living with disease

Biting into the Elephant

I believe that a story is the shortest distance between two people. While this is my story, it is not just mine, and I did not do any of this alone. In April 1983, my husband Joe and I were 25 years old and attending to the required pre-marital blood work. Next thing we knew, we were sitting in a doctor’s office because my blood counts were abnormally low. They told us there was something wrong, but they didn’t know what it was.

Amer Zeidan, MBBS

Institution
Yale University and Yale Cancer Center
Physician Status
accepting new patients
Primary Disease Area of Focus
Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
Aplastic Anemia
Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN)
Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria (PNH)
About
Amer Zeidan’s primary research interest is in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and was mentored in this research area by Dr. Steven Gore and Dr. B Douglas Smith at Johns Hopkins University where he has completed a clinical hematology/oncology fellowship and a clinical research fellowship in myelodysplastic syndromes. He also earned a Master of Health Science (MHS) degree in Clinical Investigation at Johns Hopkins before recently moving to Yale University as an Assistant Professor of Medicine to reunite with Dr. Steven Gore and continue his MDS research. Dr. Zeidan has two major areas of

Timothy Graubert, MD

Institution
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Primary Disease Area of Focus
Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN)
About
Dr. Graubert’s research focuses on the molecular pathogenesis of myeloid leukemias. While at Washington University in St. Louis, he and his colleagues used genome sequencing technology extensively to gain insights into the genetic basis of human cancer and to use this information to improve risk stratification tools and identify targets for novel therapy. Their group published the first complete genome sequence of a human cancer (acute myeloid leukemia) in 2008 and in subsequent publications described novel recurrent mutations in IDH2 and DNMT3A that have prognostic significance in acute

Mikkael Sekeres, MD, MS

Institution
Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and University of Miami
Physician Status
accepting new patients
Primary Disease Area of Focus
Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)
About
Mikkael A. Sekeres, MD, MS has been Medical Advisory Board Co-Chair since 2004. He is currently the Physician Liaison in Hematology and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Center at the University. Previously, Dr. Sekeres was the professor of medicine, director of the leukemia program, and Vice Chair for Clinical Research at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute in Ohio. He earned his medical degree and a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Sekeres completed his postgraduate training at

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