Gratitude- Care Tuk's continuing God story.

Care Tuk has been through more physical challenges than anyone we've known. But that has not robbed her of her sense of humor, her positive attitude and her special relationship with God. This is our second opportunity to chat with Care on Episode 22. You'll hear about her continuing health challenges that would have brought most of us down. Along with a health update, "Amazing Greats" host Klem Daniels jumps in with a meaty conversation about near death experiences, the power of her marriage with her care-giving husband, and her unique relationship with her best friend.....God. Care shares her amazing ability to keep a positive attitude: finding and focusing on one good thing even on her worst days. As she says....You can be IN pain or you can BE a pain. This episode can't help but touch you and make you feel grateful for every single day of good health. Her website and blog http;//www.caretuk.com Her books Care has authored her second book, which was just released in October 2021. Read her continuing story in

"Don’t Wimp Out! Finding Faith, Courage and Victory in Life’s Daily Battles " Available now on her website

Care's first book introduces you to this amazing woman and her struggles. It will you amaze you, how upbeat and hopeful she is after all of the things she has been though. Truly an inspiration. "Loose Screws and skinned Knees" Available now on her website

CARE TUK AT A GLANCE

Alaska author, cancer survivor, and Christian speaker who has endured repeated cancer, more than 120 surgeries, a near-fatal car accident, brain injury, and the loss of her daughter while continuing to live from faith, humor, courage, and hope.

Topics

Cancer survival · grief · near-death experiences · faith · prayer · marriage · caregiving · chronic illness · resilience · humor · Don't Wimp Out

Her Faith Journey

DES-related infertility → adoption of Jamie → decades of medical battles → near-death experiences → loss of Jamie → deeper dependence on God → choosing faith, humor, gratitude, and one day at a time.

This Episode Explores

• Care Tuk's adoption of Jamie and Jamie's unexpected death.

• Care's experiences of being clinically dead and what she describes experiencing.

• Why she says the questions "Why?" and "Why now?" are above our pay grade.

• Her extraordinary medical history and more than 120 surgeries.

• Bill Tuk's role as her husband and caregiver.

• How faith sustains her through cancer and uncertainty.

• The meaning behind her book Don't Wimp Out.

• Choosing gratitude, humor, and a positive attitude in the middle of suffering.

• Why Care describes faith as a relationship with God rather than simply going to church.

Questions Answered

• Who is Care Tuk?

• What happened to Care Tuk's daughter Jamie?

• What did Care Tuk experience during her near-death experiences?

• How has Care Tuk survived so many medical challenges?

• What role does Bill Tuk play in Care's life?

• How does Care Tuk's Christian faith sustain her?

• What does Don't Wimp Out mean?

• How does Care Tuk deal with pain and suffering?

• What does Care Tuk say about living one day at a time?

• What is Don't Wimp Out about?

Core Story

Care Tuk's life has been marked by extraordinary physical suffering, loss, and uncertainty, but she refuses to let those circumstances define her. Through cancer, surgeries, brain injuries, a near-death experience, and the death of her daughter Jamie, she has leaned into her relationship with God, her marriage to Bill, humor, gratitude, and the decision to live one day at a time. Her message is simple: acknowledge the pain without making it bigger or smaller than it is, trust God with what you cannot control, and don't wimp out.

Care Tuk Part 2: Don't Wimp Out — Faith, Courage & Surviving Life's Daily Battles

Amazing Greats with Ric Hansen

Introduction

Ric Hansen:Hi there, Ric Hansen here. Thanks for checking out the latest episode of the Amazing Greats Podcast.

In this episode, our producer extraordinaire, Klem Daniels, again rocks the microphone in a second follow-up episode with Care Tuk. We originally interviewed her back in February of 2021.

Let me get you up to speed. After multiple battles with cancer, a near-death car crash at the hands of a truck driver, and then a brain bleed that left her having to learn to walk and talk again — plus the unexpected death of a child — Care Tuk knows a little something about survival.

A lot has developed since that last conversation, including the release of her new book, Don't Wimp Out. Here is Klem Daniels and Care Tuk.

