As a doctor, I knew not to declare "Cancer is a battle I'm going to win!" or ask "Why me?" (Answer: Why NOT me?) I learned that stage IV lung cancer today was a disease whose story might be changing, like AIDS in the late 1980s: still a rapidly fatal illness but with emerging therapies that were, for the first time, providing years of life. While being trained as a physician and scientist helped me process the data and accept the limits of what data could reveal about my prognosis, it didn't help me as a PATIENT. It didn't tell Lucy and me whether we should go ahead and have ac hold, or what it meant to nurture a new life while mine faded. Like my own patients, I had to face my mortality and try to understand what made my life worth living.