What is time, really? When you are diagnosed with a terminal disease like cancer or leukemia, your perception of time changes.
I will continue to keep fighting sucking the marrow out of life as life sucks the marrow out of me.
I try not to match too much. You know, if there's a blue coat and a blue shirt and a blue tie, I try to stay away from that. I'd rather have a blue coat and a yellow shirt and a pink tie. I don't like to look too matching. You know those mismatched socks kids wear? That's my idea of a good suit.
I never complain: 'Oh, I have to go to the hospital and get platelets.' No. It's just something you have to do, so why complain about it?
I first met Jim Valvano in the 1980s when he was a frequent guest on our CNN 'Coaches Corner' show based in Atlanta, as he was always in the area recruiting the next North Carolina State basketball phenom.
In 1974 when I was 22 years old, I was working for $95 a week at WSPB, which was an Atlanta Braves-affiliated AM radio station in Sarasota, Florida. Fresh out of Northwestern University, I was the news director at the station, and my main bread and butter was to handle updates during the morning and afternoon drive times.
I can't even use a can opener. I'm mechanically challenged. I ripped off two thumbnails trying to change kids' bicycle chains.
I think my demise has been prematurely reported. That's what I think. I think I'm going take this and make medical history, and I really believe that.
Like most boys, I had a model train set up in my bedroom, resting on a little-used ping-pong table upstairs.
I have wrestled gators in Florida. I have sailed the ocean with Ted Turner. I have swam the oceans in the Caribbean.
I look forward to continuing my work on the sidelines for Turner Sports.
I've already had two stem cell transplants. Very rarely does somebody have a third, so I have to maintain my strength so I can go through this.
Whatever I might have imagined a terminal diagnosis would do to my spirit, it summoned quite the opposite - the greatest appreciation for life itself. So I will never give up, and I will never give in.