Glioblastoma Awareness Day 2024

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you. I'm grateful and honored

to be bringing you a special episode.

It's Wednesday, and it is July 17th. Today is Glioblastoma Awareness Day.

I'm sure you've heard me talk about glioblastoma before, but glioblastoma is

a type of brain cancer in the family of tumors known as gliomas,

and it's the grade four most malignant

glioma, and it's the most common malignant brain tumor in adults.

It accounts for about half of all the brain tumors in adults.

And it has a terrible survival.

It has a five-year survival rate that's close to 0%. It's without a doubt the

most devastating and difficult disease that I have to take care of.

And over the course of my career as a neurosurgeon over the last 20 years,

I've dealt with hundreds of patients and their families, and it is always a

difficult conversation, and it's always a devastating course that we have to go through together.

And so I told a lot of those stories in my book, I've Seen the End of You.

Today, I want to give you back an episode that I recorded in early 2023 about my book,

some of the stories that I shared of patients that I've taken care of,

and just as kind of a tribute to those folks that were so important to me that

they really changed the way I saw myself and my whole nature of my practice. us.

I was called to writing actually in the first place because of this common problem

that I have. I would look at a scan and I would know exactly what was going to happen.

And it caused me a faith crisis because I understood that God could heal.

He could change things. He could make a difference. But for this one particular

disease, he never seemed to make that decision.

He always seemed to say no when we prayed for our patients with glioblastoma.

So I wrote a whole book about And that's really what led me to,

after we lost our son, to understanding suffering and understanding how to find hope and faith again.

And all those things really came out of my quest to understand how to be a good

doctor to people when I couldn't fix them with surgery.

So I have a lot of emotional investment and I've seen the interview and the

stories and the patients that come along that created that book and also in

the ongoing care that I give to people in my practice now that I'm dealing with.

So today's Glioblastoma Awareness Day.

If you feel called to do so, I would really appreciate it if you would consider

donating to the research.

There's several great organizations, the American Brain Tumor Society.

The National Brain Tumor Foundation, the Brain Tumor Foundation.

There's links in the show notes to some of those organizations.

And it would be a really special thing for you to contribute to this work.

Work that's giving hope to people. Someday they're going to cure this disease.

Someday they're going to figure it out. And it would be amazing if we came together

in the cell brain surgery community and made some donations that help that work get done.

I'm thinking today about people like Elmer and Joey and Samuel and Rupert and

Mrs. Knopf and all the stories that I told in my book, I've seen the interview.

And I'm just praying for you if you're dealing with this disease or if you're

a loved one of somebody who's going through it or has gone through it,

praying for you that there will be hope.

And so today I want to give you this episode back, my friend.

It's Gleeoblastoma Awareness Day. I wanted to bring this to you.

It's a special episode I recorded back in 2023.

Before we get started, I have a question for you.

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the

neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything

starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place. Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired.

Take control of our thinking and find real hope. This is where we learn to become

healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready? this is your podcast this is your

place this is your time my friend let's get after it.

Music.

Hey friend it's january 7th 2020

after a long long time of living and writing this story after countlets edits

and revisions and going through the publishing process selecting between four

publishers that made offers and choosing the waterbrook penguin random house

team and over Over 18 months of work since then to get everything ready, today's the day.

Today, my book, I've Seen the End of You, A Neurosurgeon's Look at Faith,

Doubt, and the Things We Think We Know, will be available to purchase everywhere books are sold.

Lisa and I are in New York City this week doing a variety of media promotions

for the book, and I'll put a list of the appearances in the show notes at my

website, wlawrind.com.

And since you most likely haven't read the book yet, I wanted to spend a few

minutes with you today to talk about the story and what it means.

If you're going to consider spending a few dollars to purchase my book,

I want you to know what you're getting into.

I do want to send a shout out to our friends and family who served as advanced

readers for the book and the hundred or so people who read the advanced copies

and reviewed it on websites like netgalley.com and goodreads.com.

Those people are helping a lot of new people find out about the book this week,

and I really appreciate all their help in getting the word out about this important book.

My books are always more than they seem to be on the surface.

