Help Me Fight Prostate Cancer

Hello, family, friends, and colleagues,

As September nears, it is time for me to once again reach out to you to ask for your support in the fight against prostate cancer, by asking for a donation to the SEABLUE Run and Walk.

Prostate cancer continues to be the single leading malignancy in males in the US, and the second leading cause of cancer death. Zero Prostate Cancer is a nationwide organization assisting men and their loved ones navigate diagnosis and therapy.

Although I have retired from my professional career as a prostate cancer pathologist, I still have a strong personal reason for joining the cause. My father, Harold Raff, died in 1993 at the age of 80 from advanced prostate cancer. This year in his honor, I am proud to have created the RAFF’S RIDERS team for the SEABLUE event.

Please sponsor me and our team with a donation. Any amount is appreciated.

To donate, click here.

With deepest appreciation,

Les

In Memory of Lin Brehmer and Dr. Rebecca Blank. After Every Loss We Must Fight For More Wins. Please Read To The End.

Last July, my post was centered around the newly public cancer diagnoses of Lin Brehmer and Rebecca Blank. As everyone in Chicagoland knows, Lin, our local WXRT radio legend, succumbed to prostate cancer last month. This week, we learned that Dr. Blank, the incoming President of Northwestern University, has passed away from her “aggressive” cancer, which I have seen classified as pancreatic cancer.

Sadly, my campaign for a moment of radio silence in honor of Lin fell on deaf ears. Too many readers let me know that “dead air” was the last thing a radio pro like Brehmer would have wanted. My next request will be for NU’s men’s basketball Wildcats to win a few games in the NCAA March Madness Tournament to honor the University President who never got to be. Go Cats!

Prostatic cancer and pancreatic cancer are the two diseases that took my father and my sister. Each year tens of thousands of other Americans die of these two scourges. A thimbleful of DNA gone wrong, a pinpoint of genetic material led astray, and a person’s life and sometimes lifespan is indelibly altered.

I am not an eternal pessimist. All cancer news is not negative. Progress is being made in the multi-faceted battle against the disease. The very genes whose alterations begin the malignant process are now targets for therapies that can halt or reverse the course of the disease. Surgery and radiation treatments have become more focused in an attempt to minimize patient side effects and avoid damage to surrounding tissues. In fact, better treatment along with earlier diagnoses and a decrease in smoking rates have given us a remarkable 33% drop in cancer death rates over the last 30 years.

My friends with cancer histories are fighting strong and proud. This week I bowled with a prostate cancer survivor and played tennis with a kidney cancer warrior. I aspire to play half as well and be half as optimistic as either one of them. And my dear wife is 11 years past her melanoma diagnosis and treatment. I look forward to a day when all cancer patients can celebrate the same successes.

Those of you who know me well are aware that for many years I have been involved in the SEA Blue/Zero Prostate Cancer Walk and Run for Prostate Cancer Awareness. My involvement continues this year. If you are thinking of Lin or someone in your family who has been affected by prostate cancer and want to help prostate cancer patients please support our cause by clicking this link. (Please be aware the donation process currently only works from mobile phones. It does not work on desktop computers or tablets.) Any and all donations are appreciated.

And if you are a Northwestern alum and want to recognize Dr. Blank, a memorial fund exists at the University of Wisconsin, where she served as Chancellor for nine years.

The fight goes on!

Chicago’s Best Friend In The World Has Died. Lin Brehmer, I Will Miss You.

What a week. Jeff Beck. David Crosby. And now Lin. It’s the last of those that brings me closest to tears.

I can’t describe myself as a long-time WXRT listener. Back in the day (whatever that means) I spent more time with Steve Dahl and Garry Meier on the Loop and was an early disciple of the Stroud Crowd on the Drive. But in recent years whether listening to my office boom box or streaming at home, if I wanted music with a local source, it was WXRT for Chicago’s Finest Rock. And if it was “XRT it was most likely Lin Brehmer.

Lin played the same music as the other WXRT jocks, but his personality outshined all the others. Never one for understatement, any song he liked was the greatest song ever written. And of course, he was everyone’s best friend in the whole world. Who wouldn’t want to be best friends with a Chicago legend?

For a year or two my schedule at the lab revolved around Lin. No matter what I had scheduled, or what unscheduled fires I needed to extinguish, I was sure to be in my office listening to that old radio at 6:20 in the morning for Lin and Mary Dixon to play the three snippets of songs that comprised that day’s 3 for Free contest. My only reward for the dozen times I was the first to Tweet in the right answer was having Lin say my name on the air. It was lagniappe enough.

