Treating cancer can be like playing God – but you can and do lose sometimes. And it seems a lot more personal than God. As a physician who treats blood cancer — a hematologist — including those in children and young adults, author Dr. Tami Rashal is used to being trusted with the most personal and intimate details from her patients and their families. She is a kind of tour guide on a journey on which no one wishes to travel. But when the author’s close friend — a doctor herself — once again became a cancer patient, Dr. Rashal could not remain merely an objective physician and researcher anymore. In her first book, Dr. Rashal tries to move the cold facts to the background and dive into a world where close friendship and family are a substantial part of healing.

Dr. Rashal was born in 1971 in Israel. She served in the Israeli military and then completed her medical studies at the Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary. She completed her residency in internal medicine and then a fellowship in hematology. She has been researching cancer for over 10 years, holds an MBA in health systems from Tel Aviv University and recently founded a company that develops digital systems to improve home care to support cancer patients. Dr. Rashal wants to bring patients back home where they can feel like whole people again.