435: What If Cancer Could Save Your Life? A Powerful Story of Resilience & Second Chances with Steve Garraty

Kevin Lowe: Today's story is about a young man who had this happen to him.

Kevin Lowe: He thought his life was headed in one direction.

Kevin Lowe: And then he heard three words, three words that we all fear, three words that change a life, the change of family.

Kevin Lowe: You have cancer. But those three words, which can sound like an ending, would in fact become the start of a new beginning, a grateful new beginning.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, if you've ever walked through pain and have been left to wonder, what could it mean?

Kevin Lowe: Why did this have to happen? Then today's episode is gonna speak to you because what I want you to understand is that even the hardest chapters in life can grow something good, can bear fruit, just like they did in the story of today's guest.

Kevin Lowe: Today's guest is Steve Garraty, the author of a book titled Greatfruit, How Cancer Led to Leading a More Fruitful Life.

Kevin Lowe: You're going to hear his full story, the impact of those words, You Have Cancer.

Kevin Lowe: But what comes next? It's after the devastation where it all comes together, where things start to change for today's guest and what I believe is true for you as well.

Kevin Lowe: If you love today's interview, then my friend, you're going to really love Steve's book.

Kevin Lowe: Please be sure to check out today's show notes where you can find links to get your own copy of Greatfruit.

Kevin Lowe: Or you can also just head on over to https://gritgraceinspiration.com/greatfruit to find that link as well.

Kevin Lowe: Lastly, I want to give a big shout out to a past guest of this podcast, Bishoy Tadros.

Kevin Lowe: Bishoy is the one who connected me and Steve together.

Kevin Lowe: So Bishoy, my man, thank you so much for making such an awesome introduction.

Kevin Lowe: And last but not least, if at any point you think to yourself, ah, you know what?

Kevin Lowe: I'm just going to press pause and I'll finish this later.

Kevin Lowe: Well, I beg you to think differently because, my friend, chances are if you hit pause, you're going to forget about it and you're not going to come back.

Kevin Lowe: And I'm telling you, you want to listen to this entire episode.

Kevin Lowe: The interview is amazing. The conversation with Steve is life-changing.

Kevin Lowe: And awaiting you at the very end, you get to go from an interview to listening to maybe your new favorite song as I took the creative inspiration and turned today's story, Steve's story, into a song titled Greatfruit.

Kevin Lowe: So just know that is waiting for you at the end of today's episode.

Kevin Lowe: My friend, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe. This is episode 435 of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: Without any further ado, this is my interview with Steve Garraty.

Kevin Lowe: What's up, my friend, and welcome back to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: Today, I have the pleasure of being in the studio with Steve Garraty.

Kevin Lowe: Steve, my man, welcome to the podcast.

Steve Garraty: Thanks for having me, Kevin. I've been excited to do this today, so thanks for having me.

Kevin Lowe: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Steve, I'd love to start with a question of, for the person listening today, what do you hope that they take away from hearing your story today?

Kevin Lowe: If you could wave that kind of magic wand and got to choose how they left feeling, what would you hope that would be?

Steve Garraty: Yeah, that's a good question, Kevin. I would say that it hopefully provides a new or a little bit different perspective in how your listeners view adversity that they've either been through or they're going to go through.

Steve Garraty: It's really not a question of if, but when, right, we hit those life hurdles.

Steve Garraty: For me, it was cancer. but the hurdles can be divorce, job loss, grief.

Steve Garraty: There's a lot of things that we go through. And I think we all have our own story of challenges and hurdles.

Steve Garraty: And I hope that my story provides a little bit of perspective in how we view that and how we can grow and live a stronger and better life coming out of those life's roadblocks.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, well, Steve, where do you think your story really kind of begins?

Kevin Lowe: I mean, I know from from preparing for an interview and stuff, I would say probably around that age, like 17, junior and senior year.

Kevin Lowe: But but if you know a better starting point, you started where you feel the best places for us to begin.

Steve Garraty: Yeah, I think the junior and senior year in high school provide some context behind this story.

Steve Garraty: My junior and senior year in high school, Kevin, were, you know, I think to back up, my family had moved a couple times, and I came from a stable family.

Steve Garraty: Parents are still married 60 years in now.

Steve Garraty: Middle-class family. Dad was a hard worker. My mom stayed at home with us.

Steve Garraty: Had a good, stable family life. We moved a couple of times, the second of which was end of middle school, beginning of high school.

