brian druker right away, don't do anything until you see him. three days later, he got a call from druker who mysteriously eichner didn't know how it got in his phone number. during the next 20 minutes, druker talked him down from his panic assuring him that being in the ear of the stages of the disease eichner could wait a week or two to oregon health and science university where he had been treating and researching leukemia since 1993. he gave eichner his professional blessing to drink beer. it was august and eichner had been getting ready for summer grew fast, his brother's idea for getting his mind off of leukemia when the phone rang. ten days later, eichner was on his way to portland. within three weeks of his diagnosis he was swallowing his first tablet of medication which druker was instrumental in developing. a drug aimed at tackling the cancer at its roots. i won't leave you in suspense. this is the beginning of the. gary eichner is still alive. was supposed to be here. i was hoping he would walk in right after the excerpt. six months af

anyone could set him at ease about that, it was his doctor, brian druker. all i care about is that you're making some progress, druker told his patient, who had come to drukeres chrin nick portland, oregon for a bone marrow biopsy. the procedure would reveal whether the medicine, a pill he had been taking daily for six months, was tackling the leukemia that had invaded his body. eichner had chronic myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells that though slow growing could be fatal. i will be happy if you're 18 out of 20. eichner nodded his understanding, his jittery foot the only sign of his nervousness. for eichner, those numbers were part of the new language he had learned since his diagnoseness the summer of 2011. as with so many cancer diagnoses, the education began suddenly and unexpectedly. after a day or so of sharp, excruciating kidney pain, eichner, a single parent after teenage boy, drove himself to the emergency room at his local hospital in olympia, washington, where he had been living at the time. his sister-in-law, a trauma flight nurse