Wendy Schlessel Harpham

Wendy Harpham is a doctor of internal medicine, 34-year cancer survivor, best-selling author and nationally recognized leader in survivorship. She has devoted her career to helping patients get good care and live as fully as possible. Born, raised and educated in New York, she moved to Texas in 1979 to complete her post-graduate training. Only 7 years after opening a solo practice, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When ongoing illness forced Dr. Harpham to retire from patient care, she turned to writing and speaking to continue educating, comforting and inspiring thousands of patients and their caregivers. In addition to her groundbreaking books and articles for patients, she's been writing to clinicians: textbook chapters, a book, and a long-running, award-winning regular column for Oncology Times, “View from the Other Side of the Stethoscope.” For 10 years, she was an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), where she co-taught an honors seminar, "Medicine, Politics and Philosophy," and mentored premedical students. She continues to offers workshops, "Writing a Personal Statement " for grad school and scholarship applications. Dr. Harpham’s lymphoma is in a long remission after many courses of treatment, including investigational drugs received in clinical trials. Ongoing aftereffects of past treatments prevent her from returning to clinical medicine. In her free time, she enjoys reading, classical music, visits with her children and six grandchildren, and time with her husband, She looks forward to expanding her collection of commemorative thimbles, which represents all the cities in which she has done work to help patients become Healthy Survivors.