A Special Day

Klem Daniels:Thanks, Ric. I'm Klem Daniels, and today we have a special guest who is back for round two because there are some new things going on in her life, and we'll tell you all about it today.

Her name is Care Tuk. Chances are you've never met anyone quite like Care Tuk for so many reasons. She's extremely unique, but her uniqueness lies not only in her charm, her smarts, her stubbornness, and her faith.

Care is unique by really no fault of her own. It's a side effect of an experimental fertility drug her mother took back in the 1950s.

Care has suffered 14 cancers in all, four of which she has right now. We'll talk about that as well. She's had over 120 surgeries to repair and replace several body parts, and she's had a facial rebuild after a horrific car accident that almost killed her.

She's the author of her second book, Don't Wimp Out: Finding Faith, Courage, and Victory in Life's Daily Battles. She's the toughest lady I know from Wasilla, Alaska.

I introduce Care Tuk. Hi, Care.

Care Tuk:Hi, Klem. How are you?

Great. We call ourselves the Chosen Frozen up here, but it's going to be 70 degrees and awesome. We don't often get nice 70-plus-degree days.

Klem Daniels:I don't get it up here. And this is May, right?

Care Tuk:The end of May.

Klem Daniels:And I'm in Seattle and we're in the 50s today. So go figure.

Care Tuk:Yeah, go figure. My husband found a block of ice still yesterday when he was tilling the garden.

Klem Daniels:So today is a special day for you?

Care Tuk:It's a really special day.

Because of DES — the drug that was used to prevent miscarriages — one of the side effects they didn't know about was that the female offspring would be infertile over 80 percent of the time, sometimes even higher. I happened to be in that category.

We really wanted to have kids and tried to have kids, but we didn't know that my mom had taken DES.

Then we decided to adopt. Adoption back in the '70s was really expensive, and we were getting rejections right and left. Bill would be staying home, being a house husband, or a guy staying at home and raising the kids, and that wasn't acceptable.

But on May 25, 1979, a baby bundle, Jamie Marie, came into our life.

An unselfish young teen mom knew that she couldn't give her a life at that time that she would want to give a child, and we got Jamie on loan for 40 years.

Klem Daniels:And so Jamie's birthday is today?

Care Tuk:Correct.

Klem Daniels:How old would Jamie be today?

Care Tuk:Jamie today would be 42.

Klem Daniels:Yeah. Jamie's no longer with us.

Care Tuk:No. Actually, it would have been almost a year and a month after her 40th birthday.

She was pregnant with her third grandchild, and she always had trouble with heartburn in her second trimester. She was out on the couch, huddled under a blanket, and she had heartburn.

She got on the computer and was Googling heartburn. She did have a heart defect that we didn't know about, which most often women don't know about until their 30s. Heart disease is one of the main killers of women.

The medical examiner explained to us that her heart just stopped.

So we get this call from her husband saying, "Jamie is no longer with us."

And yet, in every sense of the way, Jamie is still here.

I can see her sliding on the northern lights. I can see the delight in her kids' faces. I can see it in her husband. Everything.

So unexpected. Hard, but okay.

Clinically Dead — and Experiencing Heaven

Klem Daniels:That's terrific that you're able to feel that way when other people might take it a different way.

We're going to talk about that today — the emotions of suffering, the emotions of death, your experiences with death.

Why don't we start with that? I mean, you've been clinically dead twice in your life?

Care Tuk:Twice documented, but three times unofficially.

It's very surreal.

If anybody has watched the movie The Shack, there's a scene with the little boy — I can't think of the name of the movie right now — but it is exactly that.

The first time I had a blood clot in one of my chemo port lines. My husband and I were in the ER, and they were doing CPR.

I could hear my husband yelling. It was like I was I Dream of Jeannie, and I'm sitting there cross-legged looking down and wanted to just blink.

But I heard him yelling, "Don't you dare leave me here without these two teenage girls alone. I'm not doing this thing alone."

And so I chuckle over that.

The music overhead was, "Can't live if living is without you."

And I kind of looked up.

Klem Daniels:Did they actually play that in the hospital?

Care Tuk:That has to be the music that is on right now.

