www.providence.org/together16 | PROVIDENCE TOGETHER16 | PROVIDENCE TOGETHER www.providence.org/together

By ROB ODOm

PHOTOs By JIm LOmmassON

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Patients and families often form close bonds with the people who care for them during tough times. Physicians and nurses become

friends and family over the course of treatment, sharing in both the challenges and personal triumphs that accompany a cancer diagnosis.

Those relationships continue.

Today, former patients and their families are working together with physicians and scientists to offer hope to future cancer patients through new research. Together, they are thoughtfully planning every detail of new facilities designed to make the cancer journey easier with environments designed to heal body and soul.

Meet some of the families who are reaching out to others at Providence Cancer Center. > > >

18 | PROVIDENCE TOGETHER www.providence.org/together

Fit to fight

A t 48 years old, Bill Gray was in the kind of physical shape that most

men 15 years younger would envy. He was a biker, a skier, a runner – an all-around athlete. But for several months in 2002 he’d been bothered by fatigue and experi-enced an abrupt onset of abdominal pain. A visit to his doctor, David Silver, M.D., at Providence Milwaukie Hospital revealed that he had advanced kidney cancer. Like many kidney cancers, it had gone unnoticed and undetected while it had spread to his liver, his lungs and his lymph glands. The diagnosis was so grim that Gray and his wife, Ann, refused to see the diagnostic scans.

“We just felt that if we saw it, it would devastate us, and maybe we would lose some of that willingness to fight,” Ann Gray remembers. “For us, the right deci-sion was to say, ‘Yes, we have it, but we’re going to pick the best doctors we can find and figure out what we can do about this.’”

Stephen Bader, M.D., a Providence radi-ation oncologist, lives near the Gray family in Portland’s Eastmoreland neighborhood and was one of the first friends the Grays consulted. He and Dr. Silver recognized immediately that extraordinary measures

would need to be taken to save Gray’s life. Together, they put the couple in touch with medical oncologist Brendan Curti, M.D., a Providence cancer researcher and a leading expert in kidney cancer who had just joined the Providence Cancer Center team in May 2002.

Dr. Curti helped expand the Biotherapy Program at Providence using FDA-approved interleukin-2 (IL-2) treatments for patients with kidney cancer and melanoma. “Bill quickly learned that interleukin-2 was the only known therapy that could possibly cure his cancer,” Dr. Bader says. “That can feel pretty overwhelming to some people, but Bill was ready to go. He wanted to get on with it.”

The buddy system

Old friends from the neighborhood moved into action and began conducting their own research on the Internet and on the phone. John McCracken started e-mail-ing updates to old college buddies, church friends and business colleagues to keep everybody informed. One core group of friends was headquartered at Tumac Lumber Company. Bill Gray was then Tumac’s chairman of the board.

“Bill was like the big brother at the

company,” remembers Brad McMurchie, Tumac’s CEO and another childhood friend. “He was the senior guy, and every-body looked up to him.”

In fact, Bill Gray had been the first of several young men from the close-knit Eastmoreland neighborhood to join Tumac as the company grew. Paul McCracken, John McCracken’s father, had founded the company with Bill MacPherson. During a period of about 20 years, the Eastmoreland crew at Tumac that included Gray grew to include McMurchie, Tom Gustafson and Mark Williams. Together with Kyle Meisner, they strengthened company sales in inter-national markets. Today, the locally grown, employee-owned company surpasses $350 million in annual revenue.

When Gray shared the news of his diagnosis shortly after Thanksgiving 2002, his team of close friends and family put their connections and ingenuity to work to ensure he received the best possible care. The Grays were already assembling their team at Providence.

“We checked with everyone we knew, and family members called some of the top cancer centers in places like New York and Texas,” says McMurchie. “They all

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said, ‘Providence is the perfect place to be. They’re doing things with immunotherapy that they’re only doing at about 25 places in the country.’”

As Gray prepared to be hospitalized for treatment, Ann set up a schedule so that he would have the company of friends and family – including his parents Bill and Adele – around the clock. Childhood friends Jim Peterson and John Norville would help Gray walk the halls to keep up his strength and read to him when he was too weak to get out of bed.

Soon Gray, the former star college ath-lete and avid outdoorsman, was working to set a different record – a much more important one this time. In one year’s time, he would withstand eight rounds of IL-2 treatment with Dr. Curti – more than anyone on the West Coast had undergone at that time.