A Peek Under the Hood seemed like it was just patient stories from my practice,

but really it was a bunch of stories wrapped in spiritual lessons.

And No Place to Hide seemed like a military memoir, and it was,

but it was really about recovering after something hard, about post-traumatic

stress disorder, and about learning to let God be in control in out-of-control situations.

And I've done it again because I've seen the interview looks like a medical

memoir are about brain tumor and trauma patients.

But it's so much more than that because it's really my story of learning how

to honestly encourage people to have faith and fight even when all seems lost.

It's about helping people see the light when life seems so dark.

And it's about how our family suffered the worst loss imaginable and somehow learned to hope again.

As Lisa put it, this book is a lifeline for anyone who's ever felt hopeless.

So after all these years and all this work, today's the day.

In this episode, I want to take you into my story, our story,

and break it down for you and help you prepare to get the most out of it.

And even if you don't read the book, there are some things I will share with

you today that will help you find solid ground for your life,

even when everything seems so shaky.

I wrote, I've seen the interview to help us process all we've been through as

a family and to help you find faith and hold on to hope, even when everything

you thought you knew seems to be in doubt.

This episode will help you understand why I'm here every week,

trying to help you start today.

My editor from Waterbrook, Penguin Random House, asked me if I could write a study guide for my book.

Now, you can get a study guide, a copy of the study guide on the Penguin Random

House website, and I'll put a link to it on the show notes, too.

And I thought it might be helpful today for us to just use the study guide as

sort of a framework to talk through some of the issues around this book.

And I thought I would take a minute to bounce these questions off of Lisa,

and we'll discuss them since she hasn't read them before. So,

Lisa, are you up for that? Yes, definitely.

We're going to spend a little time talking about this book. It's really been

something you've been living with for four years now, right? Yes.

It's been a wonderful experience to help us get through something so devastatingly

horrible. That's right.

And so before we get into the study guide, though, here's this week's thing that will help.

As you probably know, if you've been reading my newsletter for a while or following

my books or on my blog or podcast, about every other year, Lisa and I do a book

a week challenge for our readers.

We've read a lot of books together, haven't we? We have. And people often ask

me, how in the world do you have time as a busy neurosurgeon,

husband, father, grandfather, writer, to read a book every week? And what's the answer?

Audiobooks. That's right. Lisa and I both discovered audiobooks several years ago.

It's become a great way to read books and accomplish something while I'm also working out.

And I've started using them when I'm on the treadmill or on the bike,

usually the Peloton. Again, not a paid endorsement, but we love the Peloton so much.

But I used to listen to them at 2x speed.

So with the Audible app, you can set it up to, what, 3 1⁄2 or something?

It sounds like the chipmunks if you do that.

And what I learned is you really can process and retain a lot of information

when you're listening to books more quickly.

And I thought, boy, it was a great way to kill two birds with one stone and

get my workout in but also read a book in half the time that it would take if

I was actually reading it on paper.

But all that changed pretty dramatically a few months ago, because I got an

email from an audio producer from Penguin Random House who contacted me and

asked me if I wanted to narrate my book myself.

Now, Lisa knows I've been frustrated over the years since I made the decision

in 2013 to not narrate my first book, No Place to Hide.

Zonderman gave me the opportunity to do that, but we had recently lost our son,

Mitch, and I just didn't think I had it in me at the time.

But every time I've listened to that audio version of that book,

I've been pretty frustrated that I didn't read it myself.

The man who did, did a great job. He's a well-known narrator and he's done lots

of books that you probably read, but he just didn't sound like me, right? He didn't.

Just didn't sort of enunciate things or end sentences or emphasize things the

way that I would have because it wasn't his story.

And so I've always told Lisa that if I was ever blessed enough to publish another

book, I would narrate it myself if given the chance.

So when Penguin gave me the opportunity, I jumped at it.

The producer recommended that I listen to a bunch of audio books at normal speed

to get a sense of pace and cadence that would help me to read and be kind of

a proper guide for that type of recording.

And to my surprise, I got a lot more out of those books listening to them at

normal speed than I had been listening to them at double speed.

And it dawned on me that I was missing a lot of nuance and detail by speeding

those books up and by just going too fast.

