This week’s conversation is with Dr. David Fajgenbaum, a groundbreaking physician-scientist and disease hunter.

The timing of his insights is incredibly relevant for us right now.

David is best known as the ‘doctor who cured himself’ – he received his last rites while in medical school and nearly died four more times battling Castleman disease.

To try to save his own life, he spearheaded an innovative approach to research through the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network and discovered a treatment that has put him into his longest remission ever.

Now, he is spreading this approach to other diseases like COVID19.

David is also one of the youngest individuals ever appointed to the faculty at Penn Medicine and the top 1 percent youngest grant awardees of a highly-competitive National Institute’s of Health grant.

As someone who’s been on the verge of death multiple times, David has a unique perspective… he shares how it’s altered his approach to life.

David likes to refer to it as playing in “overtime.”

In his words:

I’ve been in overtime ever since I had my last rights read to me. Think about overtime in sports. In overtime, all of a sudden there's this incredible clarity and purpose that comes with every tick of the clock. You can make a mistake in the first quarter of a game and you can make up for it, but if you make one wrong move in overtime the game's over. And I think that's the perfect analogy for how I feel every day of life. It’s not that I'm afraid to make a mistake or a paralyzing feeling, but it actually gives me clarity. I can hear the clock ticking, I know that I have this awful disease, but it helps me to focus on what's important and what's not important.

And that really sets the tone for this conversation.

We discuss the preciousness of life and why it really comes down to having clarity of purpose and making sure you take the proper actions to back it up.

David also shares how his lab is approaching finding a cure for COVID-19.

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