We exchanged direct messages over a few topics. Lin took issue with an email from ‘XRT program director Laura Duncan to new jock Annalisa that I “discovered.” But at the end of our back and forth, even Lin had to admit that the station played a limited number of prescribed tunes from artists such as the Cure and The Grateful Dead. And we disagreed over a particular song by the band Guster, with the band members themselves becoming involved in our Twitter conversation. At this sad time, I concede that battle to Lin.

Lin lost his life to prostate cancer. Regular readers of this blog know of my involvement personally, professionally, and philanthropically in the fight against prostate cancer. Men of a certain age, please get screened for this potential killer, whether by PSA or one of the myriad of other tests now available. None are perfect, all are better than doing nothing,

On Lin’s Bin, our superjock gave tongue-in-cheek responses to questions submitted by listeners. Disappointingly, Lin never answered any of the questions I submitted. Lin, I have one more question for you.

Are angels your best friends in the world now?

The Fight Against Cancer Never Rests. Northwestern’s Rebecca Blank and WXRT’s Lin Brehmer Have Revealed Their Battles.

Rebecca Blank and Lin Brehmer (Photos courtesy of Chicago Tribune)

Two days this week, two announcements that saddened me, one of which really shook me.

A 1975 Northwestern graduate, I wear the purple proudly. A family trip to Ryan Field for a football game is an annual event. So I was disheartened to read the email this week that Rebecca Blank, the incoming university president-elect at NU has stepped away from her role to face a battle with aggressive cancer. I wish her the best and trust that my alma mater will again find a top-notch academic to fill the role of university president.

The other notification has struck me more deeply. I missed the Tweet yesterday, spending a lovely afternoon on Lake Michigan, but this morning, the first news story I read was about WXRT radio guy Lin Brehmer. He too is stepping away for a while, taking a sabbatical from his role as the midday jock on my favorite radio station to begin chemotherapy for metastatic prostate cancer.

While I must concede that Rebecca Blank is just a name to me, Lin Brehmer has been a daily voice in my life for years. I would time my morning commute to be sure I was in the lab for “Three for Free,” the on-air trivia game orchestrated by Lin and Mary Dixon. A double-digit number of wins soothed my ego still bruised over long ago losses on Jeopardy! and It’s Academic.

And thanks to social media I am one of the thousands of listeners who have a bit of a relationship with Lin. He and I have Twitter bantered over Janet Jackson’s nomination to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, over an awful Guster song, and most recently over my allegation that the station program director required one Cure song per shift. “Just don’t play Friday I’m In Love on Fridays…”

As a pathologist specializing in the diagnosis of urologic diseases, I see about 5 cases of prostate cancer a day. While many, perhaps most, of those men do well, I still feel a sense of loss for each of those husbands, sons, and brothers whose prostate biopsy is under my microscope. I know their lives have changed. So it is for Lin. (No, he is not a patient of mine and I was not aware of his diagnosis or the previous treatment that he has revealed in his Tweet.)

Lin is always everyone’s best friend in the whole world. I know the wishes from all of those admirers are bringing him strength and leading to a successful outcome. I can’t wait to hear his voice on “XRT once more.

And just a final reminder to all of you. Men, ask your primary care physician to check your PSA level. Ladies, remind the men in your life. Just do it.

________________________________

The above is the opinion of the author and not UroPartners LLC.


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A Prostate Pathologist Pencil Pusher. Making a Better Diagnosis.

Tools of the trade.

Using a pencil in the laboratory? Absolutely verboten. If you write down something in the lab, make sure it’s in indelible ink, magic marker, or perhaps blood. Something, anything, that can’t be erased.

Does a tech need to make a change in what they see on an instrument printout? Our accreditation regulations (courtesy of the College of American Pathologists) are pretty strict:

  • Original (erroneous) entries must be visible (ie, erasures and correction fluid or tape are unacceptable) or accessible (eg, audit trail for electronic records).
  • Corrected data, including the identity of the person changing the record and when the record was changed, must be accessible to audit.

In layman’s terms, that means carefully drawing a line through your mistake, initialing, and then dating your correction.

So what am I doing wearing pencil after pencil down to its nub? I am making sure I am the best pathologist I can be.

Through this part of my career, looking at multitudes of prostate biopsies, I have developed, inaugurated, and continuously improved a printed, unofficial worksheet that I use for every prostate case. At the top of each sheet our laboratory information system prints the patient’s name, age, medical record number, and pathology case number. I then search the medical record and add in relevant clinical history, such as previous biopsy findings, PSA values, and results from imaging studies.

The sheet then contains a row for every biopsy location. After looking at each slide I can quickly pencil in whether I think the biopsy is benign or malignant, what the Gleason Grade is, the extent of tumor, and any special studies I want to perform. It is really a very efficient way for me to work.

