Member of MTA board is ‘just fine’ after cancer scare
“This process of having to be faced with my own mortality then basically being given my life back, it affected my outlook on life, how I think about my time.” Manny Yekutiel, MTA board member and business owner
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board member and business owner Manny Yekutiel announced he was diagnosed with cancer, but said he’s “going to be just fine” and was looking forward to life and public service with more vigor than ever in a recent interview with The Chronicle.
News of Yekutiel’s cancer diagnosis spread after he spoke — virtually — to Congregation Emanu-el Friday about his experience being told he had a particularly vicious form of cancer, then discovering after medical tests that the cancer should not affect his life. It attracted more attention after Yekutiel spoke about what he called “basically a medical scare” on a podcast he co-hosts.
Yekutiel, who owns Manny’s, a Mission District restaurant and event space with a political bent, said he was diagnosed the day before Thanksgiving with a rare form of softtissue cancer that usually strikes only people with AIDS.
After a CT scan and multiple tests, however, he was told that he didn’t have AIDS and was among a tiny number of people — six in a million, he said — who contract the cancer without having AIDS, meaning it “has no serious ramifications,” he said in The Fun Police podcast.
“I’ve been assured by my doctors this is not serious in any way,” he said. “My prognosis is very positive.”
Yekutiel said his condition will be monitored but that treatment was unnecessary.
It would, however, be inaccurate to say that the diagnosis won’t affect Yekutiel’s life.
“This process of having to be faced with my own mortality then basically being given my life back, it affected me, it affected my outlook on life, how I think about my time, how I think about what I want to do on this earth, how not to sweat the small stuff,” he said in the podcast.
In his sermon, given on camera to a nearly empty synagogue, Yekutiel advised congregants not to waste their time and put off doing what they really want to do. Practicing what he preached, he said he plans to take off three months this summer to travel.
As for Manny’s, Yekutiel said he plans to continue the political discussions and debates, return to in-person events — hopefully by summer — and perhaps do some pop-up events in other cities.
“Having a venue for politics and public life is important,” he said. “Every city should have one.”
But his main lesson — and his advice for everyone — is for people to focus on what’s important, what gives them purpose and not delay.
“It’s been a course correction,” he said. “I’m charting a new course. If anything it’s to be courageous. I feel less interested in waiting. Waiting for too long basically assumes our time on this planet is a certain length and now I know we can’t count on that.”