Rebekah Wilson

Rachel Gleason

PT 8072: Professional Roles II

3/24/2021

Personal Reflection on Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope Into Action

Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope Into Action by David Fajgenbaum is a book full

of grief, struggle, and hope, all at the same time. In this book, Fajgenbaum leads the reader through his

personal journey from health to uncertain illness to finding a path forward for himself after narrowly

escaping death repeatedly. This book helped me to reflect on my own feelings toward illness and the

medical system and to consider my role as a health professional myself.

When describing this book, emotional would be a very apt label. This book sparked many

emotions for me personally. Firstly, I had a lot of sadness for his whole situation. He had to go through so

much loss; from his mother dying while he was in college to losing his relationship with Caitlyn to

ultimately losing his health. Thinking about if I had to go through something similar made me really

appreciate all that I have to be grateful for in my life. I also felt sadness for his family and loved ones who

had to watch him go through so many cycles of nearly dying. When I think about how I would react when

faced with my mortality that many times, I’m struck with how incredible it is that Fajgenbaum continued to

push onward. This really made me want to work hard with my future patients, to help equip them to keep

fighting for themselves. I felt happy in the end of the book, learning that Fajgenbaum is still living and is

continuing to make his life the best he can while helping others.

Since this book is autobiographical, it makes sense for the reader to connect most with

Fajgenbaum, but through his actions and tenacity, Fajgenbaum comes off as a truly admirable person. His

moto of “think it, do it”1 really stuck with me. I personally find myself thinking I will do something to help

progress myself towards my goals but then ultimately finding excuses to not take action. The fact that he

continued to push himself to do more whenever he had the thought is extremely impressive. Additionally,

while he had every reason to give up or let someone else handle the issue of figuring out his disease; he

stepped up and took his fate into his own hands, which I find amazing.
 Throughout this book, Fajgenbaum describes many obstacles he had to navigate. Some of the most

frustrating for me would include the current inefficiencies in our health care system. Issues like the “Up to

Date” research portal not actually being up to date, and the research siloing of information were clearly a

hinderance for Fajgenbaum and other health care providers from getting access to the best information

when treating patients. Another instance I found frustrating was when he as being silenced from being able

to speak as both a patient and a physician. His unique position should be utilized to the advantage of the

health field instead of being minimized due to the conventional way of doing things.

Unfortunately, the health care system cannot be perfect and, as such, some of the difficulties were

unavoidable in the now but can be used as motivation for improvements. Issues like limited money to

devote to rare disease research or Fajgenbaum’s doctors not having answers for him because the research

isn’t there are going to be continuing issues for the foreseeable future. Our finite health system is

something I think I need to acknowledge to recognize limitations and try to help find ways around them.

As a future physical therapist, there are several take away thoughts I have from this book. First, I

recognize how meaningful it is for patients to have their health care professionals to be current with their

education. This impresses on me the importance of lifelong learning in the physical therapy field and how

valuable it is to be able to look at new research coming out and incorporate it into practice. This is

especially true when the most current research contradicts the current way of doing things. This is part of

recognizing that I work in an imperfect system. I need to be willing to make adjustments to my care and not

cling to approaches when the evidence doesn’t support them. Another thing I am taking away from this

book is the power of even just a single person caring about an issue. Because Fajgenbaum continued to

solve his issues with Castleman disease, he provided an avenue for many others to contribute to the cause

and make an incredible amount of progress in a relatively stagnant area. This inspires me to work hard and

look to connect with other like-minded people to make the most of collaboration to solve problems I may

encounter within my practice. Overall, this book provided me with many valuable insights into the health

care field from both a patient and practitioner perspective and I hope to use them to become a better

physical therapist.
1. Fajgenbaum, D. Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope Into Action. 1st ed. Ballantine

Books; 2019.