WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE THAT MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO OTHERS. PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE IF YOU CAN NOT HANDLE THE FREEDOM OF YOUTHFUL AND IGNORANT EXPRESSION IN THAT SAME DICTION.

(Since Friday is Good Friday, I am using Thursday as my liberal expression day)

That’s right. I just said, "F*&k you if you have never had cancer!"

  • If your world has never stopped;
  • you have never had to immediately face the reality of your immortality;
  • never witnessed the shame of your invincibility being brought down before you;
  • never interacted with all the well wishers that just make things worse by telling you about their friend/family member/or loved one that DIED of the same cancer you are fighting;
  • never received intravenously a chemical brought in by nurses wearing rubber gowns, in a bright yellow bucket with a covering warning of the dangers of exposure, WTF!;
  • never gotten high off of Benadryl given intravenously; and
  • never lost your hair as a result of those highly cautionary chemicals brought in by the nurse in the rubber gown or by a machine that applies radiation directly to your head.

In keeping with the theme of this week’s National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week, I thought I would share the thoughts of a young cancer survivor, aka me.Therefore, I will tell it from my generation’s diction.

"Be still, and know that I am God." That passage has stuck with me a long time as a result of my whole world stopping on or about June 17, 1995 at Lexington Medical Center when they informed me that my white blood cell count was over 160,000 (normal range 4,000-10,000). The following days of needle insertions, Hickman line insertions and reinsertions, chemotherapy, spinal taps, radiation to the head, constant monitoring and loss of privacy, and bone marrow aspirations were not that delightful.

Funny story. I got so sick, weak, and delirious on the first round of chemo that I believed I could still stand and operate my body. It had only been 1 day for heaven’s sake. My parents finally decided to let my aunt and uncle watch over me, while they ran home to take showers and get clothes for a longer stay. When I tried to get out of bed, I had so many damn tubes going in me and I was so weak, I stumbled and stepped on some of those tubes.  Those tubes were connected to the Hickman line that was surgically inserted in my jugular vein. My 180lbs of downward momentum ripped that tube right out of my chest and the rest is kind of a blur. I remember a loud noises, lots of nurses in my room throwing sand bags on my chest to stop the bleeding, a shot of morphine, and an extended stay in the ICU.  That was just the first few days. I guess that wasn’t too fucking funny was it?

Or how about one of the nights in ICU the first week when all the chemicals started really fucking with my head and …..

 

for some reason I thought I was on one of the aircraft carriers getting bombed during Pearl Harbor and there was an air raid so I jumped out of bed and ran for the hills (towards the window). Thank goodness my dad tackled me to the ground before I ripped all my tubes out again and jumped out the window because I had that crazy look to me. (I will save the priapism story for another day).

The "rubber hitting the road part" was when I had gone through my summer of hell and was actually trying to complete my senior year of high school at Mid Carolina High School in Prosperity, SC. On the first day of classes, my parents had left for work and I was trying to return to some form of normalcy (that’s hilarious sitting here writing now, considering how abnormal I still am).  For whatever reason, while I was getting dressed I couldn’t catch my breathe and ended up falling down and almost suffocating. I remember thinking this is how I was going to die. Putting on my clothes to go to school after battling all summer in the hospital. I was going to die tying my shoes. Perfect! I eventually caught my breathe and made it into school that day and for many days after that until I got my law degree.

I didn’t write this to strictly vent. I also wrote it because we need to start considering more of what is really important and less of what isn’t really important. Bad shit happens and will continue to happen to people until the end of times. Sometimes it comes in the form of illness, murder, economic woes, broken hearts/marriages, or injury.

Regardless of your personal woes embrace that anger and energy that can be predominately negative. Only you can harness that energy and try and reproduce positive out of the negative. Yes, it sounds like fucking bullshit, but if I would have continued on my path of self-pity, anger, and apathy I would have died as a result of my own choices, not because of some earlier mentioned woe.

Who gives a shit about the 24 hour stock market updates telling us the worse is yet to come? The housing market will never be the same. Unemployment is at staggering rates and we are going to be in such an inflationary period we will never get out of this hole.

Shut your computer down. Stop watching 24 hour CNN or FOX. Walk outside and smell the air. Go grab a leaf off of a tree and try and see the life running it’s course in such a simple thing. Look at your right arm and then look at your left arm. Ever wonder how in the hell you are able to do that? See. Hear. Talk. Touch. Move.

More importanly LIVE! 

 

You are a Superstar. Start living like one.

