Live a Great Life for the Rest of Your Life: Les Whitney on Eight Years with Stage Four Lung Cancer, Perfect Moments, and the Choice to Not Let Anything Get in the Way

Eight years ago, Les Whitney finished a surf session, picked up his ukulele, and his left hand stopped working. A brain tumor. Then, worse: stage four lung cancer, metastasized. His doctors gave him six months.

He's still here.

In this episode of The Bridges Between Us, Les, a CEO mentor, author of Cancer's Gifts, and one of the most genuinely joyful guests we've ever had, shares what eight years of living with a terminal diagnosis has taught him about gratitude, presence, community, and the choice to live fully no matter what. He doesn't use hope as a strategy. He doesn't fear dying. He counts perfect moments three to five times a day. And he has found, across eight years of CaringBridge posts to over 1,200 followers, that the act of documenting his journey has built a community that has literally extended his life, including a follower who connected him to a newly approved treatment when his lungs were completely filled with cancer and nothing was working.

Les also shares something new: his wife was recently diagnosed with lung cancer too. And he says watching her receive the diagnosis was harder than receiving his own.

He is planning a trip to Morocco or India. He is preparing a best man speech in advance, just in case. He is living in a three-month window and calling it a great life.

Read more about Les Whitney's Book, Cancer's Gifts, here: https://www.caringbridge.org/resources/cancers-gifts-a-loving-journey-toward-the-final-chapter

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