Steve Garraty: It also was from the Northeast down to back in the 80s, what was a very rural, I would use the word redneck kind of area of Georgia.

Steve Garraty: I just for me, that was a big challenge. And it was I struggled with that socially and fitting in.

Steve Garraty: And a couple of years later, when I did start to build my social circle, it probably wasn't the best or they weren't the best influences.

Steve Garraty: And it led to a couple years of hard partying and running a very hard lifestyle that continued to spiral more and more downhill.

Steve Garraty: I like to use the analogy of, for those that have watched Breaking Bad, probably similar to the character of Walter White and how he kind of each episode and each season spirals more downward.

Steve Garraty: And I just was not looking at stopping that spiral, I don't think I was probably capable or in the mindset to stop it.

Steve Garraty: And had wrecked my parents' cars about five times under the influence of something.

Steve Garraty: Grades were suffering. Just was kind of headed down a really bad path.

Steve Garraty: And I think something probably more tragic would have happened if not for some intervention. And that intervention was a lump was forming on the side of my neck towards the end of my senior year.

Steve Garraty: I ignored it for a little while. It started growing very aggressively.

Steve Garraty: Went in and got a biopsy. and on July 4th, the surgeon called her house, to inform me that the three words he delivered were, you have cancer.

Steve Garraty: Not something I expected, but it started a year of hell.

Steve Garraty: And that's probably where my story begins. But the background, because I do believe my lifestyle and poor choices and the path I was headed down, I do think contributed to me getting sick.

Steve Garraty: And I also think me getting sick put me on a different and better path in the long run.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. Wow. Now, before getting to the discovery of you having this cancerous tumor, during that kind of junior, senior year, graduating high school, in this party phase of life, did you have any plans for life after high school at that point?

Steve Garraty: I had seen the movie Animal House many times. And I had this vision of what Greek life, what a paternity life would look like.

Steve Garraty: And it fit in with, for those that have seen the movie, it fit in with what I had been doing the last couple of years.

Steve Garraty: So I was excited to head off to college and kind of join a fraternity and live that kind of lifestyle that I had seen on Animal House.

Steve Garraty: And I was excited about the freedom to be away from my parents and restrictions and rules.

Steve Garraty: But I would say those are probably not the best reasons, right? are the best.

Steve Garraty: Yeah, I didn't have a good path forward. I was looking to party more and with less restrictions and less rules. And I do think that would have led to, Be it me failing out of school or, God forbid, getting into an accident, hurting myself, hurting others.

Steve Garraty: And so, yeah, I think I don't think I would have made it through four years of college had I gone off to school and not been sick.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Amazing how life can get in the way sometimes, sometimes for maybe for the for the benefit for, you know.

Kevin Lowe: Now, talk to me a little bit more about the tumor, the type of cancer.

Kevin Lowe: And with that, I guess I would love to kind of group in together of just your mindset, your thought process, being told, here you've just graduated high school and now all of a sudden you're facing cancer.

Steve Garraty: Yeah. So when the surgeon called the house, I guess two things I would say to answer your question there.

Steve Garraty: One is when the surgeon called, he informed us that he took a mass out of the size of my neck that was the size of a grapefruit, which is pretty great every time I go to the grocery store and that crosses my mind when I go in the produce sector, the fruit section.

Steve Garraty: But it was the size of a grapefruit. So it was pretty large.

Steve Garraty: But I think what sums up where I was in life is the surgeon, and I'm sure my parents had given the surgeon some backstory about my drinking and partying.

Steve Garraty: But the surgeon said, listen, you have cancer. We're going to need to do, you're going to need to see an oncologist, get some tests done to find out how much it has spread.

Steve Garraty: But one of the things he said was definitely no drinking for at least a year and potentially ever again.

Steve Garraty: And my mind went to this place where I stopped listening to everything else he said.

Steve Garraty: My family, I have two siblings, my parents, all sitting around the family table, family room table.

Steve Garraty: And I think my family was devastated and upset. And my mom and my brother were crying.

Steve Garraty: I was in this state of shock that I can't drink.

Steve Garraty: And so I was not really that upset about the cancer.

Steve Garraty: I was upset about the fact that I couldn't drink. So that's where my mind was, which might be a sign of denial, I guess, the first stage of dealing with something.

Steve Garraty: But that's where my head was. And my mind started going to what about the what about going off to college? What about my independence?