The other one was another time when I was really close.

I got to the gates, and a friend who was my occupational therapist, who also happens to be a friend, was right next to me.

He said, "You know, I've never heard anybody argue with God. You were just ticked off at Him."

And I said, "Yeah, because He wouldn't let me in. I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back."

And I obviously got the message: You're going back.

The gates — I mean, literally gates — it's not so much gates as an opening. And it's no other colors or sounds.

If anybody has watched The Shack, there's a scene with all the wildflowers, when his five-year-old daughter comes running. It's his assurance that she's doing okay.

It's like that.

It's indescribable.

Klem Daniels:You're listening to my interview with Care Tuk, an amazing survivor, and she continues to do so today. Let's get back to the interview.

How old were you at the time?

Care Tuk:At that time, I must have been 45.

Klem Daniels:How old was your body in heaven?

Care Tuk:I don't know that it really was a body. It was more of an ethereal — it was a spirit moment. It was a soul. It was a heart. It's a heart issue.

I don't mean the one with the aorta and everything else. It's the feeling. It's being there, and you know that you're loved. The body doesn't matter.

I happen to know Joni Eareckson Tada, and we laugh. She says, "Yeah, the day she goes to heaven, she knows where her wheelchair is going."

And I said, "Yeah, the day I get to heaven, I'm just going to ask God to make sure that wherever my room is, I have non-skid gold floors, because I've had enough of titanium rods and screws and cages and everything else."

Klem Daniels:The reason I asked about the body was because I've heard several people say that you are the best-looking you've ever been in your life, so you're at your peak — probably in your 20s.

Care Tuk:Hey, I think I look pretty good for an old geezer.

Klem Daniels:Right, right.

Care Tuk:There are some subtle differences in each person's experience, and I think that personifies each person's own relationship, own faith, no matter what it is — what they walk through and what they believe.

Why Me? Why Now?

Klem Daniels:So anyway, you were pulled back. It wouldn't let you in. St. Peter wouldn't let you in. And then what happened? How did you know you were going back?

Care Tuk:It was kind of a slow process.

I don't know if you've ever fainted or blacked out and you kind of have these curtains that just come in and close, close, close, close, and then you're out.

This was almost a similar feeling.

I felt myself just getting further and further away from the colors that seriously are a lot like the northern lights or wildflowers or whatever those colors are to me.

I didn't hear any harps or that type of thing for me.

I just felt myself being pulled back further and further.

And there I was, back in my hospital bed with my OT sitting next to me.

Klem Daniels:Wow. It freaks people out when you've been clinically dead for whatever period of time, and then you tell them stories about things that happened.

Care Tuk:Oh, I just tell them — the one question I get a lot now goes back to the day that Jamie passed away.

She passed away early in the morning, and on our drive into her house, Bill said, "There are two questions that you don't ask. I really don't even go there with me."

It's "Why?" and "Why now?"

Because that's above our pay grade.

When God wants us to know why, when He wants us to know why now, He'll let us know in His timing.

And I think that's really true.

But also, I think God doesn't want me up there mucking stuff up. There's got to be a reason that you're not there already.

I'm hoping part of it is that I can still encourage people.

Even being set aside as I am, we can still show people that we have fun. Even though you might not be able to do what you want to do, there are many, many things that you can do.

And that's my part.

Is it a struggle sometimes? Oh, sure.

I recently, just as recently as a month ago, got into something, and the doctors weren't sure what it was. Well, we do know what it is, but they don't have a real name for it yet other than it's affecting part of my stomach, pancreas, all that kind of stuff.

And he said to me last week, "We all, 15 of us across the country, weren't sure we were going to be able to pull you through."

Klem Daniels:I'm talking with Care Tuk on Amazing Greats.

Care Tuk:I said, "Well, that's probably because you're not the great physicians. I have the Great Physician as the head guy."

You guys already appointed me as COO, but you know, it is hard when there's nothing more that you would love to do than to get out of Dodge. No more worries, no more anything else.

Living With Cancer and Uncertainty

Klem Daniels:You were just talking about something that this audience doesn't know about. It was about two weeks ago that you're referring to.

