest Pro Stock Racing Group with drivers who visited drag raceways throughout the Midwest. He went through a painful divorce, and yet always kept his sense of humor.

When I searched for a new radio sales position in 1985, I chose Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, not only because I knew I would learn from the ownership group Don Rabbit, and sales manager Paul Chasteen at WFON, but also because I could be close to my brother and help him navigate the transition he would have living with his handicap.

I learned from Jim the essence of resiliency.  His struggles with overcoming the limitations of being quadriplegic, handling prejudices, and his health gave me an example of how to handle adversity.

His humor never left him. I’d like to share an example.  When I would drive for him or we’d go out to dinner, often we’d encounter someone driving who was struggling, or we’d see someone at restaurants who was either inebriated or perhaps had a moment of clumsiness.  When this would happen, Jim would often look at me and say, “Hire the handicapped, they’re fun to watch!”   Or if someone stared at him in his wheelchair, he would say, “Take a picture it’ll last longer!”

In moments like these, he’d often laugh heartily!  He was unafraid of his shortcomings due to his accident. It never prevented him from enjoying his life.

I’ve always been blessed with an insatiable curiosity.  A desire and need to know why things happen.

The Law of Cause and Affect ruled my mind, until reading Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. 

If you’ve watched movies like Back to the Future, you see how the writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale believe our minds can shape our future.  It’s probably why I love the movie so much.

Thoughts are things.

“Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking and believing. As individuals think and believe, so they are.” ~ Claude M. Bristol

The question about my brother Jim becoming quadriplegic, and the accident he was in 20 years earlier always haunted me.  Most people would say hush those thoughts and say, don’t go there.  My mind is curious, it looks for cause and effect, thought-directed outcomes.

If Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther King, and John F Kennedy, used their thoughts to achieve dramatic and world-changing outcomes, why isn’t it possible my brother's thoughts, his guilt, might have produced his outcome?

This thought permeated my mind, and 39 years later led me to believe through the work of my mind, the Creator, properly adjusted thoughts, and attitude I could overcome my cancer.

Had I not thought about this, had I failed to recognize thoughts are things, and negative thoughts produce unfavorable outcomes, would I have had the capacity to believe that positive thoughts and feelings could produce a favorable outcome or reverse my cancer?

Call to Action

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Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

You’d think one example to learn how to become resilient would be enough?  My brother, Gary, closest to me in age, provided another perfect example of how to be resilient as well. Next blog I share my brother, Gary’s story.   

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieves a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

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NEXT BLOG – CANCER CURED – CHAPTER III – RESILIENCY Part 2 - MY BROTHER GARY