When Blood Breaks Down book cover

Goodman, Mikkael A. Sekeres. When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons from Leukemia. MIT Press, 2020.

My Review: 4/5

I had a hard time reading this book. The first patient in the first chapter had the same diagnosis as myself: AML with FLT-3 mutation, which is described as incredibly aggressive with a very poor outlook. After surviving myself for 18 months, I came back and was able to read this book with a mind of curiosity.

The reality is many of the treatments I received are both new and old. “7+3” has been around for at least 40 years, and some of the new drugs targeting the FLT-3 mutation were only approved as late as 2021. I shudder to think what my outcome to treatment might have been without these specialty drugs.

But then comes the rub. The price tags on these treatments mean real people are choosing death over life. Patients struggle to balance what their community can bear versus the return they can give. My own treatment to date, according to the hospital’s itemized bill, comes to $1,600,000. And I think to myself everyday: Am I worth that?

The book covers other types of leukemia, CML and ALL. But the chapters and descriptions of “my” cancer made this an informative but hard read1. Dr. Sekeres is unflinching in his observations of the death and mayhem leukemia wreaks when blood breaks down.

Significant Revisions

Footnotes

  1. In the book, the AML+FLT-3 patient dies. ↩