Doctor's "Life in the Balance"

If you were struck by the misfortune of heart disease a decade ago, you would have wanted Dr. Thomas Graboys to treat you.

One former colleague sums him up this way, "You're made a doctor and you're born a doctor. Tom was born a doctor."

Bernard Lown, founder of the Lown Cardiovascular Group adds, "You have to love people in order to love the art of medicine, to be good at it, and Tom was the embodiment of that."

A nationally recognized Boston area cardiologist, a leader at the Lown Group, and once a part of "The Cardiology Dream Team," Dr. Graboys was at the height of his career when he came down with an aggressive form of Parkinson's disease.

15 years later, Dr. Graboys has had to leave his practice and his positions at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

He wants to bring hope to others by telling his story in a candid new book, "Life in the Balance: A Physician's Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with Parkinson's Disease and Dementia."

WBUR's Bob Oakes joined Dr. Graboys and his wife, Vicki, at their home in Chestnut Hill. They started by talking about why he wanted to tell his story.

Audio for this story will be available on WBUR's web site later today.