In 2013, Julie Saxon’s career was rocking along. The mother of two young girls had just gotten a big promotion, and was managing the work-life balance quite nicely. Later that year, everything changed when her husband, Joel, was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer cancer. Thus began a six-year journey trek through chemo, surgeries, hospital bills, insurance hell, and trying to keep the train on the tracks at work and at home.  After 6 years, 87 rounds of chemo, ten rounds of radiation, seven surgeries, and two clinical trials, Joel’s valiant fight against cancer ended in his death. He lived longer than 99% of patients with his diagnosis. While I was listening to her tell the story, I couldn’t help but think how much Julie’s strength, support, and raw will had to do with his relative longevity. Julie and I met when we both worked in ad sales at Yahoo! in the early 2000’s. She was in the Atlanta office where I would visit from the West Coast when I was home seeing my parents. Her story reminded me of how lucky we both were to work at a company staffed by so many incredible human beings. To this day, her Atlanta co-workers remain some of her closest friends. Not only did one introduce her to Joel, but he and the others were there to support her throughout marriage and its sad conclusion. Many of their names come up in our chat. While I wanted to explain the relevance of each one, I didn’t want to stop the flow of conversation. Trust me, they’re all great. Julie is now VP/Group director of sales for a large digital media company. She and her two beautiful daughters live in Atlanta.  I want to thank Julie for trusting me with this conversation. Connect with Paul Ollinger on his website and/or follow him on the socials: 

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