Rob 

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mental Wealth Podcast. My name is Rob and here we have Mukund with us. We also have Dr. Levine. In this episode, we’re going to be speaking with Tim McDonald. Tim, if you’d like to just introduce yourself and share a little bit about your background. 

Tim McDonald 

Yeah, thank you so much, Rob. I am Tim McDonald. I am a stage 4 colorectal cancer survivor. I ended up getting a liver transplant, so I’m kind of a rare combination in the colorectal cancer survivor world, because there’s not too many of us that did that to the path of no evidence of disease. I live with my wife here in Tampa, and by profession, I am a community builder, mostly online communities, but that’s what I do for a living, as well as my advocacy work is my passion. 

Rob 

I’d like to take you back to that initial day of diagnosis. I know it’s sort of the cliche of getting to that point, but I feel like it’s good to have that introduction of what that felt like on that day. Could you take us back? It’s November 2020, right? 

Tim McDonald 

Yeah, November 2020. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US. I had a bad pain in my side on Thanksgiving and it kept getting worse. And on Sunday, I went into the urgent care in my neighborhood. They didn’t know what exactly it was. Thought it could have been a kidney stone, but wanted to get a CT scan just to find out what was going on inside that they couldn’t visually see from the outside. And on Monday morning, I got that done. The urgent care called me back. And I walked over there and I knew like something wasn’t going to be as simple as like getting a prescription filled because they could have just called me and told me that. But I really knew something was up when I walked in. And, I know it was still COVID. So, you still had like to make an appointment to go in and everything. But this one, they just called me. I walked in, you know, any medical appointment that you walk into, I’m sure we’ve all been here before. You sign in, you maybe have some forms to fill out, you wait in the waiting room, they call you back, you go into the, visit room, you wait there, the doctor comes in. I knew something was up when they literally said, oh, Mr. McDonald, as soon as I walked in the door. brought me right back into a room. And 2 seconds later, the doctor came in with a single white sheet of paper in his hand. And the first words out of his mouth were, you have cancer. And the thoughts in my head at that time were, and I’m going to say this, and I want to preface this first, because I know it could be, you know, a lot of people might be shocked by this, but I was actually very calm about it. I wasn’t freaking out. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t like crying. I wasn’t like going playing the what if game. I was literally like just taking this like any other fact that somebody had given me in life. But I will be very candid here. The first thought that came in after I just kind of processed internally those words were, how is my wife going to deal with this? That was really the main thing that I was thinking about, because I was hearing the news, but she was still sitting at home knowing that I had just walked over, not knowing what I was walking into. My initial reaction to hearing those words was very calm, but then the uncertainty about how am I going to deal with my wife with this news was the next thing that popped into my head. 

Rob 

Was that something that had begun even before the diagnosis, that sort of calm, sort of rational response to what could be a shocking event for most people. 

Tim McDonald 

As a kid, I had a very bad temper. I would fly off the handle at things. And as I got older, I was able to control that a little bit more in public settings. But what I found, what I was still doing in private settings. So… Who is the brunt of that? My wife most of the time. And I didn’t like the way that I was behaving, and especially with the love of my life doing this. And so I was working at HuffPost in New York at the time when Ariana Huffington was still there. If anybody’s familiar with Ariana, there’s a lot of meditation, breathing, all about these concepts that she was really embodying within HuffPost that I started getting exposed to and talking with some of our experts in these fields and started practicing some of these things. meditation and breathing and consciousness. And the one thing that really I focused on was how we are really in control of our reactions. We’re not in control of what happens to us. And so just focusing on the reactions instead of the instance that got us to the reaction. So that work in progress to get to that day when I was diagnosed was over a decade of practicing these things. 

Rob 

I thought it was interesting you spoke about communicating with your wife as one of the most difficult elements of that initial diagnosis. Can you speak to anything that helped you communicate how you were feeling to your loved ones at that time? 