And then after I'd recorded my book, I really hoped that no one would speed

it up since I'd worked so hard to record it. You did. You worked very hard.

Yeah, it took a whole week and it was hard work. And that's really what I wanted

to point out as this week's thing that will help. I learned that we're just

going too fast in our lives. We're missing stuff.

We're in too big of a hurry. And we just need to slow down a little bit and

let things come out at the proper speed.

Reading has become a real joy again to me instead of just something that I need

to knock out because I promised people that I was gonna read a book every week.

And sure, there are probably some books, maybe some business books or books

of facts that you probably could listen to more quickly because they're not

really full of nuance wants or things that you need to really chew on are just facts.

But memoir and fiction and spiritual books and personal development books,

I think they have a lot packed into the words and even sometimes into the spaces

between the words that we need to get.

And that's the point I'm trying to make right now, friend.

There's stuff in the spaces between our lives that we're missing if we're going too fast.

Is that right, babe? That's a really good point. I just would encourage you, slow down.

Stop going twice as fast as you have to. You'll enjoy it a lot more,

and I promise it'll help.

Okay, since my book is coming out today, I thought it might be useful to have

a conversation with Lisa and talk through the study guide.

Like I said, it's available for free online at Penguin Random House's website,

and also I'll put a link to it in our show notes.

Welcome back to the show, honey. Thanks for having me. You're welcome.

I appreciate you being here. And like I said last week, Lisa's going to spend

a little more time with us this year

because for some reason we get more downloads when you're on the show.

Hey, now you're not a typical reader of this book because you lived it, right?

Exactly. So this is a book about some experiences that we had because Lisa not

only was my wife when we lost a child together, but also you ran our practice for 11 years, right?

Yes. So all the stories and all the patients and everything that we talk about,

you knew these people in real life. Yes, every one of them is real.

And we had intimate knowledge and relationship with all of them. That's right.

And you also sort of demanded that I write the book, right?

Yes. So it sort of came about because of our association professionally together

and as a married couple who lived a lot of hard things together.

And even though you've been so involved in this story, how do you think the

actual book has impacted you now that it's out?

Well, I can't even remember how many times I've actually read the book.

At the beginning process of you writing, I pretty much read what you wrote every day.

And then I realized I needed to step back and let you write it.

So I told you, don't show me anything until you've done a whole chapter or a couple chapters.

So that's how we went about the initial process of him writing it.

And then we got the first copy back from the editor, from Dave Lambert,

after you and Dave had worked really hard to tighten things up.

And I read through the whole thing, actually on a plane going to San Antonio.

And it was like the first time I'd read it. I cried.

I laughed out loud. um and

then since that time i've read

it probably another 10 times all the way through and then did line edits and

every single time one it's just like any book that you read more than once you

catch things that you didn't catch before but the funny part was is i knew all the words.

I knew all the stories, but the book is so powerful.

Everyone listening out there, you have to buy this book because if you haven't

been in a hopeless place, you will know someone that is or has, and it will help.

It is powerful and it needs to be in the hands of every single person that possibly

could get that book. Well, thank you.

Really, we've been praying really hard that this book is going to help people

because that's how it's aimed is to try to be helpful to people.

So let's, let's go through the study guide. Okay. Okay.

All right. So the first question, what are some ways in which people respond

to extremely difficult things in life, like learning they have a brain tumor?

Well, when we first started the practice in Auburn, we had a really small office.

And I noticed as a designer and as the person running this practice and the

wife of the neurosurgeon,

that the people who had really big news, like they had a brain tumor,

something that's stopping them in their tracks, changing the outcome of what

they thought their life was going to be like, is,

it is a huge moment.

So when we built our new office, I made, it was exam room five,

and we called it the family exam room, because when somebody gets bad news, it's not just them.

It's them, their spouse, their kids, their parents, their siblings,

their best friends, their pastor.

And we would have sometimes the

entire reception area filled with people coming to listen to this news.

And after that initial shock and processing it, you had people that either became

very positive, or you had people that were in complete denial. aisle.

And it was very interesting to see how people reacted.

And I always used to even think to myself, I wonder how I would react if I received

the news that we typically gave to patients that had these brain tumors.

