These were three things Cameron was confronting on the day he wrote on the back of a random sticky note, most likely a reminder of the topics to cover at his next doctor’s appointment.  He quite often made notes. Sometimes it was a to-do list, other times it was a list of ideas to work on later.

Looking at this sticky note, I can’t help but be amazed and saddened at what he had to deal with. 

Pain: He was unable to move his left side, yet the slightest touch burnt like fire. 

Appetite: Always being in peak fitness (although endlessly injuring himself pushing the limits) he now faced a situation where the drugs to treat his pain and his cancer were making him constantly hungry, and being in a wheelchair in pain limited his ability to exercise

Seizures: If you ever saw him on the floor at karate you could instantly see that he had total control over where his body was and how to move it.  Able to fire his foot from the ground to within a centimetre of your ear in an instant and hold it there was second nature to him. After a seizure hospitalised him for the first time he instantly stopped driving, not wanting to ever put someone else in harm’s way. It must have been hard to no longer be able to trust your own body, and at the time of him writing the note, the seizures were frequent and causing further damage to his brain.

Pain, appetite and seizures: Those are real problems.  Those are things that would cause most people to shutdown, to give up.  Not Cameron. However, this is not a tale of a man overcoming incredible barriers to become a superhero. He was already a superhero before he faced these barriers.  So how did Cameron address these barriers? He simply continued to be super. The very next side of the sticky note showed his approach to such things.