Creating time and space

Nearly 1.4 million families in the United States – and 18,000 families in Oregon – struggle with new cancer diagnoses each year. More than half of the patients will be cured with standard treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation ther-apy. Others will require more aggressive

treatments and more frequent hospitaliza-tions to help them live longer and better with loved ones as they battle their disease.

Like Ann Gray, Jeannie Williams knows firsthand what it means to stay by a hus-band’s bedside 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while he undergoes cancer treatment. She and her husband, Del Williams, came to Providence in 2005 when they learned IL-2 therapy offered the best hope for man-aging his cancer.

“We were virtually given no time and not much hope when my husband was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma,” Jeannie Williams says. “It was pretty much, ‘Go home and get your life in order.’ Then we came to Providence and were referred to Dr. Curti, who gave us all kinds of hope – not to cure the disease but to have some more time.”

As a leading national expert in treating advanced melanoma, kidney cancer and other cancers, Dr. Curti is helping patients by stimulating the body’s own immune system to attack tumors. He and other researchers at the Robert W. Franz Cancer Research Center in the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute are now investigating ways to use immunother-apy for other cancers, such as lung cancer and colorectal cancer.

“With immunotherapy, we have an impor-tant tool for extending patients’ lives and even, in some cases, curing cancers,” Dr. Curti explains. “Immunotherapy also can be used in combination with standard therapies such as chemotherapy and radia-tion therapy. That gives us yet another way of slowing and preventing the spread of disease.”

Del Williams endured fever, chills, muscle aches, nausea, skin rashes and other treatment side effects that required long periods of hospitalization. Jeannie brought in their wedding and family photos, bed-ding and Del’s beloved University of Oregon Ducks paraphernalia from home to make him feel more comfortable.

“Even though you’re going through a horrific time, that’s the time that you have together,” Williams says. “You want it to be pleasant, you want it to be nurturing, and you want your family and friends there when you have good days.”

New care facilities at Providence Portland Medical Center and Providence St. Vincent Medical Center have been designed to offer cancer patients and their families an unprecedented level of comfort and support. In both new facilities, all cancer services are gathered under one roof to eliminate the need to travel during > > >

A life well lived. Opposite page, left:

Bill Gray, age 10 (far right), is joined by

fellow Eastmoreland Cub Scouts (from

left to right) John Norville, Scott Corbett,

John McCracken, and Bruce Freeman;

Bill Gray (top) with family members

Liz Gray and (seated, left to right) Karen

Keefer, Adele and Bill Gray, and Jennifer

Arbanas; right: Nine months of remis-

sion following Bill Gray’s successful

treatment with IL-2 included a summer

spent vacationing on the Oregon Coast

with son, Mark, daughter, Liza, and Ann.

This page: Today, friends of Bill Gray at

Tumac Lumber Company (left to right)

Mark Williams, Brad McMurchie, Tom

Gustafson and Kyle Meisner stay active

physically and are helping to organize a

cancer research fund in his honor.

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“I said, ‘Wait a minute. Whoa – time-out. I can tell you from experience, that thing is not okay. I’ve slept on it, and it doesn’t work.’” Instead, the team chose an armchair that not only is comfortable but also folds out into a bed.

“You can ask me my opinion, and I will tell you,” Williams says. “I have so much personal drive to do the right thing, because I’ve been through it.”

Williams saw Del get through the worst side effects and emerge with an extended lease on life. After weeks of therapy, he went home from the hospital, picked up life where he left off, and went back to work as a fire and arson investigator, a trainer and an educator – jobs he loved. Ultimately, the cancer returned, and Del died in November 2006.

Was it worth the fight? To Jeannie Williams, the answer is obvious. She points to a photo of three boys under 10 years old that sits in her office. Del had the same photo in his hospital room.

“That’s why,” she says. “That’s what we get to see, enjoy and love. Those are our grandchildren, and that’s what Del’s life was all about – relationships. He was a

treatment, which itself can be a harrowing ordeal. For patients such as Del Williams, gathering services under one roof means much more than just a convenience. During his treatment, the short trip from his hospital bed across a parking lot to radiation oncology and back was the part of the day Del dreaded the most.

