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I am not a doctor or a scientist, but merely a passionate layperson, a filter, a messenger. I spoke with so many patients who are living normal, happy, fulfilled lives, and their enthusiasm and great quality of life convinced me that you can indeed live with cancer.

Having been an oncologist and having cared for scores, if not hundreds, of dying patients, when you don't have a treatment that can shrink the tumor and the patient will die, it's a very difficult conversation. It's emotionally draining.

I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first instinct was to withdraw from what was going on - the complexity, the death. It was a very bleak time.

We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet.

What does it mean to be an oncologist? It means that you get to sit in at a moment of another person's life that is so hyper-acute, and not just because they're medically ill. It's also a moment of hope and expectation and concern.

What I've been telling people is that the doctors are gaining on cancer very rapidly. It's almost become a chronic disease, like diabetes - something you can treat. It doesn't go away, and you're not well in the sense of being over it, but you go on and live your life.

I think any cancer patient, if you dig not too deeply, they want to live.

As a cancer doctor, I'm looking forward to being out of a job.

There are lots of dimensions to being a cancer patient. The overwhelming one is that it takes over your life.

What I quickly learned after my diagnosis is that the world of a cancer patient has many parts and a good deal of uncertainty.