The First Cell

by Azra Raza

Lennon, A. M., et al. “The Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer: What Will It Take to Diagnose and Treat Curable Pancreatic Neoplasia?” Cancer Research 74, no. 13 (2014): 3381–3389.

  Moses, H., III, E. R. Dorsey, D. H. Matheson, and S. O. Thier. “Financial Anatomy of Biomedical Research.” JAMA 294, no. 11 (2005): 1333–1342.

  Claridge, Laura. Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners. New York: Random House, 2008.

  AFTERMATH: GIVE SORROW WORDS

  Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, and David Kessler. On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. New York: Scribner, 2005.

  Robinson, Katherine. “Robert Frost: ‘The Road Not Taken.’ Our Choices Are Made Clear in Hindsight.” Poetry Foundation, May 27, 2016. www.poetryfoundation./articles/89511/robert-frost-the-road-not-taken.

  “Fairfield Minuteman Archives, Feb 12, 2004, p. 40.” Newspaper Archive. https://newspaperarchive.com/fairfield-minuteman-feb-12-2004-p-40/.

  Lang, Joel. “Barbara Griffiths: Downsizing Gives Artist Pause to Ponder Her Life and Her Art.” CT Post, August 14, 2016. https://www.ctpost.com/living/article/Barbara-Griffiths-Downsizing-gives-artist-pause-9141213.php.

  Sontag, Susan. Illness As Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.

  Adams, Lisa Bonchek. Persevere: A Life with Cancer. Lancaster, PA: Bonchek Family Foundation, 2017.

  EPILOGUE: THE DAWN HAS ALREADY ARRIVED

  Weinberg, Robert A. “Coming Full Circle—From Endless Complexity to Simplicity and Back Again.” Cell 157, no. 1 (2014): 267–271.

  Fojo, Tito, and Christine Grady. “How Much Is Life Worth: Cetuximab, Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer, and the $440 Billion Question.” JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute 101, no. 15 (2009): 1044–1048. https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djp177.

  Yachida, S., S. Jones, I. Bozic, T. Antal, R. Leary, B. Fu, M. Kamiyama, R. H. Hruban, J. R. Eshleman, M. A. Nowak, V. E. Velculescu, K. W. Kinzler, B. Vogelstein, and C. A. Iacobuzio-Donahue. “Distant Metastasis Occurs Late During the Genetic Evolution of Pancreatic Cancer.” Nature 467 (2010): 1114–1117.

  Desai, Pinkal, et al. “Somatic Mutations Precede Acute Myeloid Leukemia Years Before Diagnosis.” Nature Medicine 24 (2018): 1015–1023.

  Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Pathologies of Hope.” Harper’s, February 1, 2007. http://barbaraehrenreich.com/hope/.

  Ibn Abi Talib, Ali. Nahjul Balagha: Peak of Eloquence. India: Alwaaz International, 2010.

  Credits

  Photo Credits

  Here Omar Courtesy of family friend

  Here Philip and Marsha Courtesy of Joe Craig, Black Label Photo Co.

  Here Fern and Eldon Courtesy of Eldon Priestley

  Here Gerson Courtesy of Matthew Connors

  Here Mark Copyright of JC Penney Portraits

  Here Kendra and Barbara Courtesy of Henry Seth

  Here Kitty C. Courtesy of Philip Bell

  Here Curt Courtesy of Adam Mosston

  Here Patrick and Michele Courtesy of Nant

  Here Andrew and Sheherzad Courtesy of Sheherzad Preisler

  Here Donna Courtesy of Azra Raza

  Here Andrew and Kat Courtesy of Kat Slootsky

  Here Harvey Courtesy of Azra Raza

  Here The signals in the blood Courtesy of Abdullah Ali

  Here Laura Courtesy of Azra Raza

  Here Omar and Naheed Courtesy of a family friend

  Here Farid Courtesy of Anoushka Beazley

  Here Sara and Omar Courtesy of Naheed Azfar

  Here Conor Courtesy of Philip Bell

  Here Kat, Andrew, and Alena Courtesy of Charles Keiffer

  Here Sheherzad and Andrew Courtesy of Rebecca Zamdborg

  Text Credits

  Here: Excerpted from “Eye Bank” by Ahmad Faraz. Translated into English by Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb and published in English first at Guernica, June 6, 2018. Used with permission of Guernica and Ms. Kolb.

  Here: “Miss Gee” Copyright 1940 and © renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden from COLLECTED POEMS by W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  Here: (“My life had stood a loaded gun” J 754/F 764—Lines 1–4) and here (“After great pain a formal feeling comes” J 341/F 372—Lines 1–4): THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON: READING EDITION, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.

  Here: “When I Die” by Lisa Bonchek Adams is taken from the book Persevere: A Life with Cancer published by the Bonchek Family Foundation, 2017. The poem is quoted with permission granted from the Bonchek Family Foundation.

  Here: “Funeral Blues” Copyright 1940 and © renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden from COLLECTED POEMS by W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  Praise for

  THE FIRST CELL

  “Showing that compassion is just as important for cancer patients as the drugs administered to them, Raza’s deeply personal work brings understanding and empathy to the fore in a way that a purely scientific explication never could.”

  —Publishers Weekly (Starred)

  “With elegant literary references and a compassion that deeply personalizes her interactions with patients and families, she engages readers in a commitment to finding a better way. Intelligence, empathy, and optimism inform the argument for new research on cancer that could obviate the suffering prevalent today.”

  —Kirkus (Starred)

  “An affecting, fascinating, timely, and uncompromisingly honest look at where we stand in treating the most fearsome disease in most people’s worry list.”

  —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

  “With wisdom distilled from more than three decades of clinical practice, the sensibilities of a poet, and a deep compassion for her fellow humans, Azra Raza provides a compelling argument that a key way forward in improving patient outcomes is early diagnosis and treatment, before cancer has become much too complex for any therapy to overcome.”

  —David Steensma, attending physician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor at Harvard Medical School

  “Unraveling myth and metaphor surrounding the disease with unrelenting acuity and sharing the pathos of lives that have been slashed of years and months and shorn of hope and promise by cancer, Dr. Raza reveals a world that has of yet been inaccessible to those who mourn humanity’s lack of progress against the disease while being simultaneously baffled by it. Here is a masterful rendition of how an emphasis on curing cancer, instead of working to detect its first venomous breath, has exacted a terrible price in human lives, including that of her very own husband, Harvey. The First Cell is an intertwining of literature and life, science and cutting-edge cancer research, that demands a radical transformation in the way we humans understand the most tragic killer of our time. Through her poignant story-telling and the strength of a scientific vision built on decades of hard-wrought lessons gleaned from her work as a clinician and research scholar, Dr. Raza presents an arresting account that challenges our core understanding of cancer and cure.”

  —Rafia Zakaria, author of The Upstairs Wife and Veil

  “As a cancer survivor, I can testify that Dr. Raza’s call to action for more research on early detection is vitally important. In a world driven by profit, this book is by a doctor who thinks about the patient first.”

  —Ruchira Gupta, journalist and activist

 

  Azra Raza, The First Cell