Tim McDonald 

I think the one thing that I’ve learned over the years is the longer we procrastinate and hold on and beat ourselves up over how the other person’s going to react, the worse it’s going to make us feel. And so the best thing for me to do, and especially in this situation, because they wanted me to go see a GI surgeon that afternoon. So I didn’t have a lot of the luxury of saying, oh, I got another week till my appointment. I can hold off on telling her this. I didn’t have that option. So it was literally the advice that I knew plus the the circumstances of reality were, I just need to rip off the band-aid and tell her. And that’s what I did when I got home. I walked in the door and I still was smiling. I had a smile on my face, but I just said, you know what? I have cancer. And she immediately was in shock. But I said, I know it’s overwhelming, but we have work to do right now. We need to drive down to see this doctor. We need to talk to the GI surgeon. They want to do a colonoscopy on me. We’ll find out more once we get down there, but I need you to hold onto yourself because I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get there. Are they going to put me in the hospital or are they going to do this? I have no idea. So I need you to just be strong with me and get me there and then we’ll figure this out together when we get home. And that’s how I kind of told her was just very matter of fact, but also just trying to make make her prepared for. This is no time to go into a complete meltdown. We need to be strong together because I need to get here and talk to this doctor today. 

Rob 

That must have been trying for both you and your wife in a relationship perspective, but I can’t even imagine you’re already dealing with a medical diagnosis. You’ve got to also frame it in your mind of I have to protect this other person. In your conversations as an advocate now for people with colorectal cancer, could you speak to some of the helpful and unhelpful things that loved ones do in these situations? 

Tim McDonald 

Yeah, absolutely. The first thing to understand is you might’ve known this person for years, but this is a shock to them too, right? And I think we’re talking about both sides of the equation here. It’s not just, it didn’t happen to one person, it’s happening to both people, but in very different ways. And we are both unique and we both have our own way of processing whatever you want to call it, let’s just say emotions for this conversation. I think that the important thing for a caregiver to understand when their spouse or partner has been diagnosed is just understanding that they’re going through a lot. And if they get angry during treatment, even though you might be the bearer of it, it’s not directed at you. It’s just a result of the chemical reaction to our bodies and what we’re going through with the therapies that we’re going through. Mine was chemotherapy. My oncologist said it’s a very aggressive chemotherapy, but it comes with very aggressive side effects. Understanding that, I think as a partner or caregiver, is so important just to understand. But I also think trying to keep your minds of communication open. My wife, I know how she processes things, and it’s very different than how I process things. And so my job wasn’t to try and figure out how she processed it. It’s just to understand and try and listen how she’s processing it so that I can be sensitive to her emotions. and just try and shed some of my feelings and my emotions with her so that she understood what I was going through and how I was feeling. I think keeping those lines of communication open are kind of the best thing that you can do, even though it’s not as easy as most conversations when you’re talking about planning your next vacation or you moving into your new house or, you know, having your first kid or whatever it is. These are very difficult conversations, but communication is key when you’re dealing dealing with difficult situations, especially with a major cancer diagnosis. 

Dr. Ethan Levine 

I’m curious, did you and your wife have a foundation of building this communication prior to diagnosis? 

Tim McDonald 

To be very candid, I think we had one level of communication up until the pandemic, because we both had our separate careers, we both had our separate lives, but we were back home in the evenings together and had our meals and went to bed together. And then the pandemic came and we were both stuck at home together. And we all know that statistics show that there was more divorces, more divestive could be used going on during that time. But what I found was it actually brought us closer together. We started learning to appreciate and understand each other a little bit more. Then came my cancer diagnosis, and that got it to a whole nother level. So to answer your question, yes, we had some, but I think it definitely transformed at each one of those stages. It’s just my philosophy in life, though, that we all got to learn from what we’re going through and continually strive to take something from what happens to us and apply it to how we can become better human beings moving forward. And I think that’s what I learned during COVID and that’s what I learned with my cancer diagnosis. 

Mukund 

COVID and handling your cancer diagnosis, was it complicated to handle both? Because 2020 was when we were in lockdown, right? Did that form any sort of complication for you, Tim? 

