I'm Chris McLaughlin. I am a radiation oncologist here at the University of Virginia Cancer Center. I specialize in treating head and neck cancer and prostate cancer. And that involves not only doing x-ray treatments to those areas, but I also do a lot of something called brachytherapy, which is kind of a radiation implant, almost like a surgery, but just using needles, and it allows us to deliver radiation internally.

I see adult patients, although sometimes children as well, who present with these kinds of diseases, and I see them before they get any treatment, during their entire treatment course with radiation, and really get to know them and see them for months and often years after their treatment. I really love being invited into others' lives at very hard times when they're struggling with something enormous and life-changing. With UVA, we have that advantage of having all of your physicians, all of your cancer physicians, working together and communicating and collaborating each day.