"As a psychiatrist who has lymphoma, I have developed a deep understanding of the ways in which our training can help us help patients who find themselves forced to deal with the complicated emotional aspects that accompany various forms of cancer. ... Cancer is an alienating and existential experience. I know of no other common disease that immediately causes so much fear, anxiety, depression, confusion, and sense of impending disaster in a patient or his or her significant others as when they hear the word cancer for the first time."