Steve Garraty: What about, you know, all I at that point, I was partying every night.

Steve Garraty: I was going out every single evening.

Steve Garraty: Again, I was out of high school. I was working a part time job.

Steve Garraty: It was really full time during the summer. And I was going out every single evening.

Steve Garraty: It just it rocked my world that socially you know I knew that a lot of my friends were friends because we would go out partying together and I just knew that all that was now in jeopardy and that's what upset me the most when I was told you have cancer.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. I mean, whether or not the things that you were focused on were quote unquote good or bad, I mean, yeah, it's a life change.

Kevin Lowe: And that's not easy.

Kevin Lowe: And I think especially when we're talking about something like alcohol, which, you know, when we're talking about addiction and all that, I mean, that's not an easy thing to hear.

Kevin Lowe: What was the doctor telling you guys as far as treatment and long-term outlook on this type of cancer?

Steve Garraty: Yeah, that was the hard part. This was, I guess, to back up, this was 1986 that I graduated high school and got this phone call.

Steve Garraty: The surgeon was really just delivering the news of you have cancer and couldn't really answer any questions beyond that.

Steve Garraty: He said, you'll need to go in and see an oncologist. And that probably took 7 to 10 days roughly to get in to see, the oncologist that we started my process with.

Steve Garraty: But that was the hard part because, again, if you think back 1986, the internet really wasn't around.

Steve Garraty: You had to go to the library to look things up and learn.

Steve Garraty: And so we had all these questions. My parents had questions.

Steve Garraty: I had questions. And we really didn't have any answers to them.

Steve Garraty: And short of going to the library and trying to look up stuff, there were a lot of questions that weren't answered in the beginning.

Steve Garraty: So we had to go to the oncologist and then even then it was all speculative.

Steve Garraty: I had to go get x-rays and CAT scans to determine how much the cancer had spread.

Steve Garraty: What I found out within a couple of weeks, Kevin, was that it spread to my, not only my neck, but my chest and my stomach.

Steve Garraty: And so it was stage three, which meant chemotherapy was the treatment that they moved forward with.

Steve Garraty: So I did about nine or 10 months of chemotherapy.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. So what kind of cancer was it?

Steve Garraty: It's called Hodgkin's, and it's probably most common in like 18 to 25-year-olds.

Steve Garraty: That's where Hodgkin's happens the most, which, again, I was 18 at the time.

Steve Garraty: But yeah, it's called Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. And is that the one, am I getting it right, where there's Hodgkin's lymphoma and then there's Hodgkin's non-lymphoma or something like that?

Steve Garraty: Yes. I think you're spot on there.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Okay.

Steve Garraty: Mine was in the lymph nodes, which made it Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Kevin Lowe: Okay, okay. So now, treatment-wise, is that because I think of typically like either chemotherapy or radiation?

Steve Garraty: Yes. Again, this was at the time, this is a long time ago.

Steve Garraty: They had told me, listen, if we do these tests and it's stage one or two, we'll probably treat it with radiation.

Steve Garraty: If it's three or four, it's going to be chemotherapy, maybe a combo of chemotherapy and radiation.

Steve Garraty: But that's how they kind of treated it. I think the more severe it was, the more likely you were to have chemotherapy as part of it.

Steve Garraty: So I did not do radiation. I did the chemotherapy.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Okay. Wow. Well, before getting to the part about the chemotherapy, the grapefruit-sized tumor, that was the entire tumor was able to be successfully removed?

Steve Garraty: Yes, they moved it out. There was still cancer in there, there's still cancer in the lymph nodes, but they took out a mass, so they took out a good part of it in the neck, and then obviously in the chest and stomach that it had to be, and there was still cancer in my neck.

Steve Garraty: That's how they got it was with the chemotherapy.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Wow.

Kevin Lowe: So with chemo, I mean, I think we all just envision horror stories of chemo.

Kevin Lowe: How was that for you?

Steve Garraty: It was a horror story. It was, yeah.

Steve Garraty: So I went in on the first one and they said, you know, listen, some people don't get sick on the first one. And I did not.

Steve Garraty: They basically put an IV into you and you sit there.

Steve Garraty: It was typically about 45 minutes to an hour. you would sit there and the drugs would kind of slowly drip into your veins.

Steve Garraty: And the first one I did fine. I went home, slept a little bit, and actually had a friend come over later that day and went out that evening, which was probably not a good thing to do, but went out that evening.

