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Each year, the IU Health Ball Memorial Cancer Center hosts a Patient Annual Holiday Party. One of the special moments of the party, something the patients and staff look forward to each year, is William B. Fisher, MD, Medical Oncologist, reciting a poem he writes for the annual event. Fisher offered to share his poem with Oncology Times' readers.

 

Yesterday we remembered Pearl Harbor Day....2300 soldiers died

  
William B. Fisher, M... - Click to enlarge in new windowWilliam B. Fisher, MD. William B. Fisher, MD

The nation mourned...and prayed and cried

 

The president called it a day of infamy

 

As war broke out on land and at sea

 

From that dark day we see some light as Christmas lurks so bright

 

What is it that so attracts us to this day...and night

 

Is it the birth of Christ, we ask, with gifts and family

 

And a time to remember those we can no longer see

 

I say it is all of the above

 

So let's take time to love....those we hold so near and dear

 

And to celebrate those no longer here

 

These are indeed exciting times in oncology

 

New treatments abound, almost too fast to see

 

Cancer slowly falls onto one knee

 

And we applaud with glee

 

We gird our loins to fight

 

The "emperor of all maladies"

 

We take delight in knowing tonight

 

We are surrounded by worker bees who strive to beat this disease

 

Read more on page 41 about Fisher's lifetime achievement award he recently received from peers and colleagues after 40 years of hard work and endless contributions to the field of medical oncology and clinical research.