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thank you guys
I
was supposed to have this memorized so
don't hate if I cheat
if you'd asked me when i was younger where i would be on this night
I
i don't think i would have predicted here with you guys
I'm definitely honored to be here and i'm happy to be taking part but
more realistic prediction would have been
me and my smoking hot wife
would be
taking our yacht through the caribbean
celebrating my most recent super bowl victory
and reading my new york times bestselling memoir
entitled how to be good at being good looking
but this isnt my yacht, we're not in the caribbean
and uh...
the truth is
that uh...
I'm going to have to cheat now, sorry
i'm just uh...
really honored to have been brought up here by
having been pulled from a pool of
all the stories that
it's uh...
just an honor to be up here
the uh...
throughout everything i've been through though
i was not alone
my burden has been shared by my family
my friends our community
my brothers
but most my mom
if you were to judge off of tears alone
you would see that ah...
it was a far more painful experience for her than it was for me
but despite all our suffering
none of them would accept defeat
though i'm completely different person now than when this all began
when i was young i really wasn't invincible, you cant convince youth
otherwise
and then in 2009 i went paralyzed and spent 183
days in a hospital
just changing channels with a straw
and you're you're taught that
you're not invincible
my family
my friends my community my doctors were around me every step of the way
always pushing forward
my neurooncologist doctor jayshree blakely and her staff and work
done at johns hopkins
has made a bigger impact on my life that they could ever fathom
it is because of her passion to connect the n f research community
and their ability to think outside the box
to find a possible fix to this
adversary that we face
it's unbelievable that they found the solution to stem the tide of suffering
they'd offered me a treatment
and it was more than just a treatment it was a chance
it was a chance for me to wake up
somewhere other than a hospital bed
for me to go travel the world and
experience a normal life and find someone with which i could share it
and it was a chance
that didn't exist before
but this treatment isn't just an investment in me and my future
it's an investment in all the patients who share in our battle
and all of their families who sit by their side throughout
our world will forever be changed
because of the research that
these people do
but we're not done
far from it
and with your support tonight
we can offer a better tomorrow
thank you guys