Dr. Bryant Lin stood before his class at Stanford in September, likely one of the last he would ever teach. Just 50 years old and a nonsmoker, he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer four months earlier. The illness was terminal, and he estimated that he had roughly two years left before the drug he was taking stopped working. Instead of pulling back from work, he chose to spend the fall quarter teaching a course about his own illness.
Registration for the class had filled up almost immediately. Now the room was overflowing, with some students forced to sit on the floor and others turned away entirely.
“It’s quite an honor for me, honestly,” Dr. Lin said, his voice catching. “The fact that you would want to sign up for my class.”
He told his students he wanted to begin with a story that explained why he chose to pursue medicine. He picked up a letter he had received years earlier from a patient dying of chronic kidney disease. The man and his family had made the decision to withdraw from dialysis, knowing he would soon die.
“My nickname, I guess, in the family is ‘Dr. Lin,’ Dr. U.’ or ‘Dr. Dad,'” he said. “I think I’m just a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a friend, a doctor, a colleague, and also a patient.”
Dr. Lin explained that the diagnosis was particularly cruel given his work. Dr. Lin, a clinical professor and primary care physician, was a founder of the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education. One of its priorities has been nonsmoker lung cancer, a disease that disproportionately affects Asian populations.
He referred to the class as his letter to his students, but he had crafted an actual letter to his sons for them to read after he was gone.
“Whether I’m here or not, what I want you to know is that I love you,” he wrote. “Of the many things I’ve done that have given my life meaning, being your daddy is the greatest of all.”
In what he called his version of Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech, referring to the Hall of Fame baseball player for the New York Yankees who died at 37 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., an incurable neurological disease, Dr. Lin said: “For the past quarter, you’ve been hearing about the bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”
Source link
