I have wrestled gators in Florida. I have sailed the ocean with Ted Turner. I have swam the oceans in the Caribbean.

Ted Turner sailed into the meeting, and I mean sailed. He holds himself as if he were at the helm of his sailboat, in the process of winning the race.

I'm not Bill Gates. And I'm not Ted Turner.

You can often find in rivers what you cannot find in oceans.

After we looked around and noticed coral was dying all over the Caribbean, not just in Florida where we have sewage and other problems, I found some literature on the Amazon rain forest. In the late '80s and early '90s, scientists determined that the African dust supplies most of the essential nutrients for the rain forest.

Whatever I might have imagined a terminal diagnosis would do to my spirit, it summoned quite the opposite - the greatest appreciation for life itself. So I will never give up, and I will never give in.