His wife remembers it clearly: “Transportation employees would come up to Del’s room, and they would get a wheelchair and put Del in it. He’d be chilled, so they’d wrap him up. Then they’d take him outside, and it would be raining, and the wind would be blowing.

“It doesn’t sound very awful when you’ve never experienced it, but when you have a feeding tube, you’ve got IVs, and you’re a delicate individual – what does it mean to go over a one-inch bump? It’s horrific, is what I can tell you. When everything in your body is aching to the point where you can hardly stand sunlight, going over one bump is very painful. So to have every-thing in one building will be a godsend.”

Built by people who know

Today, Jeannie Williams is part of a team that includes former patients, fam-ily members, physicians, researchers, nurses, community leaders, architects and administrators. That team has one very important goal – to help cancer patients live life to its fullest. And together they’re

building an 11-story, state-of-the-art facil-ity opening in early 2008.

“When Del was diagnosed with advanced melanoma in 2005, I retired to take care of him full time,” Williams says. “Together we saw them break ground on the new cancer center building, and before he passed away he told me, ‘I want you to go forward. I want you to be a part of that.’ He knew there wasn’t time for him to see it finished, but his heart is in that building. Now mine is, too.”

Williams is putting her 36 years of pro-fessional health care experience to work – literally – for Providence Cancer Center. Now a senior capital and projects buyer in the Materials Management Department at Providence, she is part of the team that works with vendors and suppliers for the new building. The job became available dur-ing Del’s treatment, and Del and the nurses all encouraged her to apply. Everything from blood pressure cuffs and operating room tables to highly sophisticated medical equipment, such as Gamma Knife Perfexion used for treating some types of brain tumors – “everything that you touch” – is bought by Williams’ department.

Because of her experience with Del, anticipating the needs of patients and their families has become a personal mission for Williams. In her first weeks on the job, a vendor showed her a chair for a patient room that stopped her in her tracks.

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people magnet; everyone was drawn to him because of his kindness. When he was back in the hospital, the nurses would argue over who got to take care of him. I knew why they were saying they wanted him. I wanted him, too.

“He was a great guy. And we fought hard. We fought as hard as could be, and he went through a lot, and he succumbed. But we got a lot longer than we were given in the beginning, so we are forever grateful for that.”

Sharing gifts of hope

“Some patients, like Del Williams and Bill Gray, have a strong response to immu-notherapy in combination with standard

cancer therapies,” says Dr. Curti. “And there are a few patients who have long-term cures, so that is always the hope.

“In Bill Gray’s case, the treatment was effective in that if you were to ask the treat-ing urologist 10 years ago, a patient with advanced kidney cancer would have had a life expectancy of about six months. Yet, after six to eight months of treatment, Bill was responding well, he was starting to feel better. His disease was regressing, and as it regressed he was able to travel, he was able to play golf. He had 10 months without any evidence of disease. That was a blessing.”

Though Gray’s cancer returned, his treatment allowed him to see his children continue to grow up. “Our son, Mark,

What is IL-2?

PROVIDENCE TOGETHER | 21

was a sophomore in high school, and our daughter, Liza, was in the eighth grade,” Ann Gray says. “Bill’s attitude was that he owed it to himself and to his family to do whatever was possible. It was worth it. It bought us more time.”

After Gray’s death in early 2006, Providence Cancer Center received a record number of gifts in his memory from family, church friends, fraternity brothers, college friends, old sports teammates and business colleagues. With additional sup-port from the families of Ann Gray, Brad and Julie McMurchie, and Mark and Tracy Williams, as well as Tumac Lumber Company, Providence Portland Medical Foundation established the > > >

Friends and family meant everything. (Left to right)

Del Williams, age 7, a student at Maple Elementary

School in Springfield; with wife Jeannie at a 2003

Oregon Ducks game; with son Luke in 1999 and

(inset) fishing with grandsons Dylan and Tyler in April

2006. This page: Del visits with nurses Nina Beach,

R.N., BSN, and Lyn Glenn, M.N., FNP-C, AOCN, during

treatment in September 2006.

Stimulating the body’s own immune system to fight cancer, interleukin-2 (IL-2) is the only known curative therapy for patients with metastatic kidney cancer and metastatic melanoma. Brendan Curti, M.D., director of genitourinary cancer research at the Robert W. Franz Cancer Research Center in the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, is now studying further applications of IL-2 and related compounds to these and other cancers.

