In bed. Seventeen. Feeling sorry for myself. TV playing in the background. This is your life, I thought to myself. It was 1983 and I had already spent two years in and out of hospitals.

My teachers brought me assignments so I would not fall behind. I spent so much time with my surgeon that we could have been considered best friends. Most of the time, I was a fighter. I had my moments, and this was one of them.

The American reality series This Is Your Life was the backdrop to my doldrums. The host would surprise celebrity guests and then take them through a retrospective of their lives in front of an audience, including appearances by colleagues, friends and family, who would be backstage and introduced by their voices. The honored guest that evening was Rolf Benirschke, an NFL football player. I had no idea who the guy was, but a voice I knew so well got me to turn my whole body toward the tube, and stare. The surprise guest was described as a "world renowned" surgeon.

The story unfolded. Benirschke had been to the brink and back suffering with ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease. His health problems escalated in the 1979 season -- he was a placekicker for the San Diego Chargers -- when, on the team plane coming home from a road trip, Benirschke collapsed. He underwent two surgeries to remove his large intestine and almost died from sepsis. When released from the hospital, he weighed 123 pounds and had to adjust to life with two ostomy appliances.

Though Benirschke's life was saved, emotionally he hit rock-bottom. Amazingly, he was able to return to the NFL in 1980 but would require two more major abdominal surgeries over the next few years by the voice on This Is Your Life, including moving his bag to the other side so he could kick more easily and then undergoing an innovative Koch pouch procedure to replace his ostomy appliances. Benirschke would play seven more seasons with the Chargers, setting team records before retiring in 1987 as the third most accurate kicker in NFL history.

Dr. Irwin Gelernt was the voice. He walked from behind the curtain to center stage. The two men hugged. "That's my surgeon!" I shouted to the television. By now, my parents were by my side. They always were. I had just come home from spending almost four months in the hospital. I have the same condition as this star football player. I was weak and very thin. I had an ileostomy bag hanging from my side. I was uncertain about my future. Will I be able to go to college, become a doctor as I had dreamed, date, hang out with my friends or even eat my favorite foods again?

I remember feeling my first glimmer of hope. Could Benirschke's story of survival be mine?

A week passed. My father walked into my bedroom. He was smiling. "Get dressed," he said. "We are going to meet Rolf Benirschke on the Giants' Stadium field." I found the strength to dress myself.

We arrived at the stadium and Benirschke was already on the field practicing. When it was over, he ran over to the three of us and introduced himself. He was careful not to hug me too hard because he knew exactly how it felt to be recovering from surgery. We walked him to the team's bus. I was by his side, hunched over from the surgery but feeling taller than ever. Then, he turned to my parents and asked if they would mind driving him back to his hotel so that we could have more time together. Of course, they said yes.

We compared surgeries, our pain, our fears and our thoughts. He told me how hard it was for him at first to take communal locker room showers with his teammates with a bag hanging from his side, but he understood that without the bag he would not be alive. I felt so close to him. When we dropped him off, he turned to me and said: "I will tell Dr. Gelernt to take good care of you. You are very special."

We stayed in touch for several years. I wrote my college entrance essay about him. By the time I decided to go to medical school -- a few years after getting a journalism degree and working as a journalist -- we had already lost touch. But my emotional bond with him remained strong. I remember promising to myself that I would do for others what Benirschke had done for me.

And I did. I started sharing my story with young patients, rooting them on and giving them hope. I volunteered for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation and became its first Rising Star recipient. It became clear to me in medical school that I could make a real difference in how doctors communicate with patients by combining my passion for journalism and medicine with my life experience. My two passions melded when I became the medical director for the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, training doctors and medical students nationally to communicate with empathy and clarity.

I left the Alda Center in 2017 after nine years to accept a position as dean of a novel communications program at the new Texas Christian University and University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine in Fort Worth. The school's mission is to train generations of empathetic scholars.

Stuart Flynn, M.D., our founding dean, envisioned a medical school where students would excel in communication and become life-long learners. Yes, they will have medical degrees, and communication skills will make them better doctors. He brought me and my team here to develop the curriculum we call the Compassionate Practice. It is not an add-on or one class. It is embedded into all classes and a pillar of the school. It was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Leaving Stony Brook was a very difficult decision for me. I was a lifelong New Yorker staring at the Trinity River and perfecting how to say y'all. I had learned so much from Alan Alda and pinched myself every day. (I used to watch MASH during many of my hospital stays.) We used improvisation to train doctors to listen and connect. We focused on avoiding jargon at all costs. We encouraged the art of storytelling to develop common ground and relate to patients.

Sometimes, late at night, I had my doubts about moving to Fort Worth. But then, something magical happened.

The TCU chancellor's advisory council, alumni and parents of current students were invited to learn about our new medical school. I had been on campus seven months already. I greeted the group and spoke about our plans for the communication training to be threaded throughout all four years of medical school. I told them that the faculty will be expected to be trained in the same curriculum and model the behavior.

The next day one of my colleagues sent out a group email about a conversation she had with a TCU father who had arrived late and missed my presentation. He heard snippets of the medical school's plans for training empathetic scholars, and it resonated with him. He said he wanted to help. My colleague told me this father was a former football player who suffered from a life-threatening intestinal disease and dedicated his life to telling his story and working to transform the patient experience. He was a leader in the patient-engagement movement, she wrote.

"Is this Rolf Benirschke, the former kicker for the San Diego Chargers?" I typed back. I knew it was him. He made such an indelible impact on my life and he had gone on to inspire so many others. It turns out that his son goes to TCU and he wanted to be a part of our new medical school.

This chance reunion with Benirschke was the moment that I realized why a girl from the Bronx landed in Texas. Three important men influenced my destiny: My father and his use of story to relate to people; Alda and his character Hawkeye, an endearing trauma surgeon on MASH; and Benirschke. My father showed me how the use of story connects people, Benirschke gave me the courage to tell my story, and Alda taught me how to tell it.

I have been through 21 more surgeries in over 30 years. I like to think my resilience was lit by a kind football player so many decades ago. Pieces of Benirschke's story became my own. And now I teach doctors and medical students the importance of listening to their patients and sharing their stories.

We all become patients, some sooner than others, and we must bring that knowledge into the relationship we create with our patients. We remember those special people who took the time to stop, to listen, to nod, to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, to tell us we are special, to share their stories, and to inspire.

Evonne Kaplan-Liss, M.D., M.P.H., is the assistant dean of Narrative Reflection and Patient Communication for the TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine in Fort Worth. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.