Why don't you explain what you were going through?

Care Tuk:One of the cancers that we've been battling with — and they're calling whatever this is a neoplasm — is in my bile duct.

And it's true to Care Tuk style: It's twice the size of anything that any of the doctors have ever seen.

They've only found one research paper that had someone whose duct was dilated to 10, and mine's at a 20 as of two weeks ago.

It means I get to change my diet to full liquids and soft foods and that kind of stuff.

But it's a good thing I like smooth peanut butter and toast. And Bill makes awesome, awesome soup bases, so that's not a problem.

Bill: The Caregiver Behind the Survivor

Klem Daniels:Wow. We didn't talk much about Bill last time around, but Bill has really been a saint as a husband.

He's set the bar so darn high that none of us can ever reach that.

Bill's a big, burly guy who wears shorts in the middle of winter in Alaska. He comes off as a big tough guy, but he's really a teddy bear.

Care Tuk:He only wears T-shirts with sleeves once it gets about five above. And he might wear a coat at 10 below. Maybe.

I would say the hero in anybody's story going through things — and especially mine — is the caregiver, caretaker, or in my case, taker of care.

And he has done it.

He walked into our marriage knowing we thought it would only be one vow. We weren't counting on as many.

But he is so gifted and so wise, and he's the only one other than God who can probably keep me in line.

Klem Daniels:You take these vows when you get married, and I understand he missed something in your wedding vows. What did he forget to say?

Care Tuk:He forgot "in sickness and in health."

And I kind of wonder, you know — yes, we had lawyers coming after us saying, "Why don't you sue? Why don't you sue? You could get great money."

And we thought, you can't put a price on life.

But I teased him the other day, saying, "Hey, you left out this. I wonder what life would have been like."

And he goes, "Well, you've done a lot in your life, lady, but you haven't done very well at the 'till death do us part' part."

So I said, "Okay."

Klem Daniels:Point well taken.

Care Tuk:Point well taken.

Klem Daniels:What a great guy he is.

Care Tuk:We have.

But probably, Klem, I can say why we've been together.

Most marriages — there's a high percentage — I've heard as high as 90 percent of marriages won't last if somebody has chronic illness or those types of things.

But when people say, "What makes you guys stick together?" I say Bill will tell you, one, because he made a promise; two, he doesn't break promises; and three, especially to God.

But we started our relationship as best friends.

We encourage anybody who wants to enter into any relationship that you've got to be friends.

Because when you're best friends, you're not going to just walk away forever.

You may be ticked for a while, but you always come back and you always share those special things with them.

And so we're best friends.

Marriage, Conflict and Faith

Klem Daniels:One thing I read in your new book is when you were going for adoption, one of the questions they asked was, "How do you handle an argument?"

And you couldn't answer the question.

Care Tuk:We could not.

At that point, we'd been married a couple of years, and even really to this day, we don't really argue.

I did give him a plaque that hangs in our living room. It says, "I'm not arguing, I'm just explaining why I'm right."

So, yeah, it isn't arguing.

We always talked it out, and we kind of had a signal: "Time out."

Okay, this is getting where we don't want it to go.

So we'd time ourselves out, just like we did with our kids. Then we'd come back and we'd talk it out.

And we'd end up — well, making up is never hard to do — with hugs and kisses and praying, and just trying to understand.

You turn it over to God to kind of work it out for you, or help us understand how we're supposed to work it out.

In a lot of ways, Bill and I are polar opposites.

He can do almost anything. He was out this morning already, rototilling and disking and leveling the half-acre garden that we're going to put in.

But it's like Italian dressing.

When you have a bottle and the oil separates from the other stuff — that's Bill and me.

We both have our own flavors, but one of us is the oil and the water-based stuff is the other place.

Shake us up and we make a darn good salad dressing.

That's how I describe us.

120 Surgeries and a Body Rebuilt

Klem Daniels:It's a very important part of life.

But certainly what you've been going through — since you were what, 14? You had your first —

Care Tuk:Actually, yeah, 13. Right around there.

