Dr. David Fajgenbaum

And I was just heartbroken.

But I think that I ended up spending about six months in the hospital in critical condition.

And I think about some of the things that you've gone through as a soldier and sort of just like fighting one day at a time.

And I think that there's three things that helped me to get through those six months of survival.

And I'd love to hear if you've thought about these in the same way.

But for me, it was like...

for the entire six months, I kept thinking about what I wanted for my future, which I kept visualizing like a family with Caitlin.

I kept visualizing like me in the lab trying to find drugs for patients.

I had to have this vision for what I was fighting for.

So that was the first thing.

The second is that I had this like amazing support group around me, my dad, my sisters, Caitlin, like they were literally holding my hand, like giving me strength.

I could feel their strength from the way they were holding my hands, from their voices, like that gave me strength.

And then the third thing is that it really was this, like it's this cliche of like one step at a time or like one breath at a time.

But it was, for me, it really was one breath at a time.

Like if you told me at the beginning of the six months, like David, you're gonna suffer the most horrible pain for the next six months.

Every breath you take is gonna be horrible.

I gained a hundred pounds of fluid.

Like you're just gonna be in constant agony while your organs are being destroyed by your immune system.

There's no way I could have been like, I can do this for six months.

But I knew I could do it for like an hour.