Miklos Kohary had only met with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center physician-scientist Dr. Joachim Deeg a few times when he asked Deeg a key question:
“I asked him, do you believe in the power of the mind?” Kohary recalled at the Oct. 15 evening reception at Fred Hutch at which Deeg was named the first Miklos and Natalia Zimonyi Kohary Endowed Chair for Cancer Research.
“You don’t always know how a physician will respond,” said Kohary, who was seeing Deeg for myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, a precancerous disease of the bone marrow. He was facing MDS at the same time as metastatic prostate cancer. “But he said, ‘Absolutely.’ … I told him, together, we’re going to make history.”
Kohary, a Ferrari enthusiast and former professional soccer player, along with his wife, established the endowed chair “Because I believe in my physician … It wasn’t an easy road — it still isn’t. But I’m going to get to the end of it.”
