“This guy’s gonna live”, I said to my wife after reading a Post-Gazette account of CMU professor Randy Pausch’s battle with terminal cancer, “Look at all he has accomplished. Look at all he has to live for (three kids, great wife, exciting job). Look at how he thinks.”

If you were fortunate enough to have witnessed Professor Pausch’s now-famous “Final Lecture,” you know that this guy is something special. (If you are one of the unfortunate few, you can see it now by going here.)

I have personally read his speech a half-dozen times. Partially because I love a “fighter”, and partially because it helps me with my own personal battle with liver and pancreatic cancer.

Already, Pausch has lived well beyond the (minimum) three month “window” that his doctors gave him in August. (They gave him a “max” lifespan until February … but I’ve personally dealt away two of these myself.) In the newspaper today, I just read that “palliative chemotherapy” is now extending his life some more, “probably well into 2008.”

Well, this is no surprise to me. In fact, I’ll bet that we’re seeing Randy Pausch above ground for at least the next year and probably for years beyond that. How do I know this? If there is one thing that I’ve learned in my four-year battle with this disease - it’s that tough guys live and everyone else dies.

And Pausch is obviously one tough guy!

I frequent the Hillman Cancer Center. Not because I like the smell (God! Hospitals make me wretch!) but because I can get both treatment (although most of my treatment consists of diet, exercise, and carrot juice) and pictures of my insides there. (The latter is much more interesting to me than the former.)

And when I’m there, I spent a good deal of time waiting. Waiting for someone to stick a needle in my arm, waiting for the pharmacy to cook up the meds, and lastly waiting to get my car back so that I can high-tail it the hell out of there when I’m done.

And it is during all that waiting that I meet and get to know all kinds of souls. Basically, they fall into three categories:

1. The “woe is me” crowd – these are folks who don’t have a chance of survival because they have already made up their minds that they are going to die. Frequently, these types quit the grueling chemo, radiation, and/or surgical approach.
2. The “well, I’ll do the treatments, but that’s it”, crowd – and these are folks who expect (and just as we Americans certainly tend to do) technology to heal them. They will dutifully do the chemo (horrible, horrible stuff, that chemotherapy) or the radiation, but don’t you ever expect them to change their lifestyle in any way. Thus, if they smoke, they’ll continue to smoke, and if they eat junk for food, they’ll continue to do that, too.
3. And lastly, there are the guys that Steeler Coach Mike Tomlin would call “tough guys”. Tough guys aren’t necessarily big, physical specimens; nor are they any sort of body type, gender, race, or religion. Rather, these are the “refuse to lose” people. They walk the halls of Hillman with a sort of glow. When you speak to them, you can tell that they have already “seen past the disease” - looking instead to days and years of cancer-free bliss. They have plans for these times, and more importantly, they have something to live for in these times.

And this is where Dr. Randy Pausch lives: waaaay out there - beyond the sensory range of most humans and even a majority of animals. He just knows that he is going to make it, regardless of what he says about the “scientific inevitability” of death. At numerous levels, he knows he is going to live because he also knows that his life is important, and that he can help a helluva lot more people from above the ground than below.

Time will tell if I am right about Dr. Pausch. But if I am, I will smile and think to myself about that “greater power” that resides in that ten-to-twelve inch space between our ears.

For this is truly where all the important answers reside.

Best regards,

Ron