Tim McDonald 

There weren’t too many complications. That first visit to my GI surgeon to get the colonoscopy that same afternoon that I got the results from the CT scan was literally like, okay, we’re going to schedule this for three days because you need to get a covid test. And back then, covid test took 48 hours to get your results. That’s way back when they were sticking that big long Q-tip all the way to the back of your, felt like they were touching your brain, you know? That’s during that time. So I needed to get that done. So there was no like, let’s get you in the hospital. hospital, there was like, before you get in the hospital, we need to actually get a negative covid test from you. I’m going to just frame this because anybody that’s been diagnosed with cancer understands sometimes things, well, most of the time, things don’t move as quickly as you want them to move. But I was thinking that like, okay, three days, that’s not bad. I understand. I need to get the covid test. But then it was like, I got the colonoscopy done. I had a stent put in my colon, which basically opens up your, holds your colon open where the tumor was to allow your stool to pass through. That was opposed to getting a bag or ostomy that they put on, which is basically from your colon to your outside so it drains into your bag and doesn’t go through your ****** and your ****. I was able to get a stent put in. So all that happened. I got out of the hospital and I got referrals for a liver surgeon and an oncologist. And I called both. And I heard back from the liver surgeon in a couple of days and I was like, great. But they were like, it’s too early for you to talk to us. You need to see your oncologist first. And then I kept calling the oncologist office, you know, hey, when am I going to hear back? When can I get my appointment? You know, all this stuff. Long story short, that took about a week, week and a half to get in to see that oncologist. I am saying this like it felt like ever when I was going through this, right, to see them. But the reality of the matter is some people wait months to see their oncologist after they’re diagnosed. And to me, that is a travesty. We should be getting care in our country like right away. I don’t want to get on my soapbox here too much, but I will just say that like things like that, I kind of noticed. But other than that, it was literally like the only thing about COVID I think that slowed up my treatment or made it more complicated was some of the visits my wife wasn’t able to come with me. When I first was getting my infusions every two weeks, she was not allowed to come in with me while I got infusions. The only people that were allowed in is if you needed a translator or somebody to physically help you get there. Those were the only two people that they were allowed for visitors in infusions when you were going through chemo treatment at that time. Now, they opened that up towards the end of my treatment and allowed a visitor to come in. But by that time, I had already kind of set my piece and like it was my space to be by myself in that chair, just kind of doing what I wanted to do. And my wife said, do you want me to come? And I’m like, no. I kind of got my routine now. This is what I want. Really, that was the only thing. But I will tell you that the good thing about her not coming into one of the appointments that I had was it was an early oncologist that I had that told me that I only had three years to live and she was going to make my life as comfortable as possible. And if my wife was in that appointment, I don’t know what would have happened, like how she would have reacted to that. I knew I was there. How I reacted was, I didn’t say these words out loud, but I said them in my head as clearly as day. I mean, this is one of those things I will never forget. She said, you only have three years to live and I’m going to make your life as comfortable as possible. And the immediate reaction I had was, that’s your story, not mine. You’re fired. It was the last time I saw that oncologist. But then again, I had to get out and my wife was in the waiting room and I waited till we were out of the office and in the elevator going down because I didn’t want her to run back in and and strangle the doctor or anything. So I waited till we were in the elevator and I just took her by the, put my hands on her shoulders and I said, I want to tell you something. And I told her the story and I told her what I had said in my head. And I said, don’t worry, we’re going to find somebody else. We got this. And that was, how I reacted to that, but it was kind of a process to like all these things. I don’t think it was a barrier to my treatment. I don’t think it really held anything up, but it definitely, I faced some situations that people today aren’t facing. 

Rob 

In your book, From Patient to Advocate, you mentioned the concept of turning pain into power into a process. Could you speak a little bit about that and how you use that, the diagnosis itself and your story to inspire you to become an advocate and to help other people? 