Steve Garraty: And then, so I started having this, you know, at 18, you feel like you're invincible.

Steve Garraty: And I was no exception. And so getting cancer was a shock.

Steve Garraty: And then when I went in for the first session of chemo and didn't get sick, I was like, okay, this is going to be easy.

Steve Garraty: You know, it's old people that get sick.

Steve Garraty: And that changed on my second appointment.

Steve Garraty: So my second appointment, kind of everything seemed the same.

Steve Garraty: And about 10, 15 minutes in, I started, you know, projectile vomiting.

Steve Garraty: And basically, it got worse each time after that, but it would be about 10 to.

Steve Garraty: I'd come in, get the chemo in the morning. My parents would take me home, and I was usually hugging the toilet, vomiting, until there was nothing to come up, and then there was bile coming up.

Steve Garraty: And so it was pretty, those days were pretty rough. I did that every two weeks.

Steve Garraty: So every two weeks, I would go in and get this combination of drugs that would go into my system. And that first day was pretty horrible.

Steve Garraty: Second day, I would feel nauseous. and then I'd go the next 12 days.

Steve Garraty: Pretty much, you know, normal. I was taking classes at a community college.

Steve Garraty: I stayed home, obviously, to get well again.

Steve Garraty: I took classes and was even working part-time. But those two days that, you know, the day of and the day after, usually I was kind of out of commission.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, no. Wow, now, during this period of being on chemo, was there any...

Kevin Lowe: Maybe specific low point, where maybe you just kind of felt like, I can't keep doing this?

Steve Garraty: Yes. Well, there were multiple times I thought that, and I've written a book that I published in March, and the first chapter opens with the answer to your question, which was my rock bottom.

Steve Garraty: So there was, towards the end, the problem with cancer and going through something like that, you don't know when the end is going to come.

Steve Garraty: So I would keep going in for these sessions, and every couple of months, we would get new x-rays and CAT scans to see, is it working?

Steve Garraty: Are the tumors shrinking?

Steve Garraty: And eventually, so they never know when the end is going to be.

Steve Garraty: They just keep doing that until there's no evidence of the cancer anymore.

Steve Garraty: And so towards the end, although I didn't know it was the end, probably a couple sessions before I finished and was declared in remission, there was a time where my mom and I went in for another session of chemo, and I kind of had a breakdown.

Steve Garraty: I call it a breakdown where I asked my mother to go inside the doctor's office and to give me a few minutes in the parking garage.

Steve Garraty: And I just broke down. I didn't want to go in. I was bawling.

Steve Garraty: I was praying, asking God to give me strength to go back in and do it again.

Steve Garraty: But I just, I was spent, you know, at this point I was completely bald, had no hair left.

Steve Garraty: I had a couple friends left that had kind of stuck by me.

Steve Garraty: It was a lonely year. I was tired of how sick I got because each one got progressively worse.

Steve Garraty: But yeah, the mental part of it, Kevin, it built to a point where I just didn't think I could do it again.

Steve Garraty: And I spent about an hour in that parking garage.

Steve Garraty: And my mother, God bless her, she was upstairs and just patiently waiting for me to kind of get my act together.

Steve Garraty: But yeah, that was my rock bottom during that process.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Who during this time would you say that that you leaned on or did you?

Kevin Lowe: I mean, you mentioned that you had had a couple of friends that kind of stayed with you.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, I know some people kind of handle the difficult stuff in life just internally and stay themselves.

Kevin Lowe: Others need need somebody to lean on to cry with. Was there anybody that you would say that was for you?

Steve Garraty: There were seven people, my parents and my two siblings.

Steve Garraty: So there's four family members, two friends from high school that I mentioned that were just unbelievable angels during the whole process.

Steve Garraty: Took me to some treatments, took me to school, took my mind off of it, listened to my challenges and what I was experiencing. thing.

Steve Garraty: And then the seventh was a, there was a nurse at the oncologist's office that just really went above and beyond her kind of duties.

Steve Garraty: I mean, I would say we established a friendship during that time and she was just incredible.

Steve Garraty: And I think she helped me quite a bit, especially on the days of my chemo and trying to get my mind off of it and just so supportive.

Steve Garraty: She cleaned up my vomit each time, like she was unbelievable.

Steve Garraty: And we talked outside of, you know, outside of my visits.