Yeah, we've noticed over the years that it doesn't really seem to depend on

education or background, but individual people respond to big challenges in

their lives in very different ways.

And it's surprising sometimes when you see somebody that seems really wrapped

up and like they've got everything together and something bad happens,

some difficult circumstance occurs and they sort of fall apart.

And other people that seem like you would expect them to have trouble with bad

news seem to buck up under it and stand up.

And let's just let that segue into the second question, which is what separates,

Well.

What you said is true. It didn't matter what gender, race,

where their economic status stood, whether they had money or didn't have money,

whether they were married or not married, whether they had kids or not kids.

It was very interesting to see that some people, like you said,

that you thought were going to be.

Able to handle really horrible news would just fall apart.

And even, even to the point where we would have to call them numerous times

to get them to come back in for the follow-up or to get them to go get the scans,

they just went into complete denial.

And then you had others that were like, we're going to beat this thing.

We're going to do, what can we do?

How can we, you know, do the best thing we can do to make sure we have the best outcome.

And it was interesting to see that there had to be, I guess,

the ones that did the best had some sort of relationship with, or a faith.

They had some sort of something they held on to outside of just themselves,

whether it was a belief in God or whether it was a strong relationship with

their family or their kids.

I remember one patient that was fighting so hard because he wanted to see his

children grow up. Right.

Yeah. We saw people who they would, they would sort of absorb the news like

they'd been punched in the gut.

And then they would say, doc, I got stuff to take care of. Like they would immediately

start thinking about arrangements they needed to make for their families or,

or things that they needed to take care of in their lives.

So they left behind people being okay.

Um, but I think over the years, as we talk about a lot in the book,

I think that The one thing that seems to really differentiate people is,

like you said, do they have something that gives their life a solid floor even

when the bottom seems to fall out? Is there some place where they can land?

Is it hope or faith or a great strong family dynamic or something?

But the people that seem to do the best are people whose lives are not built

on their health or on the length of the days that they will live in this life.

So people who have a structure that's going to be solid, even when their life

turns out not to be solid. Right.

So how do you think, this book goes into a lot of information about science

and medicine, but also a lot about faith.

And how do you feel as a lay person, really, you're really kind of an in-between

person, because you've run a medical practice for a long time,

but how do you think science and faith interact?

Well, I think if you only have one or the other,

then learning more about the one you don't have a good grasp of is,

I think, the best way that we saw our patients who were the strongest all the

way to the end, whose families,

regardless of the fact that they lost their loved ones,

their families still seemed strong.

Their spouses seemed strong. Were they devastated?

Yes, but they seemed strong. And so I know that's one thing that you did in

the practice and in the book is it was beautifully done with our patients,

how you wove science and faith,

and they never seem to be one without the other.

And I think that's what helped the majority of our patients do so well.

And for us in the office to constantly be around people that were dealing with

such hard things is to have the combination of both.

And science came from God.

So it's it was an easy thing for us because we do believe.

You know, as a person of faith, as a Christian who went on to become a scientist,

there's been a lot of times in my career, in my life, where I felt sort of like

I needed to line up on one side or the other,

right? And after we lost Mitch, for a little while.

Part of me, the human part of me, wanted to denounce God and just say I didn't believe.

But what the healthy response is, is to say, we know that our Creator gave us

brilliant, gave us good minds and the ability to think through difficult problems,

and He created brilliant people who could solve stuff.

And so the place where I land as a physician trying to encourage you in the

midst of a hard thing is to say, Say, hey, have faith, dig in,

let the science do its job, let the medicine do its thing, but hold up your

spirit, too, because they have to play with each other.

You can't just get medicine and give up in your heart because those people don't do well.

And you can't not take your chemotherapy because you believe God's going to

come in and save the day, and he's out there saying, but I gave you this chemotherapy.

You should have had it, right? So I think you have to have both. Right.

Now, one thing about glioblastoma, this particular tumor that we write about

a lot in this book, is that the 10-year survival rate is really basically zero.

I mean, for the last 40 years, pretty much nobody survives that disease.

The five-year survival even is less than 10%. So if you get that diagnosis of

glioblastoma multiforme, if I tell you that you have this particular type of

brain cancer, that is really bad news.

