I read that when I. Welcome to Horizonte a show that takes a look at current issues through a Hispanic lens.

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

Former state lawmaker Lorenzo Sierra is out with a beautifully raw, heart wrenching memoir that details his harrowing battle with Covid 19 that nearly killed him.

And it happened right on the heels of his wife Rhonda's brutal battle with breast cancer.

The book details how they both fought like hell to live.

The book is called Fight Like Hell.

Love Politics and the Will to live, and it's a book you will not want to put down.

Please welcome former lawmaker, husband, father, friend and fighter Lorenzo Sierra.

So good to see you, my friend.

Thank you, thank you.

It is such an incredible book.

Congratulations.

I just I loved every minute of it.

You write so well.

Well thank you.

You know, one of the things that, you know, I really wanted to do was, right now, Latinos are having a narrative that isn't reflective of who we are.

We're fighters.

We're workers.

We we're family.

We love our communities were patriotic.

And I wanted to give a narrative of who Latinos in America are.

And I feel like my stories are very American story, a very Latino story.

Yes.

So in addition to that, I just wanted to really tell the story of what Ronda and I have been through over the past couple of years.

And, you know, the book also served as a bit of therapy for me as well.

Well, you did such a great job with all of that.

Explain to me what moved you to write this book and really go back and relive some of those dark moments that you are very honest about in your book.

What moved you to want to do this?

Again?

It's telling that story of who we are as Americans, as Latinos, as the very fabric of what this country is.

And those are the stories that aren't being told right now.

If you look at how Latinos are being perceived in the greater media and by our national leaders, that's not who we are.

We are the very fabric of America.

And hopefully that gets through in this book.

You know, one of the one very kind comment I got from someone that read it was that perhaps this can do for Latinos what Hillbilly Elegy did for Appalachian whites.

I don't know if that that'll happen, but I certainly hope that people read this and see not only that, the things that Ronda and I went through, but also that that just the courage that Latinos all throughout our country have every day fighting every day for their families, for their communities.

And hopefully that comes through.

You write that at its heart, this book is truly a love story.

So I want to start there and kind of work my way back to your Covid battle so that people can truly appreciate the full weight of what you and Ronda have been through.

You met Ronda not long after her husband had died from pancreatic cancer, and he died 18 days after he was diagnosed, which is so unbelievable.

You were divorced, having financial difficulties at the time?

How did you both draw from each other?

And your strengths at such a fragile point in your lives?

So Ronda says something that has very much struck, stuck with me, throughout the course of our relationship in these, that we are all broken.

Grace is the glue that binds us.

And we found grace within each other.

And the brokenness that we came into it almost fit like puzzle pieces and allowed us to go through some very catastrophic things.

It was just a few months into our marriage that we learned my mother had cancer and that it was a curable, survivable form of cancer.

But we saw just how devastating it was for her.

By the time they caught it, she it was too late for her.

And she was one of those adults back in during the recession that lost her access coverage.

So, you know, we had to go through that.

And then I lost the election.

And then we win an election, and then Ronda gets cancer.

And to her credit, she goes, you know, everyone knows us as us and your career, your political career is on the rise.

I want to keep this private, but I don't want people thinking that I've ditched you.

So she said, let's let's put, let's put it out there and let's share this cancer journey.

And as we did that, we shared certain parts of it.

But when we wrote the book, it we went into the real depths of what that cancer fight was, right?

Yes.

And it was not easy.

It was horrific.

And one of the things that also I wanted to do was tell that caregivers side of a cancer story we so often hear, and rightly so, we hear about the courageous fights that people have with their cancer battles.

But too often we forget about the caregiver and what they're going through as well.

So I go through a lot in the book about what it was like to be that caregiver and never feeling like I was doing enough.

That's what she was going through, so many things.

She was being so brave, and I was just like, I don't know how to deal with this.

Well, I know you.

You explain that so well in in how helpless you felt at times.

She's going through this while you are now an office holder in the state legislature.

How difficult was that for you to manage?

Both.

Yeah.

So it was, you know, I was a city councilman in Avondale.

I was, on the leadership team of, Hillary Clinton statewide campaign.

I was working I had a full time job at the same time.

But when you're taking care of someone with late stage cancer, that in and of itself is a full time job.

And it's not just the tasks that are involved.

It is the emotion that weighs you down.

And unlike a paid caregiver in the health care system, I don't get to go home afterwards.

I live with that 24 seven.

So that was the difficult part, is trying to do all these things career wise, but always being anchored by what we were going through.

I'll, you know, I don't regret a second of it, but it was so difficult and hopefully someone reads this and, and seasoned themselves, you know, hey, I have someone who's going through cancer.

I thought I was being selfish, but this is just the way it is, is, you know, we go through these sorts of things and we do the best we can, but it never feels like it's enough.

Well, Ronda was diagnosed with stage three, the breast cancer.

She had her left breast removed, some lymph nodes, eight rounds of chemotherapy and 28 rounds of radiation.

It's just so incredible what she went through.

What pulled you both through that?

Like you explained a very dark, difficult time?

Well, part of it was the job that she had.

And she had a job that were a lot of students and a lot of kids, and a lot of educators were dependent upon the work that she was doing.

So that drove her quite a bit.

And quite frankly, Ronda has been through so many things in her life.

I don't know if she knows the word quit, and it was just, how do we take that next step?

How do we get to the next day?