Steve Garraty: So I would say those seven really helped me get through that year.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. And I absolutely love that you just spoke about the lady who worked at the doctor's office, because I think so many times we put our doctors, the nurses, they're kind of over in this one category.

Kevin Lowe: But when that bridge can be formed of them being so compassionate and understanding to form a relationship, I think that's kind of where the magic lies in health care.

Steve Garraty: And I've tried to track her down. All I know is there, we ended up switching oncologists and that's, that's another chapter in the book, but the nurse, I just knew her first name.

Steve Garraty: And when we switched doctors, you know, again, that was pre-cell phone.

Steve Garraty: And unfortunately I didn't keep in touch with her, but yeah, I'd love to, I've tried to find her over the years so I could thank her, but I haven't been successful in doing so.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, you go through this, what was it?

Kevin Lowe: Was it roughly a year of chemo?

Steve Garraty: It was probably close to 10 months, I think.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. So you go through 10 months of chemo, of this kind of year of pure and utter hell.

Kevin Lowe: How do you begin at the end of treatment?

Kevin Lowe: To try to transition back into quote unquote normal life.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, I'm sitting there trying to think, I mean, the transition, it can't be just flip on a light switch and all of a sudden everything's better. I feel great.

Kevin Lowe: And just do I go back to partying and all that?

Kevin Lowe: Like what happened for you?

Steve Garraty: So it's a great question. And it was, yeah, it's not, not flip of a switch.

Steve Garraty: And it definitely was a gradual transition to answer that question.

Steve Garraty: That summer, I was just, probably the, well, first of all, the day the oncologist walked in, and again, you don't know when the end is coming.

Steve Garraty: So I went in, had gotten some tests done, some CAT scans and x-rays, and I was going in for what I thought was another round of chemo.

Steve Garraty: And the oncologist came in to review the results, which we had done a number of times, the results of the scans.

Steve Garraty: And he came in and said, I've got great news for you. And so when he told me they've gotten all the cancer, I think that was to this day, and I've had kids and I've gotten married to this day, that ranks as probably the moment of gratitude that was at an all time high for me.

Steve Garraty: I mean, I can't even put into words how grateful and how blessed and how overwhelmed with joy I was when I was told we've gotten it all and you're finished.

Steve Garraty: But from there, I did head off to school in the fall.

Steve Garraty: I did join a fraternity. I was a lot more. I knew that that lifestyle I had lived in high school, I needed to leave behind me. I think that took a lot.

Steve Garraty: 10 months to chemo and time to reflect to decide that I can't go back to that lifestyle, nor did I want to go back to it.

Steve Garraty: I also had read some things and learned that I believe that that partying and drinking and what I did from a stress and what I did to my body and my mind during that time probably led to me getting sick.

Steve Garraty: And so I knew that I had to go, that I had to approach college differently than I had expected before cancer. But I did go off in the fall.

Steve Garraty: I switched. I decided to go to a different college, went to the University of Georgia.

Steve Garraty: And it was wild, Kevin, because three months after that year of hell, as I like to call it, I'm going to football games. I'm going to tailgates.

Steve Garraty: I've got 100 friends in the fraternity that I quickly develop going out on dates, which there were no dates during the year I was bald and sickly.

Steve Garraty: And so I just felt like I was, the amount of gratitude I think I had compared to the average student at the time was probably really high.

Steve Garraty: But I think I did it more responsibly than I would have thanks to the cancer.

Steve Garraty: So that's how I kind of started to approach it.

Steve Garraty: I'd say there was some mental trauma of, I was always worried, typically when you're cured of cancer, you're in remission for five years.

Steve Garraty: So the oncologist that said, hey, we got it all, we're done.

Steve Garraty: For the next five years, we're going to monitor you closely.

Steve Garraty: You're going to continue to get the scans. And if we don't find anything after five years, then you're cured.

Steve Garraty: And I remember him saying the chances of getting cancer then are same as anybody else.

Steve Garraty: And so that five years, obviously, I was, you know, in college during that time.

Steve Garraty: And there were a couple of scares where I would have like a swollen lymph node or was sick.

Steve Garraty: And my mind would go to places of, you know, oh, no, it's it's come back.

Steve Garraty: So that was probably the hardest thing to deal with.

Steve Garraty: But does that answer your question? I would say those are some of the ways that was affected my transition.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, 100 percent. And I think that little piece that you just spoke about, I think, is probably the hardest thing to deal with is the fear of it coming back.

