Day 28: Dr. Alice Shaw. "Alice is my super-hero."

PROFILES IN LUNG CANCER
Lung Cancer Awareness Month 2015

Day 28: Dr. Alice Shaw
"Alice is my super-hero."

(From Linnea Olson's blog, Outliving Lung Cancer)

Alice and I met under what then felt like sad circumstances. It was the spring of 2009 and I was several months into my snatched from the brink of death fairy tale; aka crizotinib. As far as I was concerned (and I still feel this way), my original oncologist Dr. Tom Lynch walked on water. However, I woke up one morning only to read in the Boston Globe that Tom was leaving MGH to become the head of Yale’s Smilow Cancer Center. I was devastated and sent him a quick message saying I felt like he’d broken up with me via email. In my head I was already thinking I’d have to move closer to New Haven as I viewed my continuing survival to be inextricably linked to Tom Lynch–as an oncologist he was always on the cutting edge, having tested me for an EMLK4-ALK translocation in June of 2008, long before most of the world had even heard of an ALK mutation.
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