‘Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action’

David Fajgenbaum was in medical school when the symptoms of a mysterious disease started to ravage his body. “I felt doomed,” he writes in his new book. “I knew I was dying. I just knew.”

He endured years of hospitalizations and experimental treatments — even coming close to death five times — before his own training and perseverance led him to a drug that saved his life, even though it wasn't FDA-approved as a treatment for his disease.

Tuesday on MPR News, Fajgenbaum talked with Kerri Miller about his memoir, "Chasing My Cure" — and his hope that his journey will highlight the need to leverage already approved drugs for a variety of illnesses.