It was the end of a long day in clinic. There was a knock on the door to my office and my assistant's head appeared: "Avi called and asked for an appointment." The look on her face mirrored the thought that immediately went through my mind: That cannot be good. I asked her to fit him in to one of my clinics in the next few days. I had first met Avi about 5 years previously. He was then a 29-year-old computer programmer and recently married to Talia, an artist. He was tall, skinny and stressed. She was short, stout and happy, an eternal optimist. They had no children. He had had an irritating cough, then developed night sweats and by the time he was diagnosed, he had advanced stage Hodgkin lymphoma: stage IVB with all the poor prognostic factors on the list.
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