In this episode, I'm coming out the other end. Chemo is over. Each day I feel a little more normal, but what is normal now? My life is marked for good by what I've been through. What will continue to be with me and what recedes in the rear view mirror? It's a whole new world.

If you're a guy who spent every Sunday morning of his life in Church for 6 decades, what does it mean to have all of it put to the test? Did it help? Did it change anything? I was really really sick. Did I have a prayer?

In this episode, what did they find? How bad was it? And once you know the answers to those questions, you have part of the answer to the big one. Am I going to need chemo?

In this episode, I've been opened up and my tumors are out but there is still so much that we do not know. I'm in the hospital and in no shape to leave. I'm a fragile family man.

In this episode, after a lifetime of staying out of hospitals as a patient, my streak ends. I've got a tag around my wrist, it's finally my turn. I'm getting alterations. And everybody knows what they have to do. The patient is in trouble, and at least for now, we have to tiptoe around that.

In this episode, you've got cancer. Where is it? What is it? What am I gonna do now? Am I dying?

In this episode, I'll tell you about giving into the idea that I was really sick guy, and hearing those 3 momentus words, "you have cancer." Your life has just changed, and the end of your life may be a lot sooner than you had been counting on.

In this episode, I'll tell you about the rough and life changing road I was on, feeling worse and worse as my career also unraveled. It took awhile to sink in, I was a sick man, but I needed to get some help to figure out just how sick.

Every year in America, close to two million people are diagnosed with cancer of one kind or another. And every year, some six hundred thousand of us die of the disease.

So cancer is very much with us… all around us… part of the lives we live together, and a big part of the billions Americans spend each year on health care.

Every sufferer, every survivor, has a story that’s broadly shared, and at the same time as individual as your thumbprint.

Let me tell you mine. I'm Ray Suarez. At a time in my life when I thought I already had plenty of challenges, cancer threw a new and heavy weight on the pile. Let me tell you my story.

Listen. Subscribe: The Things I Thought About When My Body Was Trying to Kill Me. Wherever you get your podcasts.