In 2010, Dr. David Fajgenbaum had an unexpected turn on his health. Fajgenbaum, a third-year medical student of Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania had experienced symptoms he couldn't understand at first.
From fatigue to night sweets to weight loss and then his condition worsened and then got his self to a six-month care in the Pennsylvania intensive care unit, His condition got worst that he already gave his last rites in November 2010.
In an interview with CBS News, Dr. David that it was a very frightening time he ever had in his entire life.
Dr. David got diagnosed with a rare disease, the idiopathic multicentric disease (iMCD), a subtype of Castleman disease (CD), an immune system disorder that the medical community has a very little knowledge about it. The Castleman Disease, also known as the giant lymph node hyperplasia and agio follicular lymph node hyperplasia, though it is not cancer but its impact to the lymph node can be very life-threatening. Unfortunately, Dr. Fajgenbaum has one of the subtypes of this disease.
Dr. Fajgenbaum suffered three lapses with the disease and temporarily stopped the medical school because of the disease. He tried to go back to school but there came his fourth relapse. After the fourth relapse, the Doctor decided to take on serious chemotherapy treatment that somehow slowed down the disease.
He then finished his medical studies by 2013 and earned his MBA in 2015. Six years after Dr. Fajgenbaum was diagnosed, he is now leading for the awareness of the disease and provides aid to others who have the disease. Last October it was announced that he would lead up the first-ever web-based registry of patient's recorded data to be researched further. It will be called ACCELERATE which is an acronym for Accelerating Castleman Care with an Electronic Longitudinal registry, E-Repository, And Treatment Effectiveness research.
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