Ryan Beechinor, PharmD, BCPS, BCOP
I never knew my grandfather growing up. I have this memory of him teaching me to tie my shoes, but that’s it. My aunt tells this story about when our family went to visit him in the hospital when he was taken off treatment for metastatic melanoma and put on hospice. We were visiting the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, as he had been on trial for an experimental immunotherapy, and I was told to be on my “best behavior.” Fast-forward 45 minutes into the visit, and he and I are playing with the hospital mechanical bed, making the head of the bed go up and down, having the time of our lives. When my aunt tells me that story, she has the type of look in her eye where I can tell she can still see the details vividly in her memory. She often ends that story by reminding all of us how hard a worker he was to provide for their family, and his number one goal was to provide his children with access to education. That always stuck with me, the concepts of education being important to my grandfather.
Twenty-five years later, I am in a pharmacology course during my third year of pharmacy school. The professor gets to his last slide, and it is just a picture of Siddhartha Mukherjee, DPhil, MD, a sharply dressed and serious-looking man in a blue suit, and the title of the slide is simply, “One Book to Change Your Life.” That was it for me; in that very moment, I was inspired to read his book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, and so grew my passion for oncology. Since then, I have dedicated my career to ensuring the optimal care of patients receiving anti-cancer therapy like my grandfather. But for me, it doesn’t stop there. Whenever I have the opportunity to lecture in front of students, I always try and give students an explanation for why I chose oncology. I tell the same story as I just did above, and fortunately the professor gave me permission to use his slide, of which I didn’t change the title, as it still applies, “One Book to Change Your Life,” If you are reading this right now, I would encourage you to read it as well.
Ryan Beechinor, PharmD, BCPS, BCOP, is a senior clinical pharmacist at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, Sacramento, CA, and an assistant clinical professor at University of California, San Francisco School of Pharmacy. He is an instructor at UC Davis School of Medicine and UC Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
For more information
Mukherjee, S. (2011). The emperor of all maladies: A biography of cancer. New York, NY: Scribner.