Tim McDonald 

I’m a firm believer, and I know I said this a while back and somebody challenged me on it because not everybody likes the saying everything happens for a reason, but I kind of believe that, and I’ll put it in my context that I believe it in. And we’ve kind of already alluded to this earlier. I feel that whenever anything happens to us, it’s a chance for us to learn from it. and to do something with it. And when that happened to me, it took me about three to four days to realize this is happening to me because I’m pretty networked, online with a lot of different people. I have a lot of family and friends and connections. And if this is happening to me, somebody that didn’t have a family of colorectal cancer, who didn’t have any real major cancer history down my lineage, and it was happening to me, I need to start creating awareness so that other people know that they should listen to their body, they should get screened when they’re supposed to get screened, and really just creating awareness of the importance of getting screened when you should. That was all I called it at the time. But what it did was it really gave me kind of a sense of purpose that now I was here to really create awareness, encourage people that I knew to get screened. And what I was finding over time was all those people were then starting to tell their friends and share it with their networks, and more and more people were getting screened. And that was kind of the first entree into my advocacy, even though I didn’t call it advocacy at the time. 

Dr. Ethan Levine 

There’s a phrase that I often share with people that might resonate for you, the delusion of uniqueness. People shut themselves down because nobody else could possibly. I love what you did with that, really. 

Tim McDonald 

I’ll never forget the first conference I went to in Washington, D.C. for Call on Congress with the colorectal cancer group. And I was sitting at the table. For those of you that don’t know, chemotherapy for colorectal cancer, typical chemotherapies, one of the biggest things is fatigue and diarrhea. And it was so refreshing when I got up to go to the bathroom and came back 1/2 an hour later that nobody asked me, made a funny joke about, oh, what’d you do, fall in or what took you so long or any of those types of jokes. And if you were tired, you could just excuse yourself, go away for an hour, come back. And nobody said, what’d you do, take a cat nap or too tired from partying too hard last night? There was none of those types of jokes. And the reason for that was because I was around other people who got me. And I remember saying that to people, I finally found my people when I was at that event. That’s what I was saying. And I think that alludes to what you’re talking about. And the power of that only comes when we are willing to open ourselves up and share our stories so that others know that. hey, this is what you’re going through. I can connect with that story. And then you start making those connections with other people that are going through something similar to you. And that is what I found to be very powerful and what I try and encourage other people to do. We all do it at different levels, but the fact of really just opening yourself up, being vulnerable and sharing is so powerful. 

Rob 

Could you You mentioned those organizations. Man Up to Cancer was one of them that you’re an ambassador for. Could you speak to how your connection to that organization started and a little bit more about the work that they do in terms of their advocacy? 

