Chipping Away At Cancer Cancer Is Curable - And Former House Speaker Jim Wright Is Living Proof
Amid the sordid tales and gloomy statistics that form our daily fare, here is a piece of great good news: Cancer is curable!
Conditioned from early youth to tremble at the mention of the very word, once virtually synonymous with death, we all can take heart.
Thanks to a small army of physicians and dedicated health-care professionals at the M.D. Anderson cancer center in Houston, Texans have a better chance than most others to survive the killer disease.
And thanks to the work of this pioneering Texas facility, people everywhere enjoy an ever-increasing survival rate.
Fifty-four years ago, farsighted members of the Texas Legislature created what ranks now, along with Sloan-Kettering of New York, as one of the two best-known cancer treatment centers on Earth. One of the original legislative sponsors was pharmacist Arthur Cato of Weatherford, Texas. When I wrote a story about Rep. Cato’s cancer treatment bill for a college newspaper in 1941, I never dreamed that almost exactly 50 years later I would be a beneficiary.
In December 1991, I discovered a small, malignant tumor at the base of my tongue. Dr. Helmuth Goepfert at M.D. Anderson saw me on a Tuesday. I can operate on Thursday morning, he said. A part of my tongue would have to be removed. I strove to conceal my fear, not knowing if I would be able to speak intelligibly.
Four weeks of radiation treatment followed the surgery. Then speech therapy. I’ve returned 15 times for checkups. Doctors tell me I have passed a magic milestone. Ninety percent of head and neck cancer recurrences develop in the first three years.
Fortunate to have health insurance, I was able to handle the cost of treatment without financial strain. But if I had been penniless, M.D. Anderson would have accepted me. My welcome and my treatment would have been exactly the same.
From its inception, this unique institution has had two missions: to research cures for cancer, and to treat any Texan, however poor, referred by a physician to its care. Last year the hospital performed $200 million in uncompensated services - treating cancer patients who could not pay.
The most outstanding feature, at least to me, is the attitude that the hospital’s personnel uniformly display to all the scared and hurting thousands of people, rich and poor, who enter its doors. On the desk of my late friend, Dr. Robert Moreton, who gave the last 35 years of his life to Anderson’s oncology program, stood a plaque with these words:
“A patient is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity.”
Dr. Charles LeMaistre, head of M.D. Anderson, calls what Texas taxpayers have put into this hospital over the years the most productive investment in medicine in the history of man.
The evidence is overwhelming. M.D. Anderson currently treats between 1,800 and 2,000 outpatients every day. It provides diagnostic services for other hospitals. Through work begun by Moreton, it now works with 15 radiation treatment centers throughout our state.
New medical technologies have sprung from its intellectual ferment to benefit cancer patients worldwide. Today hospitals transmit images of X-rays or pathologies over fiber-optic lines. The Houston facility is the epicenter of an ever-widening medical telecommunications network.
Indigent women in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley are screened routinely for cancer of the cervix. Slides are transmitted via television to M.D. Anderson for diagnosis. Patients in remote rural communities of West Texas and New Mexico go to local clinics and receive similar video-based services.
The beneficent uses of new medical discovery radiate outward from the Houston center to every corner of the globe. A recently perfected test for newborn infants is saving thousands of lives by detecting deadly nerve tumors of the brain, fatal if undetected but 85 percent curable when spotted within the first year.
Dr. Lester Peters, who supervised my radiation treatment, is developing a program to train technicians for other medical facilities. Soon he will return, after learning and serving in Houston, to share this experience with practitioners in his native Australia.
All that is done in this not-for-profit institution has a single objective: the good of the patient, the human creature afflicted with cancer. One primary focus is to make treatment, once financially prohibitive, affordable.
In the last 10 years, says LeMaistre, by dramatically increasing ambulatory care, we have cut costs to patients by two-thirds and to the hospital by one-third.
Another emphasis stresses the patient’s mental comfort. A volunteer network of current and former patients is available with information and understanding.
From my personal experience, the following:
* If you’re healthy, thank God. What a treasure you possess! Have regular check-ups. Don’t press your luck.
* If you smoke, quit now. Take my word: It isn’t worth it.
* If you receive a diagnosis of cancer, don’t panic. And don’t hesitate. The quicker you seek treatment, the better your chances.
* Hundreds of thousands of people have surmounted cancer. They know your concerns. They’re eager to help.
It’s curable. Rejoice!
MEMO: Jim Wright of Fort Worth, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.