Words That May Change Everything: I'm gay & Cancer

choi

Danielle Peress, Words That May Change Everything; For a doctor, two jaw-dropping revelations upend her plan. New York Times, Nov 14, 2017 (under the heading "Voices" in the weekly ScienceTimes section).
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/well/live/lung-cancer.html

Note:
(a) about the author
(i) Maternal Fetal Medicine Fellowship. Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Perelman School of Medicine and University of Pennsylvania Health System, undated.
www.uphs.upenn.edu/obgyn/education/fellow-mfm.htm
("Current Fellows and Research[:] * * * Danielle Peress, MD)

After graduation from a medical school in US, one becomes an intern (doing internship), resident 住院医师 (residency), and then fellow (fellowship).
(ii) Danielle Peress & Jarrett Linder - Wedding Registry
https://registry.theknot.com/dan ... may-2012-il/1028360

is no longer active, with a total blank.
(iii) Jarrett R Linder, MD, MS
http://www.chop.edu/doctors/linder-jarrett-r
("is a Cardiology Fellow with the Division of Cardiology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia")

(b) "Sometimes * * * he would come to my dorm room and profess his love for me. I initially laughed it off, reminding him that he was my best friend. But by the spring of freshman year, our relationship had changed. We felt that we were beshert — meant to be."
(i) Online but not in print, 'beshert" is italicized.
(ii) beshert may be spelled
bashert (n; etymology).
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bashert

(c) "I was reading 'When Breath Becomes Air' by Dr Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgery resident who learned he had stage IV lung cancer at age 36. "
(i) Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air. Random House, 2016.
(ii) At 36, Dr Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He died in 2015.

(d) "I had seen him only once since the move [to Philadelphia], when our eyes had met across the sweaty room of a spin studio."

indoor cycling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_cycling
(is commonly called spinning)

(e) "I spent the following days * * * balancing on a wobbly tightrope that separated me as a doctor from me as a patient. * * * 'Right inferior mediastinal mass encasing and occluding the right inferior pulmonary vein * * * Favored to represent lymphoma' [quoting her doctor] * * * the oncologist came in to my hospital room and told me that I had lung cancer * * * I felt myself begin to tip from my tightrope and tried to grab back on, terrified to begin the long descent toward the 'patient' side. * * * Mine is stage IV."
(i) tip (vi): "to become tipped : TOPPLE"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tip
(ii) I have not seen a lung cancer as described here. It must be very big. And stage IV (the last or terminal stage) means metastasis for any cancer. It is surprising that one can survive a year, as she does.