Jun 17, 2020
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.
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with Paul Ollinger on his
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