Klem Daniels:She's found her life turned upside down, her bank account depleted, and her body put back together with screws, plates, and 25-pound-test surgical fishing line.

But through it all, she continues to survive and amaze us all.

I'm talking with Care Tuk on Amazing Greats.

Knee surgery was your first surgery?

Care Tuk:My knee surgery was the first one.

Klem Daniels:Let's go through your body parts. You ready?

Care Tuk:We're ready.

Klem Daniels:Let's start with the feet and work our way up.

Care Tuk:From the feet, I've got fused toes because the neuropathy from the chemo was so bad that I wasn't getting blood to part of my foot.

They had to fuse toes so they wouldn't have to amputate them.

Both knees are total knees, but one is a prototype that was used in a study. It has a long rod going from my knee down to just above my ankle, and then there's a spacer bar.

Klem Daniels:Titanium, right?

Care Tuk:Yeah, titanium rod.

And then there's a plastic piece in there called a spacer that they put into it. It mimics what cartilage or meniscus would be.

Then I have, from the knee up about three or four inches of my thigh, a femoral rod of titanium, or a femoral piece that they fashioned for me.

Then, in the car accident, I had my face rebuilt.

I've had my shoulders rebuilt 10 times.

After chemo, my bones became more brittle. When I fell, I hit the palm of my hand and shattered my humerus, so I got more screwed up and got a plate and 10 more screws.

Eventually they had to take those out.

But one of the great things about having so much titanium is you can't hurt titanium.

You can sure bruise around it, but you can't break it.

So that's a plus.

I'm fused surgically in four places in my back, but the rest — all but one disc — has self-fused.

Again, they're thinking that's due to the DES.

Then the brain got injured, not only in the car accident, because the bones got shoved up and things got scrambled — jaw broken, everything — but in 2001, during 9/11, I had a three-compartment subdural bleed that we still to this day have no idea where it came from.

I didn't fall. It wasn't anything.

I just had a funny headache, and the doctor said, "Humor me. Let me take an X-ray."

Then he said, "Ah, I want to do a CT."

And then it was, "No, you're not going home, you're not driving, you're not doing anything."

I did go home three months later.

After they took everything out, I had to learn how to walk, talk, speak all over again.

Then, as my charmed life goes, just after Jamie's death, I had my yearly cancer workup.

It'll be CTs or MRIs or PET scans or whatever.

I had taken mine, and it showed that the hardware in my arm with the plates and screws was starting to fail.

Two of the screws were coming through the bone and starting to damage the muscle, so they needed to get that out.

They got it out.

But what was even funnier was, right before I was being wheeled toward surgery, I could hear a couple of doctors talking.

They said, "You're doing Care Tuk? Are you crazy, or are you just stupid?"

They said, "I sure hope you have a Plan B."

Well, he did need a Plan B.

And the Plan B ended up being a blessing in disguise.

After recuperating, I'd lost a lot of blood. They did some blood work, found I was way low, gave me some blood, and then I had a reaction.

They think it was because with chemo, my core temperature has dropped, and the blood wasn't warmed up.

It's a technique they can do and usually do, but they didn't.

So here I was having this reaction. They're wheeling me down to the ER and doing CTs and MRIs and heart stuff and everything else.

And lo and behold, they find a brain tumor.

I mean, who goes in for shoulder surgery and comes out with a brain tumor?

Care Tuk.

So we deal with that.

Then, because of that, after they did more CTs, they came back and did a PET scan, only to find that I had a tumor in my sixth and fourth rib.

There's nothing they can do.

The fourth one is infinitesimal right now, and the one on the sixth rib they can't do anything about because it sits right next to where the main artery of the heart is.

So they can't touch it.

And so we said, "There we go."

And then you just live your everyday stuff that you go through normally.

More Diagnoses

Klem Daniels:This is today. How long ago was that? Did you get the diagnosis on the brain tumor and the bile duct cancer?

Care Tuk:I forgot to mention that.

They think there may be a tumor forming behind the left eye, which, if it is, would be from the car accident because it was where part of the injury from the car accident was — where I got direct impact.

But the bile duct has just been within the last six months or so that we've really been able to narrow that down. Six months to a year. It started showing up on there.