Tim McDonald 

Right after I made the news public, which was literally like a couple of days after I was diagnosed, a friend of mine that when we both lived in Chicago had said, hey, there’s this guy, Joe Bullock, who has this men’s cancer group. You should check it out. And he tagged Joe on it. It was the first group. I’m very inquisitive. I’m very interested in like learning and exploring options. And so I’m like, great, let me join. And it happened to be Man Up to Cancer. It was just a Facebook group at the time of any man impacted by any cancer. And the one thing that I kind of learned about them was they really talked about like the emotional support that men need dealing with cancer and going through the cancer journey. They didn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of different treatments. They didn’t want to go down the rabbit trail of different miracle cures. There’s plenty of other organizations that talk about Their main focus is to really make sure that no man has to isolate through the cancer journey alone. And that was so powerful to just hear these other guys. I just talked about this the other day. There was some guys in that group that are now no evidence of disease. They were still in treatment then, but they were stage 4. They had mets of their liver just like me, and now there are no evidence of disease. And all I kept hearing originally before I joined that group was colorectal cancer stage 4 has a 13% chance of living five years. And these guys were showing me that they could not only be that 13%, but they could actually beat the cancer and get to know evidence of disease. And they were like inspirations for me, but even more so, it was the guys sharing these deep emotions about how they’re ****** *** about what they’re going through, how this is making their body feel. Some of them weren’t as fortunate as me, and it didn’t strengthen the relationship with their spouse. It actually made it worse, and they were getting divorced. and sharing what they were going through with that and just opening up and seeing other guys come into the conversation that could relate to that, that were going through something similar and then sharing that their story about it. It was nobody telling anybody how to feel or what to do, but just really kind of sharing that you’re not alone in this. There’s other, I’m going through this similar situation too. And so that group was is really powerful for that. But Joe Bullock, I said, I want treatment options. All the, my condition, my liver’s covered in tumors. I’m not a candidate for all these other treatments. I want to find out what is an option for me. And he said, hey, check out Colon Town. And Colon Town was another group specific to colorectal cancer that I joined. And they talked really about treatments. And there was no religion involved. There was no politics involved. There wasn’t a whole lot of groups about emotions, unless if you wanted to go there. It was mostly where hope meets science is their tagline, right? And so it was like all factual, scientific fact, you know, based on treatment options. And that’s where I found out about liver transplants. All this happened like so quickly. But then shortly after that, Joe had posted Man Up to Cancer about this other organization, Fight Colorectal Cancer. And they were looking for ambassadors. Each year they have an ambassador class, which is about a dozen or so. advocates that they bring in and you really represent fight colorectal cancer for the year. They always say once you’re an ambassador, you’re always an ambassador, but they ask you to be exclusive to fight colorectal cancer for a year. And I applied and I got accepted in that first year that I applied to be an ambassador for fight colorectal cancer. And I think that’s what opened my eyes up to actually being an advocate. That’s when my word changed from creating awareness to being an advocate. And so those are like the three groups that I still am involved with. I mean, there’s a lot more that I touch and get involved with now, but those were the three groups early on that really supported me. Fight colorectal cancer from the advocacy standpoint, Colon Town from the treatment standpoint, and Man Up to Cancer from the emotional and mental support standpoint. 

Rob 

I was fascinated by your process of finding a liver. You created a website to find your own liver and you were looking for someone to be a donor for you. Can you speak a little bit about what others can do in this kind of situation? What tools are out there for people to find a match for them? 

