{"id":1923,"date":"2013-07-22T16:04:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T20:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2025-12-10T10:34:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T15:34:38","slug":"tom-roberts-70-fighting-spirit-healing-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2013\/07\/22\/tom-roberts-70-fighting-spirit-healing-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Roberts \u201970: Fighting Spirit, Healing Words"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photo<\/a>
Dr. Tom Roberts \u201970, during his visit to campus last spring.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Steve Charles<\/em>\u2014A week ago last Friday I received one of those family phone calls you dread. My little brother tried to break the news with a joke\u2014\u201cI\u2019ve got something in my brain and it rhymes with \u2018rumor.\u2019\u201d Pause.<\/p>\n

I felt a kick in the gut, then fear, then anger, which I expressed with an expletive, and then I asked a terrible question\u2014\u201cAre you scared?\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the response you hope to give a brother at a time of need. I\u2019m not proud of it, but I understand it: Our mom died of lung cancer 30 years ago, and for her kids, a cancer diagnosis carries a single outcome and a series painful disappointments to get there.<\/p>\n

A half-hour after the phone call, though, I was able to write something true and hopeful to my brother, \u00a0thanks to a conversation I\u2019d had with a former Wabash chemistry major, Dr. Tom Roberts \u201970, in April, for a story for this fall\u2019s Wabash Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tom had been on campus to reflect upon the implications of the new generation of \u201csmart drugs\u201d being used to fight and manage cancer. He and his team helped develop one of those drugs\u2014Gleevec\u2014at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard, and we\u2019ve been following his progress since before those pills were featured on the cover<\/a> of TIME Magazine<\/em> in 2001 (The current issue has another story on the drugs\u2019 success, “The End of Chemo.”<\/a>).<\/p>\n

At his noontime talk last spring Tom described how these drugs turn off molecular cancer triggers in tumors and prevent their growth, how a similar approach is being\u00a0 applied to more complex cancers than the relatively rare tumors Gleevec successfully treats, how tumors mutate and the ways drugs must adapt to stem their growth, and how this approach could work for treating many cancers.<\/p>\n

So I was able to write honestly to my brother that I knew doctors who were beating cancer, that I\u2019d written stories about these guys, the targeted approaches they\u2019re using, and the lives they are saving. I said I wished these guys were around when mom was fighting this monster, but I\u2019m grateful they\u2019re here now that he\u2019s facing it.<\/p>\n

I could also tell him that the oncologists I\u2019d interviewed, like Gary Croghan \u201977<\/a> at the Mayo Clinic and Bob Witherspoon<\/a> at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, are compassionate men with a far better bedside manner and communication skills than the competent but emotionally distant oncologist that treated mom, a man my brother literally had to grab and hold in the hallway to get to talk with us.<\/p>\n

I could draw from the interview in which Bob Witherspoon described advances in bone marrow transplants for leukemia: “I\u2019ve had the great fortune to work in a field where we\u2019ve gone from not being able to cure these people to being able to cure them.”<\/p>\n

I remembered Gary Croghan (who treats the very type of lung cancer that killed my mom) describing meeting with his patients: \u201cYou meet with a patient for the first time for about an hour and a half. You\u2019re giving them the worst news they\u2019ve ever gotten in their lives. At the same time you\u2019re trying to gain their trust. You have to read the family dynamics, see who has coping skills and who doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s one of the toughest things we do.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ll explain the situation honestly, explain the options, and tell them that I\u2019m glad to try to help. When they learn the odds, I\u2019ll also tell them, \u2018Look, I couldn\u2019t do this job on a daily basis if I didn\u2019t see people beat the odds.\u2019”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve carried the words of Wabash men like a prayer.<\/p>\n

This morning I was thinking back on my conversation with Tom Roberts. He said his own vocation has changed over the years. A Hoosier farm kid like many of our Wabash scientists, he described himself as a \u201clab rat\u201d during his days at the College.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut something has changed,\u201d he said in his typically understated, self-effacing manner. \u201cWhen I was 12, and even when I came to Wabash, I wanted to be a scientist; I wanted to find out new things. Working at a cancer institute, though, and seeing all the kids with no hair, the adults, too, and seeing all that they are facing, at this point my emphasis is more practical. I really would like to help cure cancer. Certainly, hanging out in a cancer institute, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t respond to the problems of the patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

My brother\u2019s \u201cproblems\u201d may be just beginning, I know. He\u2019s made it through surgery, is working through some post-operative pain and waiting for the pathology report, reading the messages and prayers from the now-784 folks who have visited his Caring Bridge site. Once glance at the and you’ll know he’s the best our family\u2019s got; he’s the best fighter, too.<\/p>\n

Those of us who love him feel mostly helpless. Not much we can do but pray and write and talk and spend too much time researching medical sites on the Internet.<\/p>\n

At times like this, coming to work can seem the least relevant thing you can do. But this morning on my way to Wabash I found comfort, maybe even a tiny role in the process, working at a place that prepares the doctors and researchers who fight these battles alongside those facing cancer, a place which nurtures not only their technical skills and clarity of thinking, but also their empathy\u2014men who bring that \u201calways fights\u201d attitude to the battle, a battle I believe my family will win this time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Charles\u2014A week ago last Friday I received one of those family phone calls you dread. My little brother tried to break the news with a joke\u2014\u201cI\u2019ve got something in my brain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/07\/robertsbestlores.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3785,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/3785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}