Klem Daniels:The bile duct cancer is the most serious of them all, I understand, of the four that you currently have.

What's the prognosis?

Care Tuk:Oh, it's the same as yours.

Terminal.

Klem Daniels:Same. We're all terminal.

I understand what you're saying.

Care Tuk:Some sooner than others.

With the bile duct, the doctor told me last week that there's almost no point in doing more scans.

Yes, we can keep on top of blood work, but when the — we will know if God doesn't come first, or I don't get hit by a moose — this is what would probably take me out.

The duct will close totally off.

And they have no explanation for why it hasn't already, because at the level it is already, I should be looking like a minion — a yellow minion.

He said once you start turning yellow, you typically have four weeks to four months.

But he said, "There's nothing typical about you, so we don't know."

H1N1 and COVID

Klem Daniels:We haven't even mentioned the H1N1 that you contracted how long ago on a flight down to Seattle or something?

Care Tuk:Right. That was 10 or 11 years ago.

I was down — I had taken a flight over to Spokane for the weekend, and that was the weekend they put Washington State University under quarantine because of H1N1.

I came back and had an orthopedic appointment, and all of a sudden I started showing signs of H1N1.

It was tough, partially because I couldn't go home until I was kind of clear for 10 days.

But if that hadn't happened, the first book wouldn't have happened.

While I was there, the people who graciously let me stay with them had a son who worked with Luis Palau, and he was my editor and kind of consultant — whatever you call them on books — head guru.

So, yeah, it's pretty cool.

Klem Daniels:Did you stay in Spokane to recover?

Care Tuk:No. I had gone over to Spokane for the weekend, and they figured I got it on one of the flights back since there were so many flights with students.

I probably got it then.

But I stayed with other friends.

Klem Daniels:So you're a survivor of H1N1.

The only thing that could — you just had to stay away from completely — was COVID, and you didn't.

You and Bill contracted COVID, and you have all of these things going on in your body and your life. You would think your immune system was just totally destroyed.

Care Tuk:Well, it is.

In fact, it's why right now I'm still on liquids and will be.

But I lost it. Sorry. That's part of having several brain surgeries.

Sometimes you lose it.

My husband calls it "all the timers." I call it "some of the timers, most of the timers."

But you were talking about COVID.

We figure the day that I was exposed to it was the day that Alaska had one of their first cases.

It came from a pilot who had flown from China, actually, and he happened to be at the hospital at the same time I was.

We didn't know anything.

Think about it — a year ago in March, nobody knew anything. Nobody was quarantining or anything else.

He was in an area where we were.

So, for us, blessedly, it was just like a bad flu.

I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but I wouldn't wish a bad cold on anybody either.

Yes, we have to take precautions. We have to be vigilant and aware.

But my take is one day at a time.

Faith as a Relationship

Klem Daniels:God keeps putting a spotlight on you and holds you in the highest regard as a representative on this planet for people.

We just don't know people like you who have gone through what you have, but have had this wonderful faith experience that just continues to keep you alive.

What are your thoughts on that?

Care Tuk:Well, there are a couple of things.

One is, yes, I do have faith.

It's my faith. It's a relationship.

It isn't — you know, I happen to be a Christian.

Just like if you go to McDonald's, you aren't a hamburger.

Just because you go to church doesn't mean you're a Christian.

I happen to have a friendship with God and am tight with Him.

And staying close with Him, even when there are times that you can't read, you can't concentrate, those types of things — that's why He says, "Hide My Word in your heart."

And that has sustained me.

Because there will be little verses that keep going around and around.

You'd be surprised at the ones that you remember and why you remember them.

In the dark nights in a rehab center, or in the middle of the night when you can't sleep, or when you're out recycling everything after a chemo —

life is fragile, so you handle it with prayer.

Don't Wimp Out

Klem Daniels:You're listening to my interview with Care Tuk, an amazing survivor, and she continues to do so today.

Let's get back to the interview.

I was going to ask, if you could say anything to the rest of us, what advice would you give based on your life experiences — and possibly, too, taking into consideration where you're going here much sooner than we all want that to happen?

