For Whom We Care

Ladies and gentleman, members and guests, it has been compete with all the younger, brighter premeds. I worked an honor and a pleasure to serve as your president for the in a lab part-time where my future wife was the head research past year. Not that every moment has been perfect after all technician. On one particularly bad day during midterm exI did have to sit down and write this talk and although it is ams, she announced in front of the whole crew that Professor well known that I usually talk too much, writing a formal Milkman had told her that I was the smartest student in his speech was a new experience for me. I read many of the 200/ zoology class. What a confidence builder. It’s been previous presidential addresses, talked to friends and foes, like that ever since. Anything I have accomplished is as and finally settled on a subject that I know and espouse to much hers as mine. Thank you, dear. make it easy for me but more importantly to praise you. I must also thank my father who is here today and my Before I give my talk ‘‘For Whom We Care’’ I have two eight brothers and sister for their lifelong love and support. groups that I must publicly thank: my lifelong mentors and Tonja and I have two wonderful children, Steve and Ellen, those who have done the lions share of the work during the who as adults remain our best friends. We are very fortunate. past year. Finally are my teachers, mentors, partners, and friends. A I am a physician today because of the nurturing and supvery heartfelt thank you to the late Stu Massad, Sr, who port given to me by the two most important women in my guided me in my original career choice and helped me or I life, my mother and my wife. My mother was a working should say got me an interview at Duke for residency. To nurse who raised nine children. She never explicitly said Roy Parker, my second father, who taught me about patients ‘‘Stephen, I want you to be a doctor,’’ but in reflecting on as people and made me a better writer and scholar. To Bill my life I must say that I had so much love and respect for Creasman who sparked my interested in gynecologic oncolher that I had to do it; anything less would have been a ogy, always taught in a positive pleasant atmosphere, got failure. She was a nurse’s nurse, a night nurse, in my mind me my fellowship at M. D. Anderson, and has remained a one of the hardest professions of all. When I told her I was lifelong friend. To Julian Smith, the best diagnostician I ever going to M. D. Anderson to train in oncology, she told me met, who fostered my interest in chemotherapy. To Chuck never to take the catheter out of a radical vulvectomy patient Hammond who put me on the map via hydatidiform mole. in the evening. It’s so hard to get it back in the middle of To my senior fellows, the late Tom Day and Peter Schwartz, the night. A terrific lesson from my wise mother that I have and my cofellows, Gary Krepart and Bob Stanhope. passed on: ‘‘always do things early in the day so that all the Now you would think that after having been exposed to help you need is available if anything goes wrong.’’ The such great people I would be fully prepared to practice gyneday she died the cardiologist told her he was going to give cologic oncology, but the person who taught me the most her 2 mg of morphine for pain and she said, ‘‘Doc, you and showed me the best system of care was Rod Mortel. I know the dose is at least 6 mg,’’ turned to my father and am forever in his debt. I remember my very first day at Penn said goodbye. She did it her way. State. I was scheduled to have a 2-hr meeting with him first Equally important is my wife of 292 years, Tonja. All of thing in the morning. I expected that since he had trained at you who know me realize that she has put up with and Memorial and I was going to work for him he would tell supported me for all those years. I was a college dropout me how things were done and I would follow. Instead he who after 4 years in the service went back to school. During said this: ‘‘Steve, you trained in one system and I in the the first year I was very concerned about whether I could other. Let’s put the best of each together into our system.