Something felt wrong during one of Morhaf Al Achkar’s regular runs on the treadmill in late 2016. He started gasping for breath.

“It became really hard to run,” he said. “That sudden development of shortness of breath alarmed me.”

Being a family physician in Indiana at the time, he asked a resident at the clinic where he worked to listen to his lungs. “There’s no air moving on the left side of your chest—that doesn’t seem right,” Al Achkar recalled hearing from the resident.

A few weeks later, Al Achkar received devastating news: he had stage 4 ALK-positive lung cancer. He estimated that he would live for just another six to 10 months.

But today—nearly eight years after his devastating diagnosis—Al Achkar is still working, now primarily as a researcher and educator.

Al Achkar spoke with Deborah Doroshow, assistant professor of medicine, hematology, and medical oncology at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

A transcript of this conversation is available on the Cancer History Project.