I applied to medical school after volunteering at a cancer institute in Pittsburgh and shadowing Palliative Care expert Dr. Bob Arnold.  Dr. Arnold inspired me to apply science to relieve human suffering and cultivate empathy to effectively communicate about mortality.   Those early experiences with Dr. Arnold impressed upon me the critical importance of patient education, informed consent, and shared decision-making.

After attending medical school in Memphis TN, I moved to Portland OR in 2005 to begin my residency in Internal Medicine.  In November 2006, I won first place in the PowerPoint-based oral presentation competition at the Annual Meeting of the Oregon Chapter of the American College of Physicians.  I spoke about Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor inhibition in Female Never-Smokers with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.  This victory at the state-level allowed me to enter the clinical vignette poster presentation competition at the National Meeting of the ACP in April of 2007.  My presentation was selected among 10 winners from 225 that were judged at that year’s national meeting.

I subsequently studied under targeted-therapy guru and personal hero Dr. Brian Druker during my final year of residency. I then attended Hematology-Oncology fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston TX.  At MDACC, my approach to end-of-life discussions was permanently influenced by moonlighting in their 33-bed medical ICU around one night a week for almost 3 years. 

In December 2011, I won the “Service First Hero” award at LBJ Hospital for going “above and beyond in patient advocacy” through my continuity outreach clinic there.  In May 2012, I won the MDACC Humanitas Award for Compassion in Patient Care.  Before graduating MDACC, I also published a review article in the Journal of Supportive Care in Cancer, entitled Music-based interventions in palliative cancer care: a review of quantitative studies and neurobiological literature.

After graduating fellowship, I worked around 80-100 hours per week for 8+ years as a community-based medical oncologist. I then had a moment of clarity when I was listening to some of my dearest cancer patients share with me from their death beds what they thought was important at the end. I was struck by the fact that none of them talked about career, none of them talked about money, and yet virtually all of them talked about family.

By the end of 2020, I could no longer ignore the degree to which my work-life imbalance was damaging my relationships with my own spouse and children.  I decided to take a sabbatical during which I read 12 books and over 300 research articles that became the foundation of a TED-style talk I have tentatively entitled “Creative Problem-Solving for the Modern Cancer care crisis”. In 2021, I returned to part-time clinical work that allowed me to maintain my same standards of clinical integrity, yet meaningfully participate as a husband and father, and still pursue my TEDx talk project.

I firmly believe that we can re-humanize the experience of cancer patients, their family members, and their healthcare providers through coordinated inter-disciplinary action. I hope to share the blueprints of that vision on a TEDx stage soon, and to post the date and location of the event on this website. Thanks for visiting.