Hello, my friend, and welcome to Cancer Can Give! in this special series of the Simplify Cancer Podcast, we share inspirational stories of people who went on a grueling journey through cancer and yet, they found their own way to live, grow and give in a way that helps others. Today, it is my absolute pleasure to speak to Trevor Maxwell, a proud man, men's health champion founder of the incredible Man Up To Cancer.

Links

MAN UP TO CANCER

Man Up to Cancer Podcast

Man Up to Cancer - The Howling Place - Facebook

Man Up To Cancer (@cancerwolves) • Instagram

Video

Full Transcript

Glad you can be here. Let's talk to Trevor. Great seeing you.

Thank you. again, thanks for your patience and willingness to speak with me. The cancer journey is full of bumps and crazy turns. Then when you become an advocate, things kind of like the map to cancer movement has kind of been taken off. Just kept me super busy. I appreciate it.

I was so thrilled to have you so thrilled to talk about you and your story. I really want to I first of all, I want to go back in time. I want to go back in time, what was life like? What was life like before cancer?

Life was great. I was 41 years old. My wife and I live here in Maine, on the on the Atlantic Ocean, basically, about a couple hours north of Boston, and been here most of my life. We have two daughters. sage, and Elsie, they were 12 and 10, at the time of my diagnosis, and everything was just trucking along. Before cancer, I was a pretty healthy guy very active. just enjoyed all the outdoors. Living here in Maine is a great place for the outdoors. I was a journalist for many years. Then, at the time of my diagnosis, I was doing my own public relations, consulting, just like a one-man company. My wife was a teacher, and the girls were just going through school, and it was like prime of life. It was good.

You're on a kind of trajectory through life. Things are going your way. Then it just hits you, so tell me the moment. How did you find out?

You're right, you're just kind of going along, and you have all these like illusions in your head, you tell these stories yourself. I'm going to live till I'm 80. I'm going to see my grandkids you just have this imagination of what the steps are. Then cancer comes along. I say, sometimes I use the phrase life asteroid, because it's an asteroid has hit you and your family. It’s like my God, I went from a 41-year-old mid middle of life, dad and husband and worker to “a cancer patient” facing metastatic colorectal cancer at age 41. With young children, and boom, life asteroid.

That's a beautiful way of putting it because exactly. It is like an asteroid that just blows up into your world. What was what was the biggest change for you, Trevor?

I mean, I think at first it was just real physiological shock. People don't talk about that enough. The shock to your system. It’s like you're in the matrix. Then one day you realize oh my gosh, this might kill me like and soon so there's the shock. I went into a period, a period of deep mental health struggle so I think the biggest change was like I'd always been a pretty positive person, outward person I struggled before cancer a little bit with typical depression, anxiety so many others do. When cancer hit, and the idea of possibly dying at a young age and leaving my kids behind, and my wife behind, it just crushed me emotionally. I went into a pit of despair man, clinical anxiety, depression, the whole works like I was on the floor. There was a lot of days when I would just be even functioning. It was that bad. I thought I was going to have to go into the hospital for my mental health, not even my cancer. Right. For the first thinking like six to eight months of my journey. It was it was like a pit, and it was crushing. It was just emotional turmoil.

I'm so glad that you brought this up, man, because it's something that does not get talked about.