In December 1996, I found that I had Stage 4 colon cancer. It was my Christmas gift. The cancer had spread to both lobes of the liver and I was given only four to six months to live ... closer to four. I didn't want to die. I had just turned sixty-eight years old and I was afraid. There was so much that I needed to do and certainly death, right then, was not one of them. It took me a while to develop a plan and I would learn that some of whether we live is up to us. From my point of view, we need to create strategies to augment medical treatment. We must fill our life with verbs rather than adjectives. It all began shortly before Christmas, twenty-one years ago. This is my story, and I am hopeful that some of my strategies will help others.