The sudden death last week of oncologist and all around media personality, Dr. Robert Buckman, during a flight from the U.K. to Toronto, left a large hole in the hearts of countless people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Writing in the Guardian, noted comedian and director, Terry Jones, reminisced that Rob had spent his final days making a series of short films in London. “We were working on them together, and Rob was his usual irrepressible self, full of good humour, jokes and kindness. On Sunday the whole film crew had lunch in a pub, and Rob left to catch the flight to Toronto on which he died. The films, ironically, are called ‘Top Ten Tips for Health’.”

Whether you were a colleague, a close friend, one of Rob’s countless patients, or simply a follower of his prolific newspaper columns, books, lectures, or radio and television appearances, you felt the same deep sense of loss at his untimely passing at the age of 63.

Yet, I suspect that if he could come back, Rob would dig into his deep bag of humour, reminding us of what he wrote in his 1999 “unauthorized” biography, Not Dead Yet : “At my funeral, they’re going to play a recording of me saying, ‘Thank you so much for coming. Unlike the rest of you, I don’t have to get up in the morning.’” Then he might quip that death was merely nature’s way of telling him to slow down.

In truth, his body had been slowing down for decades, the result of severe auto-immune disease . But, rather than indulging in self-pity, he fought back with a wide assortment of innate gifts: comedy (listen to his priceless confession to the CBC’s Vicky Gabereau about his illicit relationship with Canadian Tire ), the written word, empathy, a strong commitment to ethics and human rights, and a passion to teach, all carried out with a brilliance and joie de vivre that made the world a much better place.

Always aware of his mortality, he was determined to make every day count. And indeed he did. The man was an absolute whirling dervish: one moment he was treating breast cancer patients at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital, the next he was finishing his latest book…or appearing on CTV’s Canada A.M. to discuss a current health topic…or hopping a plane to who knows where…or….

Whatever he did, or wherever he went, it is clear from all the tributes written since his death that Rob was beloved, always making a lasting impression on those who knew or met him. Let me tell you about my own unforgettable day with him many years ago at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital (RMH).

In the early 70’s, I spent a year in oncology at the RMH with Drs. David Galton and Eve Wiltshaw. Eleven years later, in 1982, I returned to take part in a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the famed hospital’s chemotherapy department. A series of lectures had been arranged to mark the occasion. Delighted that I could attend the event, Eve was gracious enough to let me stay at her flat in central London.

After Sunday dinner, she turned on “the telly”, eager to watch Dr. Rob Buckman, one of her then current registrars (medical residents). He was appearing that night in a BBC comedy show about hospital interns that he had also written.

“Have you heard of him?” she asked as the show started. I had not. Between laughs at Rob’s zany antics, Eve proceeded to fill me in.

A Cambridge University colleague of Monty Python’s John Cleese (with whom he collaborated over the years), Buckman was multi-talented: a writer, performer, medical researcher and physician. Two years earlier, while a registrar at the RMH, he had become seriously ill, but was now recovered and had resumed his medical and performing careers. He would be speaking the next day at the “celebration”. I looked forward to hearing him.

Now, all these years later, of the many talks presented, the only one I remember is Rob’s (that’s him in the picture I took; dig that suit!!). To a hushed room, he employed a heavy dose of humour while painfully chronicling his year-long battle with acute dermatomyositis, an uncommon disease caused by an immune system attack on small blood vessels in the skin, muscles and other organs.

Rob’s case was one of the most serious his doctors had seen; when heavy doses of immunosuppressive drugs failed, he faced the distinct possibility that he would die. Luckily, last-ditch plasma transfusions helped him recover.

Soon after, he wrote and starred in Your Own Worst Enemy, a TV documentary about his harrowing experience (a review in the British Medical Journal was laudatory: “Dr Rob Buckman's story of his dermatomyositis, Your Own Worst Enemy…must rank as one of the great personal accounts of illness… What…may have struck viewers most was the remarkable resilience and objectivity of Dr Buckman in describing his own change from a very active life in several spheres to a state of near dependence on others and to what he called a monochrome view of all around him.”).

Years later, after moving to Canada (how lucky were we?), and with great humour as only he could muster, Rob told TV Ontario’s Allan Gregg about that near-death experience and how it affected his own approach to terminally ill patients, eventually leading him to write How To Break Bad News: A Guide for Healthcare Professionals. “What my [illness] did was make me braver about talking to patients. So, even though I was quite a supportive doctor before, I was a little bit frightened the patient would be experiencing something I didn't know anything about. After I'd been seriously sick myself and after I realized my personality didn't fall to pieces like a wet Kleenex, I got braver," he explained.

Listening to that interview, I reflected on how privileged I had been to hear a much younger Rob, having just regained his health, describe the ordeal that changed him, and us, forever. While his life was all too short, it was truly well lived