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Photo of Trey Mills Trey Mills

Floyd S. “Trey” Mills III knows that suffering a personal injury through no fault of your own can be a nightmare for the victim and his or her family

Mr. Mills was born on April 24, 1978.  His parents, Floyd S. “Butch” Mills,

…

Floyd S. “Trey” Mills III knows that suffering a personal injury through no fault of your own can be a nightmare for the victim and his or her family

Mr. Mills was born on April 24, 1978.  His parents, Floyd S. “Butch” Mills, Jr. and Patricia Yarborough Mills, were originally from Newberry, South Carolina, and soon after the birth of Mr. Mills, his parents brought him back to be raised in the same county they grew up in.

Education

Mr. Mills attended Newberry Academy from grades K-3, Gallman Elementary 4th grade, Rikard Elementary 5-6th grade, Mid-Carolina Middle School 7-8th grades, Mid-Carolina High School from 9-12th grades, Clemson University, and Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University.

Health Crisis

While Mr. Mills was a junior in high school he was chosen by his school to be a representative to Boys State.  This was a great honor and would have been an even better experience except, while at Boys State, Mr. Mills became unusually ill with blackouts, night sweats, and back pain.  Fortunately for Mr. Mills, his mother was an ER nurse at Lexington Medical Center, but unfortunately, for Mr. Mills that did not change his diagnosis of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.  Along with his diagnosis, Mr. Mills received a prognosis of two weeks.

Obviously, Mr. Mills has been blessed with his second chance at life and those who have been wronged by health care insurance companies and other types of insurance companies can feel confident in knowing that Mr. Mills can not only empathize with them but fight fervently for their side.  Mr. Mills’ cancer experience and his mother’s arduous yet unsuccessful battle against lung cancer were very trying times.  However, those real-world battles and experiences were nothing compared to the administrative and billing wars he had to encounter with Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance. It seems BCBS would deny any charge over $1,000 without rational reasoning therefore prompting Mr. Mills to go to law school and carry the torch for those that were too ill to fight for themselves while the school yard bully beat them down.

College

Mr. Mills went on to Clemson University where he was very active in student activities along with academic accomplishments.  Mr. Mills was invited to join Calhoun Honor’s College, Sigma Pi fraternity, Golden Key National Honor Society, Student Government, IPTAY Student Advisory Board, and Tiger Brotherhood. Mr. Mills also worked as a student employee with IPTAY Scholarship Fund under the direction of Bert Henderson, formerly the Associate Athletic Director of Planned Giving at Clemson University.

Early Life

Mr. Mills was unsure of where his hard work and life experiences would best provide an adequate return to the outpouring of kindness he received during his cancer experience. Having received many blessings from the American Red Cross, Mr. Mills went on to be an Apheresis Donor Recruiter under the supervision of Barry Pollard at the American Red Cross Blood Donor Services in Columbia, SC after graduating Clemson University.

Running from his true calling, Mr. Mills fled to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico to Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).  Having spent a semester of college in Madrid, Spain, Mr. Mills thought he should be assisting foreign countries. Mr. Mills was certified by the Vancouver Language Centre in Guadalajara for his TEFL training.  Mr. Mills was in Guadalajara only a few months when September 11, 2001 occurred and helped him focus on his life priorities.

Law School

Mr. Mills went on to law school at Mercer University and clerked each summer trying to determine how he could best serve those less fortunate.  The corporate law firms never truly provided him with that personal feeling of assisting the common person in need.  It wasn’t until Mr. Mills became the first law clerk of the South Carolina Trial Lawyers Association under the supervision of Linda Franklin and lobbyist Michael Gunn that he realized where his education, life experience, drive, and hard work could truly benefit those who have been personally and directly affected by the negligence of another.  Mr. Mills wanted to be a coveted and much needed plaintiff’s trial attorney.  More importantly Mr. Mills realized the power of the faceless insurance companies, misinformed legislative members, and the true power of money and lobbyist in dictating laws.

What’s the one service you pay for all your life but you are actually penalized if you ever have to use it? Insurance.

Trammell & Mills

Mr. Ernie Trammell gave Mr. Mills his big break at leveling the playing field against the faceless and heartless insurance companies.  Mr. Mills works tirelessly every day in an effort to bring justice to those who have been wronged.  Mr. Mills has worked on both sides of the law and has been through some harrowing life experiences.  Mr. Mills has been tested and tried by many of the more traumatic events that life has to offer and now provides his services to the public.

Who would you rather have on your side? Someone whose resolve has been tested and tried? Or someone who has intertwined their morality and greed in such a way that they can’t tell one from the other?

Why haven’t you hired Mr. Mills to be your attorney yet?

Would you listen to the devil on how to get to Heaven? Then why listen to insurance adjusters?

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