Peter DaSilva for The New York Times  CALISTOGA, CALIF., MAY 27 Alia Creasey and Joshua Lilienstein at a Quaker-style ceremony at the Creasey family's weekend house, above and below.  OF all the lines that Dr. Alia Creasey imagined might hook her into her dream relationship, this was not one: “My hearing is not so good.”  Joshua Lilienstein followed those words with a gesture toward his hearing aids and an explanation: “Too much Cisplatin.”  Like him, Dr. Creasey was a third-year medical student just starting a rotation at a family medical clinic in Manhattan. She immediately grasped that Cisplatin is a chemotherapy drug that can cause hearing loss.  As Mr. Lilienstein went about orienting Dr. Creasey to the office computers in March 2010, she couldn’t help but be curious about why he had been on this toxic regimen.  Although her career path seemed set, other areas of Dr. Creasey’s life were less directed. She’d been dating a nice guy, but with boyfriends she’d always been the caring and giving one — qualities that shone in doctoring, but often toppled relationships.  Inside, she was flooded with questions: What kind of cancer? How long ago? Mr. Lilienstein, now 31 and in remission but wrestling with the aftermath, had many, too: How not to have shame after such an illness? How to be honest but not distort new relationships with “the cancer card?”  With the computers conquered, he suggested lunch. Over bad deli wraps, he outlined his fight against the testicular cancer that had been discovered in his first year at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine: 19 grueling rounds of chemotherapy, three surgeries. The most recent surgery turned out to be a do-it-or-die moment for him.  As he spoke, she thought how it took courage to reveal something so personal. “It was a rare course of cancer,” she said. “But Josh’s positive attitude was rarer still.”  Then there was the matter of his eyes. “Clear pools of sea green,” remembered Dr. Creasey, now 30 and a graduate last month of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She came away professionally intrigued and personally impressed.  Removing cancer from center stage, Mr. Lilienstein, known for his appreciation for beautiful women, wanted to know more about this colleague with the sexy dimples and stunning smile. “I’m hard of hearing, but I wasn’t blind,” he explained.  He discovered a mutual love of cooking and gardening, and a zeal for socializing. (So much so, that Dr. Creasey, an adept multitasker, was voted by her Mount Sinai class as “most likely to become a party planner” if medicine didn’t pan out.)  For Mr. Lilienstein, who had built a reputation for hosting parties during his cancer treatment, including one he called “metastatic madness,” the notion of partnering with someone with unquenchable thirst for fun was compelling. But he, too, was dating someone. It was serious but long distance.  That night, Dr. Creasey pulled up Mr. Lilienstein’s cancer blog. Along with graphic midsurgery photos, there were comic images, including one in which his family jokingly tried to remove what was left of his hair with a lint roller. She was mesmerized by Mr. Lilienstein’s inspired writing.  At the clinic, each found the other’s professional skills complementary. As the days ticked by, he concluded that this long-distance relationship he was clinging to was already over. For the first time since cancer, he could see his future — with Dr. Creasey — but kept this thought to himself.  Then after nine days of working together, and twice again as many soul-baring conversations, a shared dinner at Mr. Lilienstein’s apartment brought them to opposite ends of a couch. Amid the detritus of sushi and whiskey, he plunged into a heartfelt admission of his hopes for their relationship.  “You and I are incredible together; we could stay in our other relationships,” he said, leaving her an out. “But that would deny this connection.”  Dr. Creasey was caught off-guard.  Amanda Creasey, a sister, said that “as a late bloomer, Alia was unaccustomed to men being attracted to her.”  “She didn’t know Josh’s interest was romantic,” she added.  Dr. Creasey admitted as much to Mr. Lilienstein at the time. “I’d almost given up hope of a partner as emotional and direct as Josh,” she said.
He was willing to talk about his rare cancer, and she discovered his special positive attitude, rarer still.