:
Thank you very, very much. I'm a very fortunate man and this is one demonstration of why I'm a very fortunate man. God has given me a lot. And whatever obstacles that are placed in your way, I think the way to deal with it is to try to figure out how to make it make you a better person. ...
When I was first told that I had cancer, I thought this was going to be a much easier decision. I thought all of it was going to be easier. I thought the decision about treatment would be made like I've made lots of other decisions in my life, some of them real tough. ... I thought the decision about running would be sort of a calculation that you would make about how tired you would be or not be, and I found that it's much, much more difficult than that.
And I find myself unable to make the treatment decision yet, even though I've been over and over it. And about the decision to run, I was almost in the same position, not being able to make it, which has never really happened to me. I've always been able to make decisions.
And I guess because I've been in public life so long and politics, I used to think the core of me was in politics. But when you feel your mortality and your humanity, you realize that the core of you is, first of all, being able to take care of your health and make sure to deal with a disease like cancer in the most effective way possible so you can be useful to the people that you really care about and really care about you.
I also have an obligation to the people of New York City who elected me as the mayor to do my job with the time and the energy in what I have left in going through the cancer.
And then I have ... obligations to all the people who supported me and helped me and assisted me in the race for the Senate, because there were many of them, and they gave a lot of their time and energy and money and support. So it's a very difficult set of decisions.
I've decided that what I should do is to put my health first, and that I should devote the focus and attention that I should to running - to be able to figure out the best treatment and not running for office. This is not the right time for me to run for office....
I don't feel that if I take on the commitment to run, that I'm - that I have the kind of confidence that I should have, that I'd be the candidate that I should be. I don't know that I'd be able to campaign the way I should. I don't know that I'd be able to concentrate on it the way that I should. ...
And the focus that I'm going to have now is going to be fighting cancer, making a decision about my treatment. ...
I think I understand myself a lot better. I think I understand what's important to me better. Maybe, I'm not completely there yet, I would be foolish to think that I was in a few weeks. But I think I'm heading in that direction.
And I thank God that it gives me another - really another 18 months to be the mayor of New York City, which I love very, very much. It's really my deep passion, the love for the people of this city and the love of this city. And I'm going to devote the time that I've been given - the extra time that I've been given, not only to do the things that we have done and things that we've accomplished together and the remarkable things that have been done, or to overcome maybe some of the barriers that maybe I placed there, and figure out how to overcome them. I don't know the answer to that yet. I don't know exactly how you do that. But I'm going to try very hard to do that.
