A colleague recently had a baby. Her patients were divided between a few medical oncologists to continuously deliver their medical care while she is on maternity leave. I met one of these patients a few months ago. While getting to know him, he said the most interesting thing. Mr. R is forty-nine years young. He […]
I would like to share a short story about how an innocent mistake brought much joy to my workplace. A few weeks ago, one of the patients I follow ended up in hospital. This patient was relatively new to me, though not new to the cancer care system. He had been followed by a colleague […]
Hello. This post will be a little different than most of my previous ones. I don’t have a patient story to share with you this time. I do, however, wish to share how the cancer diagnosis of a colleague affected me. I can tell you up front it was with heavy impact. “Can we go […]
I would like to tell you about three new patients I saw back-to-back-to-back last week. All three had the same diagnosis. Each of them also had the same answer to one of my questions. Patient #1, Mrs. B: A sixty-five-year-old woman with stage four adenocarcinoma of the colon diagnosed from an omental biopsy in late […]
I ran my first clinic of 2023 this week. During this clinic I had thirty-two individual patient interactions. These are a few of the people I saw: A forty-two-year-old woman with metastatic ovarian cancer who I was treating on an early phase clinical trial investigating a new drug in advanced cancers. She had been on […]
I sit across from my patients and have the privilege of witnessing moments in their lives that are hard to explain. I see moments of joy and of despair. I see moments of disbelief and of acceptance. With AG, I saw a moment of reckoning. It was fascinating to me. I met AG in December […]
I love my job for many reasons. Some of the most important reasons are the people I work with. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago as I had a casual conversation with a couple nurses. It was just before noon. New patient clinic had just finished. I was in one of our […]
Every once and a while I am able to give one of my patients a much more meaningful prescription than the cancer drugs I can provide them. I was able to do this with CS. She had a big impact on me. At the age of fifty-two, CS was diagnosed with stage four adenocarcinoma of […]
EP has been my patient for almost a year. He has a diagnosis of metastatic colorectal cancer. Some people would have written him off as a lost cause and given up on him, but I have a soft spot for him. I haven’t given up on him. More importantly, he hasn’t given up on himself […]
I will always remember the initial consultation I had with RF. I met him a few weeks ago when he came to see me for his newly diagnosed stage four colon cancer. He was accompanied by the daughter he lives with. A biopsy of his sigmoid colon mass showed areas suspicious for invasive carcinoma. His […]
Join me, through the stories I tell, and see the hope, grit, grace, and love that can be found in a cancer journey.
