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D espite his own near-iconic status, Brokaw has never adopted the faux patrician o n-air presence of some network newsmen; he has always managed to convey gravity without pomposity. That quality is evident throughout the book, reflecting an identity r ooted in one core lesson of his South Dakota upbringing: Don't get too big for your britches. Part of Brokaw's deep bond with Meredith is, he says, "a hardwired circuitry of Midwestern steadiness to maintain the balance." Though he knows he is a high-profile patient, he is determined to have a low-profile demeanor. He manages to keep his sense of humor during the darkest times, such as when he is walking up Lexington Avenue on a cold and windy day with a failing hearing-aid battery. As he tucks himself up against a falafel stand to replace it, he laughs aloud at himself. "Here you are, Brokaw, sick with cancer, trying to learn to walk again, bedeviled by a hearing aid battery, and not even the falafel vendor cares. You're really pathetic." Meeting with experts at the Mayo Clinic, where he is on the board, and at Memorial Sloan Kettering, he begins to understand the dilemmas that patients routinely face, not least what to believe when doctors give c onflicting advice and how to demystify the aura that surrounds medicine. As he once t old graduates at the Mayo Medical School in a commencement speech: "Most patients enter a doctor's office or hospital as if it were a Mayan temple, representing an ancient a nd mysterious culture with no language in common with the visitor." He urges doctors to solve the communica- tion problem and advises patients to find a personal ombudsman, a physician not directly involved in the treatment who can help them interpret a primary caregiver's approach. He is blunt about ObamaCare, saying it is "too complicated and too wide- ranging." He casts blame on Democrats for fumbling the structure of the plan and Republicans for not coming up with "a comprehensive bill of their own." Like so many patients, Brokaw finds that not all his doctors have a bedside manner; one with a particularly impressive résumé has a brusque style and little time for face-to-face consultation. What irks Brokaw most is a broader problem — the lack of coordinated care among physicians. He reminds patients to ask questions: "Am I making the progress expected? Are all the members of my treatment team working together?" O ne of the worst aspects of any severe illness is the feeling of being sidelined from a n active life. Brokaw laments the inability to race off to the scene of a breaking story — something he continued to do as a special correspondent after leaving the NBC a nchor chair in 2004. But he mustered all his strength to get to an event he simply couldn't miss: the 2014 commemorations in Normandy marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Throughout his illness, Brokaw reminds himself to keep his life in perspective: "I wasn't getting off a landing craft in heavy surf at dawn to face murderous fire with the odds short that I would survive 15 minutes." It's the kind of insight that is typical of Brokaw's approach to life and now to illness. Surely he will have cause to remember it again next year and for many D-Day anniversaries to come. — Laura Landro Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal Copyright © 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. License number 3632720981912. 22 The LandReport | S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 LANDREPORT.COM