Support for the Nocturness comes from the California Medical Association.

The season of The Nocturness is sponsored by the Physicians Foundation.

At the Nocturnus, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws.

Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality.

All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer.

You're listening to the nocturnous stories from the world of medicine. I'm Emily Silverman.

Today we speak with Dr. PJ Lally, who brings us into the earth-shattering moment when he received a new diagnosis and all the events that followed.

It's a story he told on stage at the nocturnous live show in San Francisco at the Brava

Theater in June of 2022, and it's one that's really stayed with me

ever since, I think, because it has this immediacy to it that is really special.

BJ is a hospital medicine doctor and hospice physician in Northern California and recently

completed a master's degree in divinity and spirituality and peacemaking,

which we'll hear about toward the end of my conversation with him.

But first, take a listen to PJ's story.

I know about 30 seconds into the test that something isn't right.

See, I'm in an optometrist's office, presumably to get some stylish glasses, you know, gray hair turning 40.

I'm sitting down in a dark room. I have a patch over one eye, and I'm in front of this machine clicking every single time I see a white flashing light on the back of the screen.

And I'm not seeing the same flashes on the right side

that I am on the left.

A few moments later, I'm brought into the optometrist's room.

It's a little fancier. He walks in really kind appearing, gray hair, fancy spectacles,

in these kind of stylish alligator shools.

...