I mean, it is a disease that God almost seems always to say no to when we pray about it.

So I had the conundrum of saying, how can I honestly tell a patient to pray

about it when I don't believe God's ever going to answer that?

So Lisa, as a Christian, how do you feel about praying for things that God never seems to do?

I guess I never thought about it that way until we were married and I was running

our practice and and saw that there was this one brain tumor that just never,

they all die. And I still try to not allow that to affect how I pray.

I pray for everything.

And I try to not imagine whether or not God is going to answer.

I'm doing it because that is my way to communicate with Him.

So I guess I really don't try to wonder if He's going to answer me or not.

Of course, there are things that I'm hoping and praying that He answers yes,

but I really do just try and just put that, put the prayer out there,

and what God says yes or no,

maybe it's up to Him, and my job then as a believer is to learn how to deal with the answer.

That's right. I think you can't ever put God in a box, because we learned there

are some people who surprise you that don't read the medical textbooks that

seem to have better outcomes than we expect them to do.

So God can do things that I have never seen Him do before.

And so I always continue to pray for the health and healing of my patients,

but also continue to pray for their heart, that they'll find a way to hold on

to hope because people that don't give up, they do better even if they don't live longer.

They find a better quality of life. Their families hold together better even

if they end up dying from their disease.

So that's where I land is that you don't have to pray to tell God to do things he doesn't do.

Don't pray that the apple will fall up when it falls off the tree.

That's silly. We know he's not going to do that. But there are things that we

don't understand that he's doing out there.

And we always should pray that his will will be done.

And that if it, like Jesus said in the garden, you know, if it's possible,

let this cup pass from me.

Jesus knew what was happening, but he still prayed for deliverance. And we should too.

Now there's two stories in the book.

Well, the one we're going to talk about now, there's a patient named Eli who

ended up having a long survival from his glioblastoma.

And I won't ruin the story to tell you what happened or what is still happening with him.

But there is a story where shortly after we lost Mitch, you remember when he

came back to our office basically, and Eli was having a problem in his own family

where his sister's son had passed away.

And Eli asked me, not long after Mitch died, while we were still really grieving,

if I could help his brother-in-law.

You remember that? Yes. So I tell that story, and the question is,

if you're in the midst of something really hard yourself, how can you help somebody

else while you're hurting?

And does helping that other person help you in some way too?

How do you deal with those kinds of things, honey?

I think it really does help.

Part of helping someone else when you're dealing with something difficult is

to take your mind off of what you're dealing with and to put yourself out there

to be available to someone else.

But when you do that, you find out you actually receive comfort from that.

Like we did it all the time and, and continue to like everyone's life has difficult and hard things.

There's no one that doesn't, no matter what your life looks like on the outside

or how how you try and pretend that everything is okay. Everyone has hard things.

So you can't stop trying to help other people because that is exactly how you

end up looking exactly like Jesus when you're trying to put yourself outside

of what you want and help other people.

That's a great example because the whole 33 years Jesus was on the earth,

He knew what was getting ready to happen to Him.

And yet His whole life was about helping other people. That's a good point.

Um, you hear that? I hear dude snoring in the background.

So if you're ready to take a nap, just zone in on the sound you're hearing from

dude breathing heavy in the background there. He's funny.

So in this book, we talk about several themes.

We talk about faith and we talk about doubt and we talk about things that we think we know.

And I have this theory that one of the hardest things to deal with in life is

when stuff that you think is solid and true turns out not to be.

So the things we think we know sometimes are harder to deal with than faith or doubt.

But the question I had that I wrote in the study guide is, what do you think

the opposite of faith is?

Well, faith is, it is a difficult thing to have consistently.

Because circumstances in our life happen that our faith sometimes is super strong

and powerful. powerful and we feel in control of it and we feel full of faith.

And then there's other times, I know in my life, I've had a few moments where

I felt like I didn't have any faith.

And to be honest, that was the most afraid I've ever been in my life was when

I thought I actually didn't have faith when we were dealing with,

you know, with losing Mitch.

And it's fear. It's not.

