Dr. David Fajgenbaum

And then I started feeling more tired than I'd ever felt before.

I mean, think about the hours you worked, you know fatigue.

And this was a fatigue that I'd never felt before, even as a med student.

And I noticed these lumps and bumps in my neck.

I noticed fluid in my ankles.

And I was really healthy.

I was like, what's going on here?

I don't know what's going on.

Horrible abdominal pain.

So I took an exam in the hospital, and I was feeling so unwell that I basically stumbled down the hallway from where I took the exam to the emergency department, told them about my symptoms.

They ran some blood work, and the doctor came back really rapidly.

And he looked at me, and he said, David, your liver, your kidneys, and your bone marrow are shutting down.

We have to hospitalize you right away.

And I'm like, wait, what?

Me?

How fast did this come on?

This was about two weeks of symptoms.

Two weeks?

Within two weeks, I went from, like, I was as healthy as you could be.

A few months before that, I'd won a bench-pressing contest in the state of Virginia.