Care Tuk:One would be something I learned a long time ago from one of my clients:

"You can either be in pain, or you can be a pain."

So your attitude has a lot to do with it.

But also, don't make it more than it is, and don't make it less than it is either.

Klem Daniels:A lot of times there's pain, and there's lots of pain with you.

But there's also the wear and tear on the mind, on the body, and everything that goes along with that.

That's difficult.

And the combination sometimes — you throw depression in there along with other things.

That's a lot to encounter.

Care Tuk:I keep a sign on my desk. It says, "Give yourself permission to leave something undone today."

And I also have Larry Boy from VeggieTales, who has a button on it that says, "No whining."

And that's kind of where Don't Wimp Out comes from.

We don't get to choose the number of days, the number of hairs — or lack thereof — on our head that God counts.

But we trust one day at a time, make right choices, and don't worry about tomorrow.

You take today.

Today's a gift.

Unwrap it. Open it up after you've unwrapped it and see the gift of today.

Every day, you can find something.

If I was in the deepest and darkest days, I would force myself to find one good thing that happened.

Focus on the good. Focus on your attitude.

It's also hard because I'm not looking at me.

Bill looks at me all the time. Other people see me, but I don't see me necessarily in the same way they see me.

I want to be the best that I know how to be, which is to be a keister-kicker, to use humor.

And on days when I can't do it, I take the phone off the hook and put the cell phone on mute.

And it's okay.

Writing Through Cancer

Klem Daniels:Your book, Don't Wimp Out: Finding Faith, Courage, and Victory in Life's Daily Battles, is a title that certainly suits you and fits you well.

You have a lot to say.

The one thing I don't quite understand is where you find the energy and the time to write not only your first book, but your second book.

Care Tuk:The first book I wrote was my way of dealing with chemo.

You'd be sitting hours on end in a chair being hooked up to an IV, and I would write there.

I've always been a journaler, and so some of the stories came from there.

This second book has actually been done — written for about three years.

People kept saying, "So when's it coming out? When's it coming out?"

And I'm saying, "I would..."

Glitches kept falling in the way.

Throw in a 7.1 earthquake. Throw in COVID. Throw in whatever.

Klem Daniels:And since the time of her interview, her new book, Don't Wimp Out, is now available.

You can find it on her website at caretuk.com.

In the meantime, your first book, Loose Screws and Skinned Knees —

Care Tuk:Loose Screws and Skinned Knees.

And you know, it's because I really do. I have a loose screw right there. You can see it.

Klem Daniels:Yes, yeah.

Care Tuk:I asked them, "Why won't you take it out?"

And they said, "Well, that's old school."

And I'm going, "Old school?"

I said, "Fine. I'll just sterilize it and go out to my husband's shop and take his reciprocating drill and just pull her out."

Yeah, it's just — no. I don't think so.

Grace and "Jesus With Skin On"

Klem Daniels:Well, Care, it's been a pleasure.

Thanks.

The name Care Tuk is almost ironic. It couldn't be a better name for a person like you who has given so much care and deserves so much care.

And you're in the care of God Almighty.

You are an example of His — I just so much, I can't even find an adjective for it.

Care Tuk:It is grace.

But you know what? It's because of people like you who are Jesus with skin on that help fuel me to be the me I can be.

Klem Daniels:Well, thank you.

It's a pleasure to talk to you again, and we wish you nothing but the best.

And thanks. Please be around here for a while, will you?

Care Tuk:Yeah. I want to see some more warm weather.

Klem Daniels:All right. Thanks, Care.

Care Tuk:See you in the funny pages.

Closing

Ric Hansen:Thanks, Klem and Care.

What an amazing story.

If you missed the first conversation with Care Tuk, check out Episode 4 from February on the Amazing Greats Podcast.

Thanks so much for taking some time to hear this amazing story and to hear how God continues His work in all of it.

If you were moved by something that you heard today, or something that struck you as being important for someone you know to hear, please go ahead and share it with a friend.

Thank you for watching and listening to the Amazing Greats Podcast and making it a part of your day.

Until next time, God bless.