Dr. Bryant Lin

Bryant Lin teaching a class on Oct. 23 (Merc photo)

A member of our family has been seeing Dr. Bryant Lin at Stanford Health for years. Lately Dr. Lin has been unavailable. Now we know why; he has been battling lung cancer.

“If you look at the survival curves, you would give up. But you may be one of the lucky ones. You need to have optimism, tinged with reality,” said Lin, a beloved clinical professor and 50-year-old nonsmoker with two teenage sons who was diagnosed with advanced metastatic lung cancer earlier this year.

...Lin initially dismissed an annoying cough that started last spring. But it continued to worsen, causing him to wheeze.

“I’ve never had a puff of smoke of anything in my life,” he said.

In one week, he got stunning news. What he assumed was just a normal spring allergy was diagnosed as stage IV non-small cell cancer, which had already progressed to his bones and liver, with 50 lesions in his brain.

The diagnosis, about a month before his 50th birthday, “was so drastically different than what I was expecting,” he said. He was quickly hospitalized...

Lung cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer, with survival rates decreasing as the severity increases. While smokers make up the majority of those cases, 15% to 20% of people with lung cancer are non-smoking, like Lin. There is new evidence of an increase in the incidence of lung cancer in nonsmokers, although no one knows why. It is largely a silent disease that goes undetected for a dangerously long period.

The gene mutation that causes the cancer disproportionately affects those of Asian descent.

While not cured, Lin’s scans are strikingly improved after an innovative medicine called osimertinib, which targets his specific mutation. It blocks proteins that control cell growth and division. His cough is gone, and he is almost symptom-free...

With roles reversed, Lin says he is learning both how to be a patient and how to more fully be a doctor.

He urges doctors to not focus just on “medical science things” but the emotional and practical challenges of their patients. He urges patients to build tight community of support and deepen their relationship with their doctor, who can act as an advocate when things go wrong.

He’s not sure how much time he has left. “One year? Two years? Five years?” The class, he said, “is to give back to my community as I go through this.”

After receiving his terminal diagnosis, Dr. Bryant Lin continues not only to fight the disease but teaches classes at Stanford Hospital, including his own life experience in the content. None of us know with certainty how we might react to such news; character reveals itself in such moments.