Thank You, Stranger: A bucket list after a cancer diagnosis, with help from strangers

CATHY WURZER: Time for another of our Thank You, Stranger series. This one focuses on a woman who started building a bucket list after finding out she was sick. And she leaned on hundreds of strangers for their help. Here's Marcia Spring from Bloomington talking about her experience.

MARCIA SPRING: I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer back in October of '22. And I've been through lots of chemo and radiation. And in between, you get little breaks.

And when I had these breaks and I start feeling like a human being, I want to go do stuff. And I want to go see things.

And, of course, I love that movie with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson on The Bucket List. And you hear so much about bucket lists. I want to go to France. I want to go to London.

And I realized I have no money to do stuff like that. But there's so many things in Minnesota that'd be fun to see. Well, I started a note in my notes on my phone with ideas.

And originally, I started with, I wanted to see all the falls in Minnesota. But some of them require quite a bit of hiking. And so I've been asking around, and on Facebook, there's a page that I found called Quirky Places in Minnesota. And they have all these different, quirky places to go.

And so I've been kind of watching that list to see if there's anything fun that I want to see. And so I thought, well, what the heck? I might as well just start my own query and say, I have pancreatic cancer, and I want to make a bucket list, any ideas? And the response just blew my mind. It's just overwhelming-- over 1,000 likes, and cares, and hearts, and I'm praying for you, and best wishes.

And it just blew me away. It just did my heart so good. And I truly believe in thoughts and prayers. And I feel like I've had some really amazing things happen in my life. One person said, let me know when you want to go to one of these places. I'll push you in your wheelchair.

And one is a librarian at the arboretum, and she offered to take me on a rare book tour at the arboretum. So that would be cool. So lots of fun ideas have come from it.

I've got so many people that want to help me, and be with me, and do things with me. And some people like hikes, and some people like restaurants, and different things like that. So I think I'm going to have to get to a physical write-down this, this, and this, because it's hard to keep track. I've just gotten overwhelmed by all the love and support and family and friends that want to help me out with this.

I think just get off the couch, and go, and just see the things that we have right here. It's worth just getting in the car and spending time together. To get over 1,000 responses, it just shows me that people in Minnesota care. And we love each other. And to have love from strangers, it just blows me away.

CATHY WURZER: And that was produced by Ellen Finn. To see a photograph of Marcia Spring and her best friend checking off Minnehaha Falls on her bucket list, you can go to our website, mprnews.org.