Kevin Lowe: I know from my own perspective of having a brain tumor, you know, my tumor was not cancerous.

Kevin Lowe: But when they had removed it, they had to leave this tiny little piece.

Kevin Lowe: And so I had to always keep going back for follow-up MRIs to check to be sure that it wasn't regrowing.

Kevin Lowe: And thank God it never started growing again.

Kevin Lowe: Actually, the little piece that was left just died off.

Kevin Lowe: But I know from that aspect what it can feel like, the fear, the worry of, you know, that infamous question of what if?

Kevin Lowe: What if it is coming back? And that can make it, I feel that can make it really hard to sometimes really move on with life.

Steve Garraty: Yeah, that definitely was the hardest part post-cancer for sure.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. Wow. So, yeah.

Kevin Lowe: Where does life take you from there to lead you kind of in the direction that took you to kind of where you are today all these years later?

Steve Garraty: Yeah, so there was that first year in college, there was a pivotal thing that happened for me. And it was, believe it or not, it was a movie.

Steve Garraty: So I went home for Christmas, my first Christmas after being cured of cancer.

Steve Garraty: And I was going to college.

Steve Garraty: I lived in Atlanta. I was going to college about an hour and a half from Atlanta.

Steve Garraty: And when I was going home for break, one of my new friends in college had asked if I had ever seen the movie It's a Wonderful Life, and I had not.

Steve Garraty: And so dating myself a little bit, I went to the local Blockbuster, and I rented this movie and took it home and watched it.

Steve Garraty: And I was bawling watching the movie.

Steve Garraty: For those of your listeners who haven't seen it, it's basically, I think it was back in the 30s or 40s the movie came out. But it was a gentleman who had, you know, a great family and had grown up in this town and wanted to get out of the town.

Steve Garraty: And a number of things happen in his life that are big setbacks.

Steve Garraty: And he reaches a point where he's wishing he was dead, had never been born.

Steve Garraty: And this angel grants him that wish. And the second half of the movie, he's able to see what life would be like had he not been born.

Steve Garraty: And for me, that movie, I always saw my cancer as the life before and the life after.

Steve Garraty: And that movie really resonated with me. And so from that, I started, I watched it every Christmas multiple times, but it started changing the way I viewed my experience with cancer.

Steve Garraty: And so it was an awful year and it was terrible and I would never want to go through it again or wish it on anybody.

Steve Garraty: But I started to view it as, one, it put me on a different path, a better path, and I was headed down a bad path.

Steve Garraty: But two, I started looking at some of the benefits or the values that I was starting to embrace because of my experience with cancer.

Steve Garraty: And so it just really, I'd say perspective was the first thing that changed.

Steve Garraty: And that movie helped frame that up for me and had me starting to analyze my year with cancer differently, if that makes sense.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, 100%. You know, isn't it always kind of crazy sometimes how we can have such changes in our lives from the most unexpected places?

Kevin Lowe: I mean, I know for myself, what a pivotal moment in my story happened from a chapter in a book I was listening to.

Kevin Lowe: For you, this movie, I think it's the powerful thing about life of when we're ready to hear what we need to hear, we hear it from something.

Kevin Lowe: And that's just really powerful.

Steve Garraty: Yeah, I like how you said that. I felt like, you know, there was a reason that my friends suggested this movie to me.

Steve Garraty: Most of my friends in college didn't know I had cancer. I didn't talk about it. but I felt like God was suggesting I watch this movie.

Steve Garraty: It rocked me the first time I ever watched that movie and just started to reframe how I viewed the experience.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin Lowe: So I guess what I would love to find out is the book that you have written.

Kevin Lowe: When was the first inkling of an idea that you wanted to write a book?

Steve Garraty: I joke, which is kind of true, but Kevin, I joke that it took me 37 years to write this book.

Steve Garraty: When I was going through chemo, and like I said, it was a lonely year.

Steve Garraty: I didn't have many people to lean on. I had a girlfriend through high school.

Steve Garraty: We broke up pretty much right away when I got cancer.

Steve Garraty: And so it was just a, it was a tough, lonely year.

Steve Garraty: And so my parents, my mom specifically, had really encouraged me to write it, write in a journal so that it was a way of coping and kind of therapy for me.

Steve Garraty: And so I filled up a pretty thick notebook with just, you know, random thoughts and experience what I was going through and what the chemo was like and what was going on inside my head.