Tim McDonald 

I’m one of these people who feels like if I’m going through something and I see other people going through it, that we should try and work together instead of each working on our own. So when I learned about a liver transplant and back when I learned about it, there was literally 14 centers in North America performing liver transplants for colorectal cancer patients. Twelve of them were all living donors, only two used deceased donors. And unlike most people that have chronic liver disease, there is no real list for us to get on to get a donor. We don’t score high enough to be able to rank for a donor. I did create my own site looking for a donor, but then I started seeing these other people that were going through similar process as me. They were promoting it. I was promoting mine. I knew. that the average person had six to seven people screened before they found a match for them. And so my thought was, anybody that is calling to be a donor, not everybody, but the majority of people calling to be a donor, aren’t doing it specifically for that person. They’re doing it because first, if you’re willing to go through that major surgery, you have a heart of gold and you are willing to do this for another human being, first and foremost. That’s what you need to be a donor. You might have been instigated to do it because somebody actually posted about needing it. But once you’ve gone through the process, you’re probably likely to be willing to do it for somebody else in a similar situation. And so my thought was, well, if I create a site where donors can apply and say, I’m willing to donate, I can actually find out who is looking for a donor and then send those people’s information over to these people that want to be donors and have them call the transplant center, see if they’re a match, and then go through the process themselves. So I started with my own site for me, and then I started a site for anybody to basically help them find a donor. And I actually made my first match before I actually had my donor. And everybody was telling me this whole time, Tim, this is something you should focus on after you take care of yourself. And I was like, no, I don’t believe that. I believe that by helping others, I am helping myself, right? Like it’s not a one or, it’s we can have both of these things. I can help others and I can help myself at the same time. Now, I will say this though, Rob, because I don’t want to gloss over this. That process of searching for a donor was one of the most mentally challenging parts of this whole process. Because A, you’re not in control over it. With HIPAA restrictions, the hospital can’t tell you who they’re talking to. They can’t tell you what stage they’re at. They can’t even tell you how many people they’ve talked to, right? And so you are basically in the dark, unless if one of those potential donors that they’re screening lets you know what they’re going through. And so at first I started to control that. Let me know if you call so I can follow up for you. And then, I’d have people and then some people that I didn’t know that were coming out of the woodwork calling me and they’d be in constant communication at first. And then I’d start following up with them and they’d be like ghosting me and I didn’t know what happened. And then I finally learned after like a month or two, if you don’t hear anything, they’re not moving forward in the process. Something happened. But it was getting my hopes up and I’m riding this high on this rollercoaster, emotional rollercoaster. And then I find out they’re not a match or not moving forward. And then I’m back down in the dumps for a while. And then I find another one maybe a month or two later and I’m back up riding this high. And then I found out the real kicker was I had somebody that had gotten screening to donate to her dad, but wasn’t a perfect match for her dad. and said that she wanted to help me. And so even though she had all her workup done, I was all excited. They called me up to get my evaluation done up in Rochester, which is where I was getting my transplant in New York. And I get up there and I’m thinking, okay, I’m getting my evaluation done. She’s going to be approved and I’m going to get this thing done right around the new year, right in January. And lo and behold, I got up there. And by the time I got up there, I had said, well, I think that you guys are working somebody up. And they’re like, I don’t think that’s happening. anymore. And that’s all they said. And that was a big letdown for me because I left there thinking it was so close to becoming a reality. I’m going through my two-day evaluation. I have a potential donor. My surgery is going to be within the next month or so. And then it was down and I was crushed. I mean, literally crushed. That one hurt the most. But I made a commitment to myself. What I found was the good opportunities came when I wasn’t stressed out about focusing on why somebody didn’t work out. And so I learned how to let go of the control of the process and just let things happen. Whoever was meant to be my donor was going to be my donor. I got too attached to these stories of who was going to be my donor, not the fact that the right person was going to show up at the right time, and that’s what I needed to let happen. 

Rob 

That still requires an incredible amount of resilience, though, that inner control of your emotions. Could you speak to some of the tools that helped you during that process, or anything that people that are going through something similar can utilize at this point? 

Tim McDonald 

One trick that I learned, and this was before I was even diagnosed, was I used to journal actually with a pen and paper. Now I just do it internally in my head, but it really takes putting the pen on paper to make this practice work, I believe, is I was told by somebody that when your mind is all like talking and sharing things and putting thoughts in your head that aren’t really healthy for you, I called it my egos. This coach that I was working with said to pick on names, whatever is right for you, but you need to name it. And what you do is just like a play has the script with ego, me, ego, me, and have a conversation, but don’t think it out in your head and then write it. Do it in real time as it’s happening. And what I found was the rules of engagement here were, one, you needed to ask permission to have the conversation. Two, you needed to be open and honest with what the conversation was going to be. And 3, at the end, you had to be gracious and open the door up to have other conversations in the future. Those were the only guidelines that I was given. But what I found was when I did this, every time I’d start writing something down, And my ego would start showing, talking, and explaining why they were bringing these thoughts up to me. It was all based on things that had happened in the past, but not the reality of what happened. It was the scenario leading up to the reality happening. And that’s what I kept challenging my ego on, was all these things you’re telling me about, yes, I went through them, but the reality of the matter is when it actually happened, it was much better than I was thinking it was gonna be. And so why can’t you just give me the opportunity here to not have me go through this and see how it’s going to be? And if I’m wrong, you can come back and tell me that you were right. I don’t care. I’ll accept that, but let’s see how it works. And my ego always agreed to that. And what I found was when I went through this, it always was better than the thoughts in my head. And so as I’ve learned to do this mentally now, when I do this, I do it a lot quicker, obviously, but I also do it in my head. And so It took me, I’m not making it sound like I’m perfect at this because it, like I said, it took me almost 14 months to find my donor. And up until 10 months in, I was in that spiral, mental spiral of each of these ups and downs. It was only after January that I learned, hey, we can actually change this. And it was going through that mental exercise of writing out the script. Why are you getting so, wound up about this not working when somebody else has always showed up and somebody else will show up until it’s the right person for you. So just give it grace, let it happen. Don’t get all screwed up in your head about it. Let it work and it will work out the way it’s supposed to. And that’s actually what I ended up settling on after 10 months of work to finally get to that point. But it wasn’t as quick as just flipping a switch. It still took a couple of times where I was like, Maybe instead of being down for a week, I was only down for a couple hours. And then it got to maybe an hour, and then it only got to a couple minutes. I’m not saying suppress our emotions, because our emotions are important. But we need to understand that our emotions don’t control who we are as a human being. They’re just part of who we are as a human being. 

