Speaking at Stanford Med School

Bryant Lin and I before the class started.

I had a terrific time at Stanford University yesterday, talking about Mom's Cancer with a class of mostly medical students at the invitation of Dr. Bryant Lin. 

The class is a speakers series on the broad topic of narrative medicine. Bryant is in the unique position of being both a narrative medicine practitioner--his book Sunshine: An Exploration of Living When You Are Dying, will be published by Penguin Random House later this year--and, as that title hints, a husband and father with Stage Four lung cancer. Bryant is incorporating his diagnosis and treatment into his medical school curriculum. He is his own case study. That's a crazy kind of brave that only a great teacher would attempt.

It was a small class, about 14 students. I love lecturing to medical students because they're all smart, confident, and eager to perform well (having gotten straight A's most of their lives), so they play along with silly workshop exercises that, by the end of the class, have them drawing their own four-panel graphic medicine comic. A few of them really lit up, and I'm often surprised by how thoughtful and touching some of their work is considering that an hour earlier they'd never tried to make a comic. 

I've been a guest lecturer for this class a few years in a row. As I was leaving, Bryant said he was sorry he'd forgotten to bring his copy of The Last Mechanical Monster for me to sign. I replied, "I'll be back next year--and so will you." "Thanks," he said quietly. "That's the plan."

My opening slide, showing the sketch that inspired me to tell our family's story in the form of a comic and later because a page in Mom's Cancer. Photo by the class T.A., Cyril Sebastian.