Brainstorm Health: Tom Brokaw on His Health, Fitbit Diabetes Deal, Pfizer Epipen Site Flaws

After stepping out of bed, he reeled across the room, completely out of balance, then reassured himself that the mysterious ailment would soon resolve on its own. Figuring the cause might be dehydration, he took a cold shower and drank some water. But his vertigo only got worse, and now he could barely walk.

A CT scan and an MRI at the local hospital in Billings confirmed he wasn’t having a stroke; nor did it seem like there was anything wrong with his heart. As for what was causing the strange symptoms, the doctors there hadn’t a clue. Brokaw didn’t get that answer until he received a full neurological workup at the Mayo Clinic—after being Medevac’d to Minnesota that very night.

The diagnosis? Vestibular neuritis, an inflammatory disorder of nerves in the inner ear. The relatively uncommon condition can cause a person to feel dizzy and lose their sense of balance. “So it reminded me of my college days,” quipped Brokaw.

Then, the former long-time anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, revealed why he’d shared this story: “To remind us all about just how complicated the human body is.”

“We’re grateful when something like this comes along,” he said, “because it can be cured—and it is not in any way going to be a permanent debilitating condition.”

And that, of course, was a very different reason from the one that had brought him and his fellow lunch mates to gather that afternoon—at a day of scientific panels and presentations sponsored by the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

Multiple myeloma, he said, “had been a vague phrase” in his life until he himself was diagnosed with this blood cancer, which strikes just over 30,000 Americans each year and kills about 12,600.

“The oncologist—who seemed to have been out of school the day they mentioned bedside manners—turned to me and said, ‘Well, you have a malignancy: It’s called multiple myeloma.’ These were his very first phrases, Brokaw recalled. “‘You know people who have died from this: Geraldine Ferraro, who ran for Vice President of the United States; Frank Reynolds, the former ABC anchorman.’”

“I was of two different frames of mind,” said the man who had filled millions of living rooms night after night, who had covered White Houses and wars, and who had memorably chronicled The Greatest Generation. “I was (a) a journalist, and (b) someone who was just told he had a cancer that, in fact, was incurable at that stage. And I was trying to sort the two of them out. So we worked our way through what the consequence were going to be. And that moment—that day—was the rebirth of Tom Brokaw.”

“I had just been told I had a terminal cancer, but it gave me a new life,” he continued. “That’s what brings me here today—because I felt an obligation as a human being, as a citizen, and as a journalist to share what I was learning about this condition. I entered that very vast universe of people with one kind of cancer or another. And the fact of the matter is, it has, in so many ways, made my life much richer.

“I’ve had the luckiest life of anybody I know. I grew up in a working class family in South Dakota, married an astonishing woman, and 55 years later we’re still together through good news and bad news—including cancer.”

“Cancer gave me a new reason to want to live. And it gave me a new mission as a human being about the relationships that I would develop with other people.”

Those are the words I’d like to leave you with this weekend—the words of just another American hero, running bravely into battle. Because that’s how you save the next generation from having to fight the same war.

The news below.

DIGITAL HEALTH

Fitbit shares spike on diabetes monitoring deal. Fitbit enjoyed a 10% rise in its stock price Thursday after the company announced that it's partnering with Dexcom to make the latter firm's glucose monitoring technology compatible with its Ionic smartwatch device. "With Ionic, we are focused on driving positive health outcomes and more health focused tools, and this collaboration is a wonderful example of how we plan to bring that vision to our users," said Fitbit CEO James Park in a statement.

INDICATIONS

Pfizer gets FDA warning over EpiPen flaws. Pharma giant Pfizer has received a stern warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over EpiPen flaws that the agency says stems from the drug maker's Meridian Medical Technologies unit. The manufacturing plant in question (which produces the product for EpiPen maker Mylan Pharmaceuticals) is located in Brentwood, Mo. (Fortune)

Eli Lilly laying off 8% of its workforce. U.S. drug maker Eli Lilly announced Thursday that it's cutting 8% of its 42,000+ workforce in order to concentrate on making new drugs. Lilly faced a devastating clinical setback last year with a late-stage failure for its experimental Alzheimer's treatment, the studies for which cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. (Reuters)

THE BIG PICTURE

Prosecutors want to jail Martin Shkreli after his bizarre Hillary Clinton hair comments. Convicted felon Martin Shkreli, not exactly known for his discretion or restraint, could find himself in jail (even sooner than currently scheduled) thanks to bizarre comments he made on social media offering $5,000 to anyone who brings him snippets of Hillary Clinton's hair during her upcoming book tour. Federal prosecutors are seeking to revoke Shkreli's bail over the comments. (Fortune)

Obamacare outreach funding has been cut off. The Trump administration has cutoff outreach funding to educate Americans about Obamacare. The health law's open enrollment season launched in November and has already been curtailed by the White House relative to the past few years. (Vox)

REQUIRED READING

When Good Home Assistants Go Bad, by Barb Darrow

Can Levi's Make Life Better for Garment Workers? by Erika Fry

How to Find Out If You Were Affected By the Equifax Hack, by Chris Morris

Apple's Foreign Lawsuits Against Qualcomm, by Reuters