It's not doubt, because we can doubt. Goodness, I mean, we have to.

We have to ask questions.

We have to have a relationship with the Lord that you can actually just say,

why did you do that? Why did you let that happen?

But it's when you think that maybe everything you thought you believed was not true, and that's fear.

So in my opinion, that's the opposite of faith.

That's what Philip Yancey said, too. The problem we have as Christians is some

of us are raised to believe that if we doubt, doubt that it means that our faith

is flagging or failing in some way, that doubt is a bad thing.

But if you really spend some time, especially in the Old Testament,

you'll see that the God of the Bible encourages us to tell Him our fears and

our doubts, to actually be honest with Him about what we're feeling,

even when we're mad at Him. And so it's not wrong to doubt.

But when doubt becomes comes fear. Like I said a few weeks ago,

faith says yes. Faith says it's possible.

Faith says keep going. Doubt says I'm not sure.

Doubt says I don't know what's going to happen. But fear tells you no.

Fear tells you that you can't. Fear tells you that it won't improve.

So fear is really the opposite of faith. And I think that's one of the things

we work through in this book is how to move from a place of fear back into a

place of accepting that you have doubt and moving from there into to more solid

ground where you can find that faith and hope again.

So I think we just answered the next question. Is it bad to doubt your faith?

I don't think so. And I actually think that there's an opportunity there to

make it stronger because you're having an honest conversation with God when you have doubts,

when you question Him about how things are going in your life or what is happening.

And I think that's a real opportunity for growth in your faith is having that

honest conversation with God.

That's right. Pastor John, in the book, one of our chaplains that I talk about,

had said at one point to me that he believed in the God of the Bible more because

those stories of people being allowed to doubt were in there.

And when I said, what do you mean by that? I didn't really understand it.

He said, well, if I was going to make up a book and claim that it came from

a God, I wouldn't put any of that human weakness stuff in there.

The God would be perfect. He would always demand perfection.

He would never allow people to doubt Him or question Him. and He would just

basically smite us if we didn't trust Him all the time.

But because the Bible shows a different type of God, a different personality

of God, He thinks it's more credible.

The God who says, hey, I care so much about you.

I want you to yell at me and tell me what you're feeling and cry on my shoulder

and let me come and help you in that pain.

That's what Psalm 3418 is all about, right? When you're brokenhearted,

the Lord will move in close and revive you in your pain, in the voice translation.

So I don't think it's bad to doubt your faith. I think it's natural and normal.

In fact, I would be a little more worried if we claimed never to have doubt. Right. Yeah. Now.

In the book also, it talked about this theory that I have, that it's the things

that we think we know that seem to cause the most trouble for us sometimes.

And how would you respond to that?

I think that's true, because then you're relying solely on yourself and on the

knowledge that you have, whatever you've learned through life,

which are useful tools, but things change.

We learn new things. And so you can't ever assume that what you know today is

going to be the same tomorrow because life does bring new knowledge every single day.

And when you focus on only yourself and only what you know, and especially for

people that think they know everything or never think they do anything wrong,

I think that's when you really set yourself up for failure and a really challenging, difficult time.

That's right. I think we have certain things in our life that we believe that

will always be true. Like, I believe that I'll always be married to you and

that we'll always be healthy and everything will be okay for us.

And I believed as a father of five children that my children would bury me someday.

And, you know, then, boom, all of a sudden we've lost one of our kids.

And that was something that I thought I knew. I thought that that wouldn't happen

to our family, which really was kind of a silly, naive thing.

Thought process because of what we do for a living, right? We see all the time

that the tragedies and the terrible things that occur, but somehow,

and even my own brother had lost a son when he was a little boy.

And so I, somehow I had allowed myself to believe that that couldn't happen to us.

And so when, when you think, you know, something, you think,

you know, your spouse will always be faithful to you.

You think, you know, you'll always have a job and always be able to pay your bills.

And you think you're 35 and you've got another 50 years to live.

And that turns out not to be true, that can really rock your world. It can shake you up.

And I think that's one of the points that we try to make in the book is that

we've seen people who were more realistic than that. They knew that life was hard.

They knew that there was human frailty. They knew that there was potential for

their bodies to get sick.