Steve Garraty: And so I did that during the course, pretty much most of the time I was going through cancer and I filled that up.

Steve Garraty: And so that was the start of what today is the book.

Steve Garraty: Went off to college, didn't want to think about cancer. I put that journal or the notebook, I should say, aside.

Steve Garraty: And then I would say in my early to mid-20s after getting out, I took a writing course. And I don't know why I was a finance major, never really much of a writer or focused on that.

Steve Garraty: But I took a writing course in the evening and pulled out that journal and started to think, I want to leave a story for my kids. I have two children.

Steve Garraty: And two children, the oncologist had told me there was a 70% chance I would never have due to the chemo. So they were a blessing as well.

Steve Garraty: But I wanted to leave them my story when they were little.

Steve Garraty: So that was kind of the first time I started thinking about taking that journal and making it into a book.

Steve Garraty: And this was a long time ago. My kids are now 25 and 28.

Steve Garraty: But life just kept getting in the way. I'm in sales. I would travel, you know, kids sports, just all the things.

Steve Garraty: Life kept getting in the way. And so I would pick up the book.

Steve Garraty: I would write some. I'd put it back down. And I'm very thankful in hindsight that it took so long to write because the first book, the first half of the book.

Steve Garraty: Is really what happened, why it happened, how it happened.

Steve Garraty: It was really the story of the cancer and the partying and all of that.

Steve Garraty: But the second half of the book is really because it took me so long to finish it and write it.

Steve Garraty: The second half of the book is how cancer made me a better husband, father, friend, business leader.

Steve Garraty: I've been in leadership a long time and how it affected my faith.

Steve Garraty: I would say those kind of five areas of my life. And so had I finished this book in my 20s, it would be part one only.

Steve Garraty: But because I have the perspective of four decades and how this year of my journey that involved fighting cancer, how it impacted my life is really part two.

Steve Garraty: And so eventually I felt like the story would resonate with people, not just who had cancer, but who've been to grief or divorce or any major life setback.

Steve Garraty: And that was maybe 10 years ago.

Steve Garraty: And anyways, it took me a long time to finish it really just because life kept getting in the way.

Steve Garraty: But it was a gradual process of going from writing a journal for therapy and dealing with cancer to having it being a book that I published.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, wow. Now, the title of the book is Greatfruit.

Kevin Lowe: And I would love for you to unpack that title for me.

Steve Garraty: Yeah. So I spent about six months. The book was done. I was going through editing.

Steve Garraty: And I was struggling trying to come up with a name for the book.

Steve Garraty: I was going to call it Why Me? I think you said what if earlier. Why me?

Steve Garraty: You know, when bad things happen to us, I think a lot of times we say, why me?

Steve Garraty: And so I was going to call it Why Me? The problem is there's a lot of books out there called Why Me?

Steve Garraty: So I was struggling with what's a better name. And a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in 20-something years, we got together in Atlanta for drinks, and he's more of a marketing guru.

Steve Garraty: And I was telling him about my book. He knew my story. And he said, hey, let me read it, and I'll come up with some titles for you.

Steve Garraty: And so he did. He gave me a list of titles, and Greatfruit was one of them.

Steve Garraty: But it's really a play on words, so it's great, G-R-E-A-T-F-R-U-I-T, one word.

Steve Garraty: And it's really a play on words from they took a mass out the size of a grapefruit, and it ended up being a blessing and leading to a more fruitful life.

Steve Garraty: And so he kind of combined that and those two themes in the book and came up with the name and I liked it a lot.

Steve Garraty: And so, yeah, the book's called Greatfruit, How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.

Kevin Lowe: Wow, I love it. I absolutely love the play on words. I think that's such an awesome idea. So catchy.

Kevin Lowe: So I guess what I'm curious about is after such a long time, from the time of, honestly, from you being diagnosed with cancer, going through it, making a few entries in a journal, to the first idea of starting a book, can end the long process.

Kevin Lowe: What was it like for you to actually hold in your hands your published book?

Steve Garraty: So it's funny you say that. So the book was published in March.

Steve Garraty: And the first copy that I got from Amazon once I uploaded the book before it was available to the public, it's in my hand right now. I call it the OG.

Steve Garraty: It's the original gangster of my books. But, yeah, I carry it with me everywhere.

Steve Garraty: It's all beat up now. But it was unbelievable to hold that book.

