Chapter One

How to Be a "Bad Patient"

You probably know Evan Handler as Harry Goldenblatt, Charlotte York's adorable, bald husband on Sex and the City, or as Charlie Runkle, the agent for David Duchovny's character on Californication. What you probably don't know is that Evan Handler was a "bad patient"-a patient so bad doctors dreaded him and nurses cursed him. But Handler swears that being a bad patient saved his life.

When Handler was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of twenty-three, his doctors told him he probably wouldn't survive, and so Handler eventually left those doctors and found others across the country who were more optimistic. When Handler was undergoing chemotherapy, a doctor yelled at him for calling about a fever because the fever was "only" 100 degrees. Handler fired him. "Doctors told me I would be endangering my care if I switched doctors, but that advice was criminal," he told me. He continued this "bad patient" behavior even after he recovered from cancer. "Recently I needed to have something in my mouth looked at," Handler told me. "The doctor performed a biopsy without lidocaine-just put a blade in my mouth and cut without telling me. I never went back, and I wrote him a three-page letter. You should leave a bad doctor and, if you have the energy, tell him why you left."

Several times in the hospital when he was in his twenties, nurses tried to give Handler a medication that his doctor had absolutely forbidden, and he had to argue with the nurses each time to stop them from administering the dangerous drug. Once, a nurse gave him an intravenous medicine that was meant for another patient-the other patient's name was right there on the bag-and Handler was the one to...