Donald Paul Lombardi, MD

My first education about oncology was not in college or medical school. It was around the dinner table, when, as a child, my father told me stories about his mother who died from breast cancer in the 1950s. Later, breast cancer hit my mother’s side — first with my older sister at age 37, then my maternal aunt, then my mother, and, most recently, my younger sister. With this background, perhaps it is not surprising that I chose oncology as a profession. During college I was fortunate to get an American Cancer Society Summer Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, and I found that I enjoyed the challenge of trying to understand cancer from biological and genetic viewpoints. After I completed my residency in internal medicine, I chose to do a medical oncology fellowship, where I felt at home taking care of cancer patients and doing clinical research to try to find better treatments. When I walk into a patient’s exam room, I bring all of me to all of her or him. The cancer journey may be rough at times, but I will always be with my patients, every step of the way.