And when those things did happen, they were more prepared to handle them in a healthier way.

And I think I'll throw this out there as an off-the-cuff of thought.

I don't want, I don't think it's healthy for us to live with cynicism.

You know, everything's going to be bad, bad things are going to happen,

you know, all of that sort of thing. There's a difference between cynicism and realism. Right.

Well, I think life is, and I've learned this through being around so many patients,

even though that's not my background.

Life is so beautiful and at the same time, very fragile.

And I think keeping in mind that we have to live every moment to the fullest.

You have to, every day is a gift and it doesn't mean that you doubt that tomorrow

is coming. It means that you're going to live in the moment.

And today needs to be the day that is, is the day that you live out everything

that you possibly can, that you be Be everything that you possibly can to the

people that you love and care about.

And you strive to do the best in your life.

Life is fragile and it's fleeting, but it's so beautiful and wonderful.

So every day has to be lived fully. And there's no room for cynicism when you're

doing that. That's right.

And there's a story in the book that I told about the patient that we called Rupert Chang.

That wasn't his real name. But Rupert Chang was a guy who had this really bad

brain tumor called gliomatosis cerebri. And he had a biopsy,

and there was a complication of the biopsy that accelerated his demise.

And he basically died sooner than we thought he was going to,

even though he had an incurable cancer and only had a couple of months to live.

But our experience with Rupert taught us that the first time I really ever had seen this,

he looked at his life like it was a story that he was writing that his children

and his descendants later on

would look back on and be able to tell the story of Rupert Chang's life.

And so the question that sort of got me to thinking about was,

how do you want to live your life?

Do you want to live it as a chronicle of events of the here's the things that

happened to Lisa Warren?

Or do you want it to be told as a tale of how you responded to those things?

And how would you explain that?

Well, I don't know if this answers the question, but this is what I do every

single day before I even get out of bed. when I first wake up,

I say to myself, okay, God, it's a new day.

So help me to live out this part of the story of my life that you've put in front of me for today.

So every day is a part of your story.

There's going to be good days, bad days. There's going to be happy parts of

your story and sad parts of your story.

But each day, it goes back to the previous question, each day has to be a gift

in and of itself, but it's also a small chapter in the story of your life.

And so you live that moment out as, as well as you possibly can.

And it's not just a chronicle of events. It's not, it is how we respond to things,

but it's also how each day is a new opportunity and a new gift.

That's right. I like how you said that. You know, there's another story in the

book. I did a surgery when I was an intern.

With a professor named David Oliver Smith. David, if you're listening,

hope you're having fun out there in Telluride.

He bought a house in Telluride. I don't know if I told you that. No.

Anyway, David Oliver Smith, when I was an intern, was a staff neurosurgeon and

was teaching me how to do a procedure that we do all the time called a laminectomy.

It's a back surgery for leg pain and back pain.

And there's an instrument that we use that bites bone and it's called a kerosene rongeur.

And there was a case where he was teaching me how to use the kerosene.

And I took a bite of bone up under the edge of the bone.

And I actually accidentally cut a little tiny hole in the sack on the outside of the nerve.

And it caused a leak of spinal fluid in the wound. And Dr.

Oliver Smith appropriately taught me how to repair that and fix it.

But he also fussed at me and said, you couldn't see where that instrument was,

but you took the bite anyway. Why did you do that?

And I said, well, I believed it was safe. I thought I knew that it was safe.

And he said, no, believing is not enough.

You have to see it. You have to know it before you take the bite.

Knowing is better than believing.

And so for several years as a surgeon, I practiced that way.

I thought it was better to know than to believe.

But one of the things I've come to see after having lost a child and having

dealt with a lot of people who were losing a lot, even their own lives,

is at the end of the day, I think it's better to believe

than it is to know in life, not in spinal surgery, but in life.

It's better to believe than to know. And I came to that when I saw that story

of Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament, when God had promised them a son

and they were old people, they were in their 80s or 90s, and they still hadn't had a son.

And God said, you're going to have a son and he's going to be the father of many nations.

And Abraham believed it, even though it seemed impossible.

And later that faith was credited to him as righteousness, and now he's known

as the father of the faithful.

