In his first public appearance since having surgery to remove an 8-cm temporal lobe tumor on the left side of the brain, AMA President-elect Bobby Mukkamala, MD, thanked the physician community for the support it has given him and—citing his newly gained perspective as a patient—vowed to continue fighting to improve patient access to care and to reduce health inequities.
“It's amazing—this difference of six-and-a-half weeks,” Dr. Mukkamala, 53, said in an interview at the AMA State Advocacy Summit in Carlsbad, California.
Dr. Mukkamala’s tumor was discovered in November, and Dr. Mukkamala’s surgery to remove it happened just three weeks before the AMA conference last month. Pathologists determined that Dr. Mukkamala had a grade 2 astrocytoma, which the National Brain Tumor Society describes as a slow-growing tumor that only rarely spreads to other parts of the central nervous system. It is normally treated with surgery, while recurring tumors often require additional surgery along with radiation or chemotherapy.
Dr. Mukkamala’s physicians recently told him that he should be able to “avoid chemo and radiation therapy indefinitely” and that he could expect to live another 20 years.
“At the beginning I felt like: How could this happen? This is the worst moment of my life. And here I am less than seven weeks later and it's the best moment of my life—and it's not because of the pathology that got diagnosed or what grade this cancer is,” said Dr. Mukkamala, an otolaryngologist and head-and-neck surgeon with a private practice in Flint, Michigan.
“It happens to be grade 2, which is good because it's a 20-year survival instead of a two-year survival, but my change in emotion has nothing to do with the science of it, but just the compassion that I feel from everybody—both within the American Medical Association and within my community,” he added. “And so even if it was a two-year survival, just the fact that I've witnessed the love from other people has made life so much better. So it's been an amazing six weeks.”
Speaking incident sparks concern
Less than two months earlier, Dr. Mukkamala was speaking to the AMA Minority Affairs Section at the 2024 AMA Interim Meeting in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, when—as he put it—he had “a total mind fart moment” and spoke for almost two minutes without making sense.
Observers were concerned that he had a transient ischemic attack, and he was rushed to an urgent-care center where he registered a normal BP reading and an electrocardiogram showed no signs of atrial fibrillation. When he returned to Flint, he had a magnetic resonance imaging scan, which revealed that he had a brain tumor.
Love’s role in healing
In separate remarks delivered in the Q&A portion of the meeting’s keynote address during which another physician shared his own health challenges, Dr. Mukkamala spoke about what he had gained from his experience as a patient receiving a life-altering diagnosis.
There are “two things that I’ve learned just in the past six weeks—as you were talking about—that comes from this,” Dr. Mukkamala said.
“One is the role of love, from my family … and then love from this group,” he added. “Before this operation and before this diagnosis, I was not one to express that, but now I realize the value of expressing that—both to help other people’s health and to help my own.”
Dr. Mukkamala then recalled how, within a week of his diagnosis, he was able to hold virtual consults with five of the most talented surgeons specializing in the care he needed. They scheduled his surgery, performed the operation, “and now, three weeks later, it’s healed up nicely.”
But, if he was just a typical blue-collar Flint resident living down the street from his office, he would not have received the same level of service.
“I’d still be waiting for prior authorization, I’d still be waiting for an MRI scan, I’d still be waiting for a surgeon that might even have some of the competency to do that operation,” Dr. Mukkamala said.
He added that, as “a physician with a ‘president-elect’ tag” on his conference ID badge and with newly acquired patient experience, he looked forward to taking his message on the road.
“We need to close that gap between being in Flint and having the world’s best access to care and being two blocks from this guy in Flint and having the worst access to care,” Dr. Mukkamala said. It “is a gap that needs to be closed in this country, so thank you for motivating me even more to do this work.”
“Here I am”
Dr. Mukkamala also mentioned that he would be moderating a panel discussion at the conference on mental health and substance-use disorder parity—an issue he has spoken about often in his role as chair of the AMA Substance Use and Pain Care Task Force.
He noted that it would be an opportunity with just “this very family-like group” to test how he handles an on-stage public speaking assignment.
When the time came, Dr. Mukkamala briefly mentioned his diagnosis before introducing the panelists.
“It's a pleasure to be here,” Dr. Mukkamala said.
“Six weeks ago, as my life ran into the challenge of brain cancer, I had no idea that I would be able to continue to participate in our collective work, but here I am,” he added, as the audience loudly applauded.