A PROMISE OF REST

Lands’ memoir chronicles his long career in oncology.

As Lands notes at the outset of his book, back when he began his fellowship, very few specialized treatment protocols for cancer existed, whereas many advances had been made by the time he retired, from pharmacology to molecular diagnostics, making the fight against cancer feel much less one-sided. Likewise, palliative and hospice care, once scorned by the medical establishment, are now accepted parts of the cancer-treatment picture. The author relates stories from his long career in the book, moments that have remained with him into retirement. “I heard people whisper their last words,” Lands writes, “watched others hold their last breath.” His recollections take a roughly chronological shape; readers first learn about the author’s childhood appendicitis and his high school years working as a night porter at a small-town hospital. More personal medical matters enter the narrative once Lands becomes a doctor and is faced with the emotional experience of treating his uncle for liver cancer. “I don’t want you to be objective,” his uncle told him when the author worried about the personal connection. “I want my doctor to worry about me.” Lands took this sentiment to heart—all the medical anecdotes that follow demonstrate his caring, from the occasion when he overrode a patient’s wishes to bring him back from the brink of death to the time when he offered to come to a patient’s house on the weekends to drain fluid from his belly. Lands’ tone is always compassionate, even when it’s also tough; writing about a patient who didn’t believe that his cancer had evolved during treatment, the author recalls, “His cancer didn’t care whether he believed in it or not.” The foremost element of all of Lands’ stories is their bright humanity, rendered in detail by his considerable storytelling skills. This is not a dry memoir, nor a self-aggrandizing one; it’s ultimately very moving.

The affecting story of one doctor’s lifelong career helping his patients fight cancer.