And Paul in Romans later on in the New Testament says, Abraham against all hope, in hope believed.

And that's how he became righteous. He held on to hope because he believed that

God was going to to keep his word.

Even when it seemed impossible, even when he couldn't see it, he still believed it.

And I'll tell you, friends, that's the way you hold up in hard things.

You believe that there's going to be a way that you can be okay,

even if you don't survive it, even if you don't make it through,

even if the pathology is bad,

even if the money doesn't come back, even if you don't get the job,

you're going to find a way for it to be okay for you.

And that's why I think believing is better than knowing.

Well, I agree with you on that as well, but I really think sometimes you have

to know and then believe, and sometimes you have to believe and then know.

And I think the marriage of the two creates an even stronger faith where I might

not know what's going to happen, but I believe that God is going to take care of me.

But when I believe and know because I trust him, I think that combination is better.

But by far, believing something instead of having to have black and white in front of you is better.

You're right. But I want to try and have both, and I want to try and have a

good marriage of those two things.

Yeah, I mean, it's the story of Thomas in the Bible where he says he's hearing

the other disciples say that Jesus has been risen from the dead.

And he says, I'm not going to believe it unless I can put my hand in his side

or see the holes in his hands.

And when he does, when he sees Jesus, Jesus is gracious to him and lets him

do those things so that he can believe.

But he said, Thomas, you believe because you see me and you can touch me.

But it would have been better for you to believe even if you didn't see me.

Right. Because sometimes you can't see it. Sometimes you can't know it.

And it's great when you can do both. And sometimes you have enough faith that

you know it even though you can't see it. I guess that's what you're saying. Right.

It's just life is really hard.

And there's going to be some moments when it seems so dark. And I can tell you,

if you lose a child, you're going to be there.

And some of these things that happen to you, like it happened to us,

like you're going to be in a place that's so dark that you're not even going

to believe that there can be light again.

And you're going to have to make a decision.

Because at the end of the day, hope is a decision that you make in your heart,

that you decide, I know that somewhere out there, there is light again. Right.

And I'm going to wait for the sun to come up because it always does,

because it always has in the past.

And I'm going to believe that sometime that door is going to crack a little

bit and I'll be able to see enough light to find my way out of this hole. Right?

That's what we have to strive for, folks, that you're going to have some hard things.

If you read our book, you'll know that we had some hard things and we can explain

the way that we dealt with that.

But life is a hard thing. and the only disease deadlier than glioblastoma is hopelessness.

If you give up, you are definitely going to be hosed.

Nothing good is going to come out of you giving up.

So you've got to find the ability to have hope no matter what.

Listen, we hope your life is going perfectly right now. We really do.

We hope nothing bad is happening to you. And if it is, maybe you don't need this book right now.

Maybe the message of hope, and I've seen the interview, of you doesn't offer

you anything that you need right now. But I've been watching life long enough.

To know that most people have been through something rough or are going through

something rough or are about to go through something rough, right?

I don't know of anybody who gets through life unscathed. So Lisa and I believe

that I've seen the interview will offer hope to people, real hope to people

when life feels impossibly dark.

What I learned in studying people

with brain cancer and other really life-threatening diseases is this.

Like I said a while ago, Glioblastoma is not the deadliest disease known to

man. It's hopelessness.

Hopelessness is the deadliest thing that people can encounter.

There are some people who die inside, even if they recover from the disease

their body is facing or the circumstance they're going through.

And we've seen people, too, that face the challenge and come alive for the first time in their life.

They find hope or faith or love or joy for the first time, even while they're dying.

That's the story of Joey in the book, really, a guy who found life while he

was dying from his brain cancer.

So the question is, like we said before, do you want the story of your life,

the story that your life tells, to be about the hard things you faced or how

you faced the hard things that you encountered?

I've seen the interview as our story. It's my story. It's Lisa's story.

It's our family's story of learning to face hard things and still land on hope.

And we hope, we pray, that it will be helpful to you too. Listen,

friend, it's time to reach for hope, and it's time to start today.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering

from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audiobooks.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.

And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,

every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries

around the world. I'm Dr.

Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your

life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.

Music.