Stephen J. Schuster
Building a Team of Champions to Combat Blood Cancer
How has blood cancer affected me?
My name is Stephen Schuster, M.D. I have been asked to write about how lymphoma has touched my life. Well, as a physician studying and practicing oncology for 26 years, I am like Ulysses in the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, “I am part of all that I have met.” Why specifically lymphoma? Again, “I am part of all that I have met.” Among cancer patients, patients with lymphomas like Nick Colleluori, have touched and inspired me to devote my life to the treatment and study of lymphomas. As a result of my experiences with lymphoma patients, lymphoma has more than touched my life; it consumes my life. In my clinical practice, I now almost exclusively treat patients with lymphomas and in my research, work to develop new therapies for those whom current therapies fail. By nature, I am a stubborn man and a poor loser. Like Ulysses, my nature is “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Like Nick, I am “relentless.”
Dr. Schuster is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Attending Physician, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology-Oncology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Director, Lymphoma Program, Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
Director, Lymphoma Translational Research, Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
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