HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — A Houston County man has turned to music in the middle of a double cancer diagnosis.
Sometimes the soundtrack of our lives is one that begins to play well before you even realize it.
"You know how sometimes you'll hear a song, and the song will get stuck in your head all day and you can’t get rid of it? That's 24 hours a day," Mark Johnson said.
Johnson says he's been playing the guitar since kindergarten and music is God's gift to him.
A gift he's been sharing with the world for decades.
"That's all I've ever wanted to do. I mean all through high school, I even spent 20 years in the Air Force, and you know, the whole time I was in the Air Force I always played in bands on the side," he said.
In 2010, Johnson made music his full-time job and played more than 100 gigs a year.
Just 12 years later, the beat of life has changed after a lung cancer diagnosis.
"It’s still sinking in you know, it still doesn't seem like its real, but I didn't have any symptoms, they just seen it on an X-Ray," he said.
After a surgery to remove the cancer, he's learned cancer has spread to his brain.
Through Johnson's bout with cancer, he tackles every day just like a song -- one verse at a time.
"If I can’t do that, I just really don't know how to be. This cancer is just one of those things you got to deal with, you know. It doesn’t stop life, you got to keep living," Johnson said.
He recently played his first show since surgery in Perry. Johnson will begin chemotherapy at his next appointment.