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"The Boring Patient"

R. David Lankes, PhDProfessor David Lankes, from Syracuse University‘s School of Information Studies, was diagnosed in 2012 with Hodgkin‘s lymphoma. During his treatment, he wanted to be the boring patient, the man who simply needed his vitals checked or a scheduled dose of chemo. “You don‘t want to be interesting in most medical settings. Interesting means complications, and that is bad,” Lankes explains in the book he wrote with the title, “The Boring Patient.”

The book was his way of summing up his experience. 

Lankes talks about how many people say a person with cancer is “fighting” the disease. The way he sees it, chemistry is fighting the disease. As a patient, he was not fighting so much as surrendering — surrendering that his son had to help him up the stairs, for instance.

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