Steve Garraty: I think probably for your listeners, it's, you know, any major goal you've gone after in your life that took a lot of work and sweat and tears.

Steve Garraty: When you finally accomplished that, whether it's, I don't know, a promotion at work or selling your business or, you know, whatever it is, it was very rewarding when it finally was published and available to the public.

Steve Garraty: But holding it in my hands was like, wow, this is now a reality.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, that's amazing. Now, have your kids read the book?

Steve Garraty: They have. They have. And I would say, you know, it was rewarding holding the book, but it was also a little scary, Kevin, because the book is very raw and I'm very vulnerable in there.

Steve Garraty: There's a chapter in there that I debated whether I should put in or not.

Steve Garraty: And so when my kids read it, they knew that they had heard, you know, that I had gotten into trouble in school and things of that nature.

Steve Garraty: But when they both read it, they were like, wow, we knew you were bad.

Steve Garraty: We didn't know you were that bad.

Steve Garraty: But yeah, they both really enjoyed it. And, you know, I hope that part two, which is kind of the ways that it affected my life.

Steve Garraty: I hope that they take some of those lessons and can learn those lessons without having to go through something like cancer, but that they can embrace things like gratitude and empathy and paying it forward and how they can be a better parent, a better spouse, how it can affect their faith.

Steve Garraty: And so, yeah, my hope is that they kind of embrace some of those lessons and and live a more fruitful life themselves.

Steve Garraty: But, yeah, they were a little shocked with some of the stuff in the book.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. That's that is too awesome. I think that's truly incredible.

Kevin Lowe: And I mean, I give you a tremendous just round of applause for for finally doing it, for for finally actually turning it into a book. I think it's truly amazing.

Kevin Lowe: It's a personal goal of mine. One day that I will hope to accomplish.

Kevin Lowe: And so I know how difficult it can be to do such a thing.

Kevin Lowe: And so the fact that you have done it, I'm just like, that's absolutely amazing.

Steve Garraty: Yeah, it's been an awesome journey. It's been fun. And I've met a lot of authors.

Steve Garraty: Some have been mentors to me that are further along in the journey than I.

Steve Garraty: And then I've met authors who are still trying to get their book out and I'm trying to be a mentor to them.

Steve Garraty: So if you're ever working on that book and I can help you, I love sharing.

Steve Garraty: And there's things I did right, things I did wrong and things I learned from in the process. But it's been fun. It's been very rewarding.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, I love it. Well, Steve, for the person who's interested in picking up a copy of your book, where is the best place that they could find it?

Steve Garraty: Online, pretty much any, you know, I'd say the major, Amazon owns about 70 or 80% of all book sales worldwide, but Amazon's one.

Steve Garraty: If you're not a big fan of Amazon, you know, Barnes and Noble, any of the big online retailers.

Steve Garraty: And, you know, again, it's Greatfruit, which is one word.

Steve Garraty: And yeah, they can get it online. and have it shipped to them.

Kevin Lowe: Okay, well, amazing. Well, I will be sure for anybody interested, links are all in the episode show notes.

Kevin Lowe: I'll be sure to drop links for easy access to your book.

Kevin Lowe: I guess I would love just to end with one final question.

Kevin Lowe: And through all that you've learned in life, all that you've been through, what are you the most grateful for?

Steve Garraty: I'm grateful that I got a second chance. I think I could save my kids.

Steve Garraty: I could say my wife, I could say, there's a lot of things I could say, but none of that happens if I didn't get a second chance.

Steve Garraty: I think I was headed on a path where I wouldn't have met my wife, which means I wouldn't have had my kids.

Steve Garraty: I could have ended up in jail or worse. And so the fact that I was given a second chance in life is probably what I'm most grateful for because it led to everything from that point forward.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. I love it so much.

Kevin Lowe: Steve, man, an absolute pleasure. I am so happy we got to make this work today.

Kevin Lowe: It's been a real joy getting to have you on the podcast. So thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be here.

Steve Garraty: Yeah, I loved it, Kevin. Thanks for having me on your show.

Kevin Lowe: Absolutely absolutely for you listening please be sure you check out today's show notes like i said i will have links for easy access to steve's book called Greatfruit please be sure to get yourself a copy if you were already intrigued by the story you just heard you can bet the book is going to get you even more excited so my friend check out these show notes and until next time this of course is grit, grace, and inspiration.