Previously, unsyptomatic.

David Faganbaum, a college quarterback, deeply impacted by his mother's fight with brain cancer, was a prime example of peak health and motivation.

The moment that I saw her dealing with her cancer, I just said, this is what I have to spend the rest of my life doing.

And by this, it's taking care of people with horrible diseases and it's searching for

treatments so that people don't suffer.

But during med school, everything quickly came crashing down when Castleman disease took him from treating patients to the brink of death in a matter of days.

I was so sick that my doctors encouraged my family to say goodbye to me.

I'll never forget the moment when a priest came in and read him his last rites.

I remember I couldn't really keep it together.

I couldn't hide how horrifying it was to see him in that state.

After exhausting all the treatments available for Castleman,

David's body was ravaged by chemo and he was out of viable options.

That's when he decided to take matters into his own

hands. I had to take some action, and it had to be a pretty crazy step, and that is to start

testing one of these drugs that I was studying in the lab on myself. All the drugs I was studying

in the lab were all FDA-approved for something else. they just weren't used for Castleman.

After repurposing a medicine originally designed for kidney transplant patients to send his

disease into long-term remission, David was determined to prevent others from that similar

dead end. His theories around expanding the approved uses for certain medicines would quickly be put to the test seeing Gary Gravina fight for his life against Castleman, just like David had a few short years before.

Yes, his heart is technically beating. Yes, he's technically breathing because of what we're doing medically.

But he's not going to come back from this.

And I just remember being so devastated to hear that.

...