The Team

Cancer is not a do-it-yourself project. Steve Jobs already tried that. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. You need a team.

The way I look at it, you are not the team captain. You are the owner. The team captain is most likely your oncologist. They are the experts in this game. They know the competition the best, they understand all the plays and likelihood of what works for your situation, and they will do their best to bring you a win.

Now this can get tricky. For instance, I’ve had my lifetime dosage of Adriamycin because it’s so potent it compromises your heart. So now, I need a cardio-electrician. Also if you get enough scar tissue and fluid in your lungs – at one point they were pumping 1 1/3 quarts out of each lung every other week – you need a pulmonologist. And then of course I have a bevy of surgeons for taking stuff out, like organs, biopsies, bone marrow and lymph nodes, as well as putting things in, like draining hoses and pacemakers.

Some of these folks come in for only one period. In that case you can still have your oncologist be the captain. But if you keep sending them in, you need an overall captain who can help you on the big picture.

For me that is my internist. Her job is to take care of the rest of me. As my first oncologist said, “Just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you can’t get a cold.” (More on that in another blog.) Also, she’s watching all the individual plays to draw connections between actions and monitor results. Is my shortness of breath due to fluid in the lungs or the afib meds? It’s always good to have all the stats in one place, not on six different spreadsheets. You can’t have a strong strategy without the big picture.

Now the reason we are not the captains of our own teams is because we cannot do it all. And after 45 years in the business world, albeit 20 of them on the nonprofit side, I've learned the power is always with the purse. I say this to reinforce the fact that you are consuming - ie. paying for - all these services so that makes you charge. You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t even want to be the smartest guy in the room – if that’s the case you screwed up on the team draft. But you know you best. You know if, like me, you are totally grossed out by needles, you want to get a port ASAP. You know if you don’t feel right. You know what’s important to you. You are the ultimate decision-maker.

For example, after a mastectomy will you get implants or not? There is no “right answer.” I can make the case both ways, but you need to decide. Not the doctors. Or anyone else.

Let me address the draft. You don’t even have to pick the doctor yourself. Some of my best doctors have been luck-of-the-draw, and that’s fine. Happily, there are so many more good doctors out there than bad. But you have to trust them. You have to bond. That doesn’t mean they are your best friend or even friendly. I actually prefer no sugar coating. Reality now. Serenity later. I don’t have time to waste. But you have to feel the connection. And if the fit isn’t there, do what any good owner would do – fire them.

The only time I actually selected an oncologist by myself was cancer #3. He was listed as one of the best and some cancer survivor friends corroborated it. He and I were convinced that #3 was the result of radiation from #2 because research was coming out that people with lymphoma who got mantel radiation came up with breast cancer about 25 years later. (Remember this was 1980s radiation, not what they do today.) We just had to treat and get rid of this and be on our merry way.

So when that fluid I remembered from cancer #1 was in my lungs again, I knew it was back. I told him, “The cancer’s back” and he said, “No it’s not.” Instead of listening to me and ordering a scan, he handed me an X-ray script, which of course only showed fluid on the lungs. I contacted the thoracic surgeon I had for a lung issue and got my own biopsies. His reaction was only, “Well, we need to start chemo.” He was off the team!

The lesson is, you have the power. The stakes are high. You don’t have to put up with anyone on the team who does not listen to you or subscribe to your agenda. Like you, everyone on the team has one goal – beating the cancer.