ROCK HILL, S.C. \u2014 Kashyap Patel looked forward to his team\u2019s Friday lunches. All the doctors from his oncology practice would gather in the open-air courtyard under the shadow of a tall magnolia tree and catch up. The atmosphere tended to the lighthearted and optimistic. But that week, he was distressed.<\/p>\n
It was 2021, a year into the coronavirus pandemic, and as he slid into a chair, Patel shared that he\u2019d just seen a patient in his 40s with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and lethal cancer of the bile ducts that typically strikes people in their 70s and 80s. Initially, there was silence, and then one colleague after another said they\u2019d recently treated patients who had similar diagnoses. Within a year of that meeting, the office had recorded seven such cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in practice 23 years and have never seen anything like this,\u201d Patel, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, later recalled. Asutosh Gor, another oncologist, agreed: \u201cWe were all shaken.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROCK HILL, S.C. \u2014 Kashyap Patel looked forward to his team\u2019s Friday lunches. All the doctors from his oncology practice would gather in the open-air courtyard under the shadow of a tall magnolia tree and catch up. The atmosphere tended to the lighthearted and optimistic. But that week, he was distressed.<\/p>\n
It was 2021, a year into the coronavirus pandemic, and as he slid into a chair, Patel shared that he\u2019d just seen a patient in his 40s with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and lethal cancer of the bile ducts that typically strikes people in their 70s and 80s. Initially, there was silence, and then one colleague after another said they\u2019d recently treated patients who had similar diagnoses. Within a year of that meeting, the office had recorded seven such cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in practice 23 years and have never seen anything like this,\u201d Patel, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, later recalled. Asutosh Gor, another oncologist, agreed: \u201cWe were all shaken.\u201d<\/p>\n