Rob 

That’s a great point about the process of it and separating sort of the ego element of going through treatment, trying to find a donor. Could you speak a little bit about how that works for yourself and some of the steps that people can take as they’re going through that process individually. 

Tim McDonald 

Now that I’m not in active treatment where my only focus was really dealing with my health, it really became one of these things where I have all these different thoughts going into my head about like survivorship and what that looks like, survivor’s guilt, having somebody else’s organ in my body and having a second chance at life. And what I really understood or came to understand is all these thoughts that were going in my head that I got kind of really obsessed about for way too much time was really the question I started just asking myself simply was, is this going to be something I’m going to be focused on an hour from now? Is it going to be something I’m focused on tomorrow or even next week or month? Because if it’s not, why focus on it right now? why are you giving it so much time in your head and energy that is taking you away from the people that you’re around, the thing that you’re working on? It’s really stealing your time from you if you let these thoughts continue? And so really that question, that simple question, and again, this wasn’t like just a thing that I came up with and flipped the switch and had it go. It was a work in progress and it still is. Whenever I start obsessing over something that kind of takes me away from being present, I just ask that simple question, am I going to be thinking about this again in the future? And if the answer is no, I have learned how to really just shut that conversation in my head down. 

Mukund 

In the middle of your treatment, how were you able to balance or rather have the mental capacity for both your livelihood and then the treatment? Was there any interruptions to your job per se? How did you handle both? 

Tim McDonald 

I wasn’t working because of the pandemic and then for the first year or and a half, I guess, of my diagnosis. Once I got off of the really aggressive chemo because it had done its job and it was also causing some neuropathy that could be permanent. So my oncologist took that out and I was on a much more standard chemotherapy. It was still fatigue, but not the same type of fatigue that I had. It was still all the other side effects, but not as bad. And what I felt like was I had a lot more energy that I didn’t have. And so I went back to work and I was working for a tech startup. And one of the things I absolutely loved about that was I was open about my treatment. schedule when I was hired. I didn’t bring it up during my interviews, but when they gave me the offer, I brought it up. They said, yes, we’re already aware of that. We’ve seen your social media. We know you talk about this. But they weren’t just saying it was okay with them. They actually allowed me, like I remember I was on a meeting once in the chemo chair and our CEO, our founder was like, Tim, what are you doing? You should be resting. And I’m like, no, I’m fine. You don’t understand. I’m fine right now. It’s later on today that I’m probably not going to feel good at all. And he goes, well, we have another meeting this afternoon. He goes, do me a favor. I don’t want you to be on it. He goes, we’ll fill you in. You know, and that’s kind of the environment I was working with. I know not everybody is that lucky, right? But I was very fortunate that I had a company and I worked for them. We ran out of funding right after I got my liver transplant. So I worked for them for like 14 months while I was searching for a donor is while I was working for them, while I was going through active treatment. And I say that, If I could set up an example for a cancer patient going through treatment and working, that would be the type of company that you want to work for. 

Dr. Ethan Levine 

Tim, I find the way you’ve processed all this extraordinary. And the question that comes to mind for me is, do you have thoughts about basically translating these for the everyday person? It’s not just people with cancer, the kind of process you’re speaking of is valuable for anyone. 

