Fazlur Rahman's mother died tragically when he was only seven years old, but her words reverberated throughout his life: "Someday you will be a doctor, Fazlur, and save lives." Eventually, he fled his war-torn homeland and, after years of training in New York and Houston, became a cancer doctor. He could never have imagined that his medical career would unfold in remote West Texas and that he would be a pioneer oncologist for a vast region.
Over a 35-year career, Rahman poured himself into not just taking care of his patients' challenging medical needs but learning from them, getting to know their lives, their families, and the circumstances that made each patient unique.
He narrates the instructive stories of five cancer patients: surviving against all odds; walking a long path with cancer and still making a daily life; bearing the crushing burdens of the exorbitant costs of cancer drugs, sometimes dictating a decision either to save one's own life or leaving enough for your family to live on; navigating the vagaries of old age and coping with malignancy; and patients' desire for dignity, dignity that we all want, rich or poor.
These compassionate tales are a blend of storytelling, cancer science, and Rahman's personal reflections and struggles on making medical decisions that treat a patient as a whole person, not just as a person with a disease.
Industry Reviews
"Fazlur Rahman is a wonderful storyteller. I was immediately drawn in by
the vivid characters, touched by their plights and by the author's depth of
compassion." --Jonathan Balcombe, bestselling author of What a Fish
Knows and Super Fly
"The renowned clinician Dr. William Osler, considered the 'Father of Internal Medicine, ' observed: 'The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.' Fazlur Rahman is not only a great physician; this remarkable man is also a wonderful writer. From his humble beginnings in what is now Bangladesh (and for this story I highly recommend his cultural memoir, The Temple Road), and throughout his post-graduate training in internal medicine and oncology in New York and Houston, it took amazing fortitude and faith for Dr. Rahman to find his way to San Angelo, Texas. There he garnered the love and respect of its citizens through his delivery of high-quality primary and specialty care over many decades. How he accomplished this is the main thrust of this memoir. Every turn this writer takes--into medical science, the evolution of oncological treatments, the intricacies of doctor-patient-family relationships--serves to enlighten and enhance this story. This physician's dedicated attentiveness to the daily, then yearly, then career-long practice of patient-centered 'connected' medicine is rare in America's fractured health system today, and we are all the poorer for it. With this book, Dr. Rahman joins the ranks of other great physician writers: Anton Chekhov, William Carlos Williams, Richard Selzer, Oliver Sacks, and Abraham Verghese, among others. You will not be able to put this book down. And when the last page is turned, you may wonder where you might find someone like this author to care for you. I know I did."--Jerald Winakur, MD, MACP, FRCPAuthor of Memory Lessons: A Doctor's Story and Human Voices Wake Us
"Cancer touches
countless lives worldwide. As a cancer researcher, I applaud Dr. Rahman's
effort to make cancer biology accessible to everyone in Our
Connected Lives. As a physician, I appreciate how his
thoughtful stories illuminate the practice of cancer medicine--not just by
revealing the struggles patients and doctors face, but also by highlighting the
importance of treating patients as people rather than cases. The lessons in
this book are instructive for us all: cancer patients and their loved ones,
general readers as well as the members of the medical profession." --Hagop M.
Kantarjian, M.D., Professor and Chairman, Department of Leukemia; Samsung
Distinguished University Chair in Cancer Medicine; MD Anderson Cancer Center,
University of Texas