William Gray Cancer Research Fund as a perpetual resource for the Franz Cancer Research Center’s efforts in developing new clinical trials for cancer.

“Cancer research doesn’t succeed without guys like Bill Gray,” says McMurchie. “Bill was such a fighter. He was so tenacious in his desire to beat the disease that he was just going to take whatever they could throw at him, for as long as they would throw it at him. So part of the reason behind the fund is honoring Bill and rec-ognizing how much of a role the patient plays in the success of cancer research.

“Bill referred to his fight with cancer as a battle,” says Ann Gray, “and throughout those four years that’s what it became – small battles and large ones with many victories that were physical, emotional and spiritual. If we can help others with their own personal battles through the William Gray Cancer Research Fund, I know Bill would be pleased.”

The Bill Gray Central Courtyard Garden at the new Providence Cancer Center building at Providence Portland

Above: Research is a major focus of the new Providence Cancer Center. (Left to

right) Robert W. Franz Cancer Research Center Leadership Cabinet member Brad

McMurchie meets research director Walter Urba, M.D., Ph.D., and Providence

Cancer Center executive director Calvin Harrison.

Below: Planting seeds of hope. (Left to right) Ann Gray and Jeannie Williams with

landscape architect Carol Mayer-Reed, FASLA, at Portland Nursery. “Just as we’re

concerned about where people will be comfortable in a garden, we’re concerned

about where plants are comfortable and can grow,” Mayer-Reed says about the

design of the Bill Gray Central Courtyard Garden.

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Medical Center will honor his memory. Here, patients and families will find spaces for rest, comfort and celebration. During

her own husband’s battle with cancer, Ann Gray worked with landscape architect Rick Serazin on a home garden that would offer him some relief. Today, she is talking with landscape archi-tect Carol Mayer-Reed about

ways to enliven the Providence Cancer Center terraces, courtyards and outdoor spaces with native foliage and fountains.

Patients who mark time by noticing the changing foliage will be delighted, as Bill Gray once was, to see the first white trillium blooms emerge each spring. The plant’s pure white petals and rich, green leaves float above the surrounding under-growth on long, elegant stems. Planted in the shady nooks in the garden at the new Providence Cancer Center, these brilliant flowers will be among the first signs visitors see that the long, fallow period of winter is over and that a new season of hope and renewal has arrived. n

The new Providence Cancer Center building on the Providence Portland Medical Center campus is designed to help patients and their families feel more at home during cancer treatment. Large

extended-stay rooms, family rooms, kitchen and laundry facilities, and other amenities give patients the support they need to live well as they fight their cancer.

In the new cancer center, patients and families will be within a quick elevator ride of radiation therapy, diagnostic imaging services, physician offices, outpatient infusion for chemotherapy, the Integrative Medicine Program, a health spa, support groups, individual counseling services and the Jill Lematta Learning Center, which is staffed by navigators with the latest educational resources at their fingertips.

That convenience will mean a great deal to patients at a major cancer center such as Providence, where the number of services alone can be dizzying, especially for someone who is already frail. “Cancer is a disease more of the elderly than the young,” says medical oncologist Walter Urba, M.D., Ph.D., who is physician director of research for Providence. “It’s uncommon for cancer to be a patient’s only medical problem. And too often you come to this big, huge facility, and you need to see surgeons and medical oncologists and radiation oncologists – and you need X-rays, you need blood work, and you need an EKG – and you need counseling and you need to go to the finance office – and all of these services are all over the place.”

Providence Cancer Center executive director Calvin Harrison, who spearheaded the new construction, says Providence is meeting a growing need for cancer services. “Major medical care is becoming too daunting for patients. On the one hand we need to be big, because we serve more patients than any other cancer center in Oregon – and that population is growing,” says Harrison. “On the other hand, we can make their journey easier by bringing everything together under one roof with the new cancer building.”

ANN GRAyWhy ‘one building’ matters

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’’

‘‘ Bill referred to his

fight with cancer as

a battle...small battles

and large ones with

many victories that were

physical, emotional and

spiritual. If we can help

others with their own

personal battles through

the William Gray Cancer

Research Fund, I know

Bill would be pleased.