And so I was just so taken with how strong she was throughout all of this.

But it's one of those things where when you're going through it, you really don't realize it until you look at back at it is that was way more difficult than we ever could have imagined.

And then writing it when we're when I'm going through her health records, we're going through all of the, the, the medical records that she had.

We were going through all the Facebook posts.

I, I remember that now.

And and it was just using all of that to capture the essence of the book and put those into something that was going to make a great story.

And I think I hopefully we did.

You did indeed.

Let's jump to 2020.

Ronda is now recovering.

You're still in office.

And then Covid hits.

She had a compromised immune system.

So you both took extreme precautions wearing gloves, double masking, staying in by fall.

You're in DC.

When you come down with Covid, you can barely breathe.

You're hospitalized on a ventilator.

You ask the folks in the hospital if you're going to live and what were your chances?

And they don't say anything.

Did you think you were going to die?

I death was was was actually a very strong possibility.

I was not afraid of the act of dying.

I was afraid of not living, petrified of not living.

That on top of the absolute guilt I felt, Ronda was already a widow.

She's already had to bury a husband.

And here I am, on the verge of making her a two time widow.

I can't do that.

And so right before, I was put on the ventilator, she goes, I need you to promise me.

I need you to promise me that you're going to fight like hell.

And I go, I promise you that I'm going to fight like hell to come back to you.

And right before they pulled me on the ventilator, all I'm thinking is, is don't close your eyes.

Don't close your eyes.

And, And you've been to hook card in this house.

Yes.

And he's got this mosaic tile of, Archangel Michael beating the devil back into hell.

And I'm thinking of the prayer Archangel Michael.

Saint Michael, protector says we enter battle.

I knew I was entering a battle that, you know, for every cell in my body.

And all I knew to do at that time was just fight as hard as I could, even though I was in a coma.

But I knew I had to fight internally with every bit of my soul.

Well, you were in a four day coma.

You still don't remember anything about it?

I don't remember anything about it.

And the thing is, is when when they put me under, they told Ron to expect for him to be on the ventilator for weeks and in the ICU for months.

And when I got it and it was just like within 48 hours, they're like, we've never seen this, but he's getting better.

I think it was the prayers from countless people around the world quite literally, that saved you prayers and world class medical professional.

You dedicate the book to them.

I dedicate all the medical professionals around the world went above and beyond and have never gotten the credit that they deserve for everything that they did.

And hopefully that's why I dedicated this book.

One of the scenes in the book is the day I get my, my Covid vaccine.

You know, tell the, the, the, medical professionals that are doing that, they're all ICU nurses that are administering it.

And I said, yeah, I was on a ventilator.

And so she goes, she brings everyone over and they're getting emotional.

They're going, when we see someone get on the ventilator, they don't come off well.

And it was it was like, I don't know how to say anything.

I don't know how to respond other than, thank you, thank you, thank you to all the health care professionals that did all they did during the Covid pandemic.

And especially when you look at my community, we were we were the, the Amazon workers, we were the food distribution, the food packing plant.

All of the people that I was representing were those crucial workers, those essential workers that stayed on the job to make sure that if it was delivered or you bought it, it probably came from people that I was representing if they were going to fight like hell.

So I so was I. Have your experienced shaped how you view the health care system, and does it inspire you to maybe run for office again?

You know, I have a wonderful, wonderful job at Cigna Health Care, where I'm helping to bring health care into the public sector, and it's a great job, and hopefully I can use that platform to help show you know why health care is important, why taking care of your health.

You know, one of the things that that I really want to make sure that I do over the course of my life is men, get your checks, do all of the things that you need to do to make sure you're as healthy as possible.

And if you do have something, let's catch it early.

So that way the earlier you catch something, the more chance you have surviving.

And you're not just surviving for yourself, you're surviving for your family and for your community.

Well, speaking of that, in 2022, you were diagnosed with prostate cancer.

As if you haven't been through enough.

Are you still having treatment?

I am monitoring it.

One of the things is, is that, because my dad had prostate cancer, I had to start getting checked in my 30s and in my early 40s.

So my checks were coming in very consistently, very early, so that when it was diagnosed, it's still in a in a form that that is very manageable.

So right now I'm on observation and I tell people, oh goodness, of all of the things that can kill me, my prostate cancer isn't going to be that, but I can use the platforms that I have to tell men, go get your checks, especially Latino men.

You know, I grew up in a neighborhood where these Latino men, they in less than a limb, was falling off.

They weren't going to go seek, health care.

So it's important for us to take responsibility for us, because I. What I tell the Latino men is we got so much going against us.

Don't be your own barrier.

Go to the doctor, get checked.

And we're talking about mental health as well, because I know you went through therapy.

We're running out of time.

So I just want to remind people again, the book is called Fight Like Hell Love Politics and the Will to live.

It comes out October 14th.

So please, everybody go out, get it wherever books are sold.

And you can also get it on Lorenzo's website which is Lorenzo sierra.com.

Lorenzo, I am I've known you a long time.

I'm so proud of you for being so honest with this book.

I it inspired me.

It's going to touch so many people and like I said, I could not put it down.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

I think the world of you and Ronda, thank you.

I appreciate you joining me.

Thank you so much.

Good to see you.

Thanks.

Thanks.

And that's our show for now for Arizona and Arizona PBS I'm Kathryn and I will see you next time.

Grand.

I can't wait I have.