A nagging cough spurred Dr. Fanale, who practiced as a geriatrician, to undergo a CT scan. He expected the results to be normal, but the scan showed a mass in one lung and other signs of advanced cancer.
“This may have been the first time in my life when my knowledge as a physician did not serve me well, because I knew exactly what I was seeing,” Dr. Fanale wrote in an upcoming article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, according to the Globe.
“I’ve taken care of patients for 40 years. Now I’m on the other side of it,” Dr. Fanale told the Globe. “I never realized what people go through, their feelings, or what caregivers really go through. I think it’s just an important and powerful story to tell.”
He recently self-published a book entitled “ONWARD: A Teaching, and a Love Story — For Physicians, and Everyone.” The book tells the story of his cancer journey with the hopes of educating other healthcare workers on supporting caregivers as well as their patients.
Dr. Fanale, who is one year into his biweekly treatments at the Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said his diagnosis taught him the full extent of what cancer patients and their caregivers go through.
“I think what all of this taught me was that you shouldn’t make the one phone call,” he told the Globe. “You need to continue to keep in touch. I get that we [as providers] have a lot to do. But goddamnit, this is the best job in the world. You actually get to impact people’s lives. You should never take that for granted.”
All of the proceeds from “Onward” will go toward a new caregivers fund at Dana-Farber.
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