Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: On When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons from Leukemia

Mikkael A. Sekeres, M.D., is professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Hematology in the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He earned a medical degree and a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed his postgraduate training at Harvard University. He is the author or co-author of more than 400 scientific manuscripts, has written more than 60 essays for The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Salon.com, and Popular Science, and has authored seven books, including When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons from Leukemia (MIT Press, 2020). In that work, Sekeres tells the compelling stories of three adult leukemia patients and their treatments, the disease itself, and the drugs developed to treat it. When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. But then you pull yourself together and start asking questions. Beside you is your doctor, whose job it is to solve the awful puzzle of bone marrow gone wrong. The two of you are in it together – and Sekeres bring readers on that journey. Publishers Weekly called it a “fascinating debut … This is a powerful look at a disease that forces patients to make ‘decisions that no person should ever have to make.’”