The short answer
Chasing My Cure is David Fajgenbaum's memoir about his own rare illness, idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease, and his work as a physician-researcher. This page explains why one patient's story is not a template, and what NCI says clinical trials are for. We could not check the book's story against an approved medical source, so the page does not retell it in detail.
Chasing My Cure is a memoir by David Fajgenbaum about his own rare illness, idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD).
A memoir is one person's story. It cannot show that a treatment is safe or works for anyone else.
NCI describes clinical trials as research studies that test how well new medical approaches work in people.
NCI lists four purposes for trials: treatment, prevention, screening and quality of life.
On this page
About this book
- Author:
- David Fajgenbaum
- First published:
- undefined
- Type:
- Memoir
- Cancer covered:
- Idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease, a rare, cancer-adjacent lymphoproliferative disorder.
This page describes a published book for education. We have no financial relationship with any author or publisher and earn nothing if you buy it. A book — including one written by a doctor — is not medical advice, and one person’s experience is not a guide to your own care.
Choose how you want to read this
The whole article, with every detail and caution.
What the book is
Chasing My Cure is a memoir by David Fajgenbaum, a physician-researcher. It is about his own illness, idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD), and the research work he took on afterward.
We could not confirm the book's story or the medical facts about iMCD in an approved medical source. So this page does not retell the plot, the drug involved or the outcome. If you want those, read the book itself, and talk with a doctor about anything that applies to you.
Read a memoir as one person's story
A memoir shows what one person lived through. That can be moving and useful. It cannot show that a treatment is safe or that it works for other people. People with the same diagnosis can be very different, and their treatment history matters.
Memoirs also tend to be written by people whose stories turned out in a way worth telling. They say little about people for whom a different path did not work out.
If a book makes you want to try something, bring it to your care team. Do not start, stop or change a medicine because of a book.
What a clinical trial is
NCI describes clinical trials as research studies that test how well new medical approaches work in people. NCI lists several purposes:
- Testing new treatments, or new uses of existing treatments.
- Testing ways to prevent cancer in people at high risk.
- Testing ways to find cancer before symptoms appear.
- Testing ways to improve quality of life during and after treatment.
If you have a rare or hard-to-treat condition, a good first step is to ask your care team whether a trial exists for it. Ask how eligibility works too. See what are clinical trials, clinical trial eligibility criteria, and deciding whether to join a cancer clinical trial.
Who this book suits
It suits readers who want a personal account of serious illness and medical research. It is not a guide for managing your own diagnosis. It can also be hard reading in the middle of treatment. Reading it when you feel steady, or with support, is a reasonable choice.
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Sources
- NCI: What Are Clinical Trials?, opened 2026-10-02.
This page discusses Chasing My Cure for education. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a judgement of anyone's real medical care.
Common questions
What is Chasing My Cure about?
It is a memoir by David Fajgenbaum, a physician-researcher, about his own illness, idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease, and the research work that followed. This page has not checked the book's medical details against an approved source, so it does not retell them.
Is one patient's story the same as a clinical trial?
No. NCI describes clinical trials as research studies that test how well new medical approaches work in people. A memoir tells one person's experience. It cannot show that a treatment will work for someone else.
Should someone try to copy a treatment from a memoir?
Do not start, stop or change a treatment because of a book. Talk with your own care team first. Ask whether a clinical trial is an option for your condition.
What can clinical trials be used for?
NCI says trials can test new treatments or new uses of existing ones, ways to prevent cancer in people at high risk, ways to find cancer before symptoms, and ways to improve quality of life.
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Plain-language explanation of the published sources cited on this page. AI-assisted, source-checked, not clinician-reviewed.
Written by: Cancer ExplainedSources last checked: 2026-10-02 what this meansLast updated: 2026-10-02Next planned review: 2028-09-03
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Cancer Explained does not originate medical claims. Every page restates guidance already published by the National Cancer Institute, the CDC, the USPSTF and the FDA, in plain language, with the source cited so you can check the original yourself. AI does the translating and organizing; automated checks test claims, citations, clarity and safety before anything publishes, and this is translation and navigation, not clinical judgment. Nothing here is personal medical advice, and no page can account for your particular situation.
Editorial status — Source checked. This page was written with AI assistance and then compared with the sources listed on it, looking for statements those sources do not back up. That check is not a sentence-by-sentence record and can miss errors. It is not a medical review, and it does not confirm the page is complete or right for your situation.
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Human medical review: not completed. Pages here are not signed off by a clinician before they publish. That is not an oversight we are quietly working around: we restate published guidance and cite it, so the authority belongs to the source rather than to us, and every page names where its claims come from — you can verify us instead of trusting us. Where a volunteer clinician has reviewed a page, their name and credentials appear on it; where no name appears, no clinician has checked it. We are glad to have reviewers and are recruiting them, and we do not hold pages back waiting for one. Use this site to understand your situation and to ask better questions of the people treating you.
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How this page was created
Cancer Explained does not originate medical claims. Every page restates guidance already published by the National Cancer Institute, the CDC, the USPSTF and the FDA, in plain language, with the source cited so you can check the original yourself. AI does the translating and organizing; automated checks test claims, citations, clarity and safety before anything publishes, and this is translation and navigation, not clinical judgment. Nothing here is personal medical advice, and no page can account for your particular situation.
Editorial status: Source checked — This page was written with AI assistance and then compared with the sources listed on it, looking for statements those sources do not back up. That check is not a sentence-by-sentence record and can miss errors. It is not a medical review, and it does not confirm the page is complete or right for your situation.
Human medical review: not completed. Pages here are not signed off by a clinician before they publish. That is not an oversight we are quietly working around: we restate published guidance and cite it, so the authority belongs to the source rather than to us, and every page names where its claims come from — you can verify us instead of trusting us. Where a volunteer clinician has reviewed a page, their name and credentials appear on it; where no name appears, no clinician has checked it. We are glad to have reviewers and are recruiting them, and we do not hold pages back waiting for one. Use this site to understand your situation and to ask better questions of the people treating you.
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