I decided to write Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race To Turn Hope Into Action, because I learned so much about life, hope, and resilience from nearly dying five times and fighting back to find a treatment that is saving my life. I knew these lessons were applicable beyond those battling disease and felt compelled to share these lessons with the world. But, when I started writing Chasing My Cure almost three years ago, I never could have known just how relevant these lessons would be today, in the midst of this pandemic. I thought I’d share a few of these lessons from Chasing My Cure below.
We are all in overtime.
I have considered myself to be in overtime ever since I had my last rites read to me and nearly died for the first time. From Chasing My Cure, “…the experience of being in overtime is surprisingly one of intense awareness and scrutiny. And clarity… When there are only a few seconds left on the board, all distractions disappear and the purpose—victory— becomes clear. The present is only the things around you, and overtime is all present.” COVID19 has made us all feel like we’re in overtime and the clock could run out at any moment. Fear is an understandable feeling, fear for ourselves and our loved ones. But let’s use this sense of overtime to focus us on the most important things in life and liberate us to be our best selves.
Think it, do it.
Each of the five times that I’ve laid on my deathbed, I haven’t regretted anything that I’d done; my greatest regrets were things that I had thought of doing but never did. I told myself that if I made it, I’d do everything in my power to make sure my thoughts turned into actions. COVID19—and the uncertainty of the weeks and months ahead of us has—has caused many of us to feel paralyzed. We need to try our best to keep doing. We’re often encouraged to look for and find silver linings during tough times. But I was inspired by my mom during her battle with cancer to look for ways to create silver linings. What is something that you can do today to create something positive for you or someone you love?
Humor is incredibly powerful.
One of the last things that comes to mind when we picture suffering and dying is laughter (and understandably so). When I was dying for the third time battling Castleman disease, my belly was so large due to kidney and liver failure that I was once confused as my father’s pregnant wife. But as I shared in Chasing My Cure, “Facing my horrible moments with laughter was just as fundamentally a rejection of Castleman’s dominion over me as anything else I was doing… Perhaps most important, humor is social. For me and my family, there was never a better way to reset our collective resolve than laughing together.” So keep your eye out for internet memes during COVID19 and laugh with the people you love!
Turn hope into action.
I had hoped that some researcher somewhere would find a treatment or a cure for my diseases so that I could survive to my wedding day with Caitlin. When I relapsed on the only drug in development and learned that there weren’t any promising leads, I realized that “hoping for something takes more than casting out a wish to the universe and waiting for it to occur. Hope should inspire action” (Chasing My Cure). So I got to work and eventually discovered a drug that is saving my life and others. Today marks 75.57 months since my last relapse—I know I can’t round up to 76, because I may be in the ICU tomorrow. I hope and pray that is not the case, but I don’t stop at hoping. I’ve learned to harness my fear and hopes toward taking concrete action. We are all hoping and praying for a positive outcome right now with COVID19. Let’s make sure we’re taking the right action steps each day to make sure that we are staying safe and protecting those we love.
It takes an army.
If I had tried to chase my cure on my own, I would have never made the progress that we did together. Fortunately, I had the most amazing team of family, friends, and colleagues working beside me. Though we are all socially distancing from one another, turn to those that you love (via Zoom) and your colleagues for support with whatever challenges you’re facing because none of us can do this alone.
As a physician-scientist that has successfully identified novel treatments and is alive thanks to one of these drugs, I am hopeful that one of the 1500 drugs already FDA approved for other diseases could be an effective treatment for COVID19. And I recently turned my hope into action by joining the fight. Click here or watch the video below for more information about our work.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HFHfTd9-Y8[/embedyt]
David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is a groundbreaking physician-scientist, disease hunter, speaker, and bestselling author of the acclaimed memoir, Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action. Best known as the ‘doctor who cured himself’ (Doctor Cure Thyself, NY Times), Fajgenbaum went from being a beast-like college Quarterback to receiving his last rites while in medical school and nearly dying four more times battling Castleman disease. To try to save his own life, he spearheaded an innovative approach to research and discovered a possible treatment that has put him into an extended remission. Now, he is spreading this approach to other diseases (His method could save millions, CNN) and sharing lessons he learned about living from nearly dying through Chasing My Cure, which has been translated into five languages and named one of the “Best Non-Fiction Books of 2019” by Next Big Ideas Club.