Tim McDonald 

It’s interesting you say that because I have thought about that a lot. One of my fellow advocates says that every cancer patient is a lived experience expert, right? Like we carry that card and credential wherever we go because of what we’ve been through. But yet, when it comes to the mental health side and how we process this whole thing, I don’t give myself, I think, enough credit for what I’ve actually been through and how I’ve dealt with it. So to answer To answer your question, I have thought about it, but I’m probably in this role of still thinking, I don’t have the credentials, I don’t have the expertise to do this, even though in my book I talk about like, you don’t need those things to be the expert and to be the advocate that you are. To answer your question very simply, I do do it one-on-one, but I haven’t applied it on a bigger scale because I’m kind of holding myself back from doing that, thinking I’m not the one that is supposed to be doing this when I probably am the one who’s supposed to be doing this. 

Dr. Ethan Levine 

How has this affected your relationship with your wife, your journey, how you have changed? How has that affected your relationship? 

Tim McDonald 

She might answer it a little bit differently, but I think she would be pretty close to this. I think that both of us would say our relationship is stronger now. I think our love is a little bit deeper now. But I think that comes from a place of both understanding that we are human and we both are mortal. And we’ve been fortunate enough where I was like looking that in the face and she was there with me. And we’ve been able to kind of step back from that place, which is remarkable. But I think when you can go through a situation like that together and stay together throughout it, it really helped strengthen your resolve for each other, your relationship and your love. So I really think that it helped. I think the most difficult part that she’s had since I had my liver transplant was understanding like for her, she was done with cancer, you know, and me, I said, cancer is always going to be part of who I am. It’s never going to go away. And since I was really starting to take off in my advocacy at that time, I just started going to all these things and she couldn’t understand it. why was I still involved in all this if I was done with cancer? And so that took us a little while to work through, but now she is like very supportive when I go to these advocacy trips, when I’m at these events, when I’m doing talks. So she understands it now. So I really think that we’ve come to a really strong and healthy place with each other as far as understanding who we are as people. She doesn’t want to pursue the advocacy path with me. as a caregiver, and that’s okay. But she’s not holding me back from my advocacy path because of how important it is for me personally. 

Dr. Ethan Levine 

How has your personal bucket list changed because of this journey? 

Tim McDonald 

It’s so funny because for years I’ve always said I don’t have a bucket list. I actually have a good friend who wrote a trilogy of books called **** the Bucket List. And so I really don’t say that I have a bucket list, but I will say this has changed about me. It changed during my treatment and it has not stopped is both my wife and I love to travel and I love exploring new places that I haven’t been before. So it’s really travel, exploring new places, new cultures, new kind of architecture, new ways of being. I’ve learned so much from my international travels for work that I want her to experience some of that too and broaden her horizons. So really that is like the one thing that is at the top of our list now is really getting out and exploring the world. 

Rob 

I’m wondering about the distinction between a volunteer and an advocate. And you talk a little bit about that in the book, how you define a volunteer and advocate and what these organizations organizations do. 

Tim McDonald 

So many organizations say we have volunteers, right? And I’m not discounting the value of volunteers and the power that they can bring to an organization. But I think an advocate is so much more. In simple terms, I think a volunteer shows up and performs a task that the organization assigned to them. That’s what a volunteer is. An advocate is somebody who shows up, is empowered by the organization to go out and make a change for the betterment of others in their own way. And I think those two things are so different, but so closely aligned. And both are valuable, and both are needed, especially by nonprofits. But if you truly want to be an advocate, just don’t show up and do the work that other people are asking you to do. Really embody what’s important to you, what you’re passionate about. Learn how the organization can support you, and then go out and create your impact. 

Rob 

It’s always heartening when we speak to someone like you, Tim. We really appreciate the way you communicate your story, and thank you so much for sharing with us and sharing your time with us. 

Tim McDonald 

Thank you. 

Rob 

Thank you so much again.