“I’ll do whatever you tell me to,” my patient said earnestly.

“All right then, let’s talk about what you have and how we can treat it,” I said with just a whiff of swagger, which at that moment I thought maybe they needed.

Within 24 hours we performed a bone marrow biopsy, which showed a low level of the leukemia, and a lumbar puncture, which confirmed that the leukemia had not yet reached his spinal fluid. We inserted a port and started the chemotherapy.

He weathered the expected fevers and requisite blood transfusions, went into a remission, and was discharged to my outpatient clinic a month later.

Over the next two years, I saw him regularly as he continued his treatments. This is where leukemia specialists can be particularly merciless. The key to curing lymphoblastic leukemia is to treat it according to the advice often attributed to Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley on how his constituents should vote: “Early and often.” Just as my patient was starting to feel better from one round of chemotherapy and his blood counts had barely recovered, I treated him with another round, holidays and vacations be damned.

He took it all with good spirits. In the fall he wore Browns gear, and when I gently suggested to him that he might tolerate his chemotherapy better if he donned the black and gold of the Pittsburgh Steelers, he wore even more of it. In the winter he turned to a Cavaliers jersey, and then back to the Indians come springtime. It became part of our ritual to banter about the recent plights of the Cleveland teams, and I checked the standings before walking into his room, as if cramming for a test. It also relaxed his dad. He must be doing well, if we had the luxury of bemoaning the hapless Browns. And he was.