Dr. David Fajgenbaum

I don't know if I was mentally... I wasn't totally there, but I do have some memories, and those memories are...

The room being really dark, my family hugging me and crying.

And they just started telling me all the things that I told my mom, right?

Like, you know, what I meant to them.

And, you know, we're reminiscing on old memories.

And then I remember the priest coming in.

I mean, of course, I'd never had my last rites read to me before.

So what is sort of like confirmed my biggest fears, which is that like, this is going to kill me.

Um, but just a couple of days before the priest had come in, the doctors had tried this one chemotherapy.

It's the only chemotherapy they thought to try.

Like there were actually others they could have tried, but this was the one they tried.

Um, and amazingly, um, it, it just started to kick in really within days.

And, um, it didn't last long term.

I relapsed about a month later and

It was a real roller coaster because like the euphoria that we all had when I was feeling better and the hope that we had.

And then just, you know, a few weeks later when it would come back, just the heartbreak.

And that cycle happened a total of five times in three and a half years where I went from being, you know, totally, you know, critically ill in ICU to much better to then back again.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that moment for me, I remember very vividly.

It was May 12th of 2012.