And I do it in pencil. Why? Because diagnostic pathology is not all ink–it is an art as well as a science. Cancer cells don’t actually have a big “C” on them under the microscope. Malignant changes can be striking, but they can also be subtle, and first impressions can sometimes be misleading.

Sometimes looking at the 7th core in a patient’s biopsy series can affect how I view what I saw on the 3rd biopsy. Sometimes special stains are going to nudge me to call a biopsy malignant that I had originally noodled in as “atypical.” Sometimes viewing a core the next morning will clarify my thinking, or a word from my associates will lead me in a better direction. When any of those things happen I grab my worksheet and out comes my pencil, eraser end first. And I mark down my new, improved, diagnosis.

Eventually, the worksheets get turned into our administrative team, entered into a digital pathology report, and following my electronic signature, become very official. Corrections can still be made, but only through a very regimented procedure, with documentation of every step. No more pencils, no more erasers.

But rest assured, the next morning I will be at the sharpener, getting my favorite diagnostic tool ready for another busy day.


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We Save Lives (and I Apologize)

Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune

Words have an impact. Whether the speaker is a politician, an entertainer, or a blogger, they must think about the words they choose–and choose carefully. I try to do that, but despite my scrupulous care, I made a blunder in my word choices in a previous blog and I want to apologize for it.

You may recall my last posting conveyed some thoughts on my profession, ranging from Sherlock Holmes to surgeon’s “fingerprints. And in a section dealing with statistics, I said “Some days every prostate I look at will be malignant and I feel like Dr. Death.”

I really should have known better. Within a few hours of posting, I received the following from Marty, a friend, and prostate cancer warrior:

What? 


No, no.  Better to realize you are giving these men (myself included!) a 2nd chance at life as they and their doctors learn that they now need to enter the “treatment phase” of their now discovered prostate cancer.  

And B’ruch HaShem may that treatment extend their lives for many productive years to come!
 

We MUST stay positive.

Marty was so right. The diagnosis of prostate cancer is absolutely not a death sentence. By far, most men diagnosed with prostatic cancer will live long and fruitful lives, enjoying careers, family, and free time.

So instead of referring to myself as Dr. Death, I should have chosen an honorific like Dr. Decision Tree (I know, I know, it doesn’t have much zing.) My diagnosis is a key piece of the data set that guides the patient and his medical team as to whether to treat (surgery, radiation, hormonal modulation, immunotherapy) or not to treat (active surveillance) the patient’s cancer.

(And while we are talking about prostate cancer, here is my annual plug for PSA testing. Ask your physician if it is right for you and the men in your life.)

Marty, you have improved my mindset. I will watch my words with the focus of a laser beam. You reminded me that, as one of my previous partners used to say, “We are pathologists. We save lives!”


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Pearls for the People From a Prostate Pathologist

A tray of prostate biopsy slides is ready for microscopic review.

As my career in pathology heads toward the home stretch, some pearls I have picked up along the way, particularly during the last 17 years as a prostate pathologist.

I Can Name That Surgeon in 3 Cores

You all know that no two people have the same exact fingerprints or DNA. I can tell you that no two surgeons send the same exact prostate biopsies.

I can look at a case and know right away who the urologist is. Fourteen cores? That tells me this case is from Dr. B. A ten-pack? Got to be Dr. M. Lots and lots of cores from every location in the prostate? Dr. Y must be the urologist of the day. Long, thick cores come from Doc A, while Doc B sends more fragmented specimens. Sixty different urologists, sixty different biopsy “fingerprints.”

It’s Not Over Until the …

I sometimes get a bit exasperated looking at 15 or twenty prostate biopsy cores from a patient, all of which look perfectly normal; well-formed acini with lots of basal cells, bland stroma, nice even spacing.

But today I got a reminder why I need to look carefully at each and every one of those cores, all the way to the end. In two consecutive cases, I found nothing, nothing, nothing, until the final core in each case demonstrated prostate cancer. And not the potentially insignificant Gleason 3+3 kind, but high-grade cancers that will require treatment to preserve the patient’s health and hopefully prevent a cancer death. It’s humbling to realize that the 12th biopsy found what the first 11 didn’t.

Statistically, Things Tend To Return To The Mean

There is a saying in baseball that a ballplayer’s batting average is going to match the numbers on the back of his baseball card. A .250 hitter might go on a hot streak, but eventually, he is going to go back to being a .250 hitter.

It’s like that in the lab, too. Some days every prostate I look at will be malignant and I feel like Dr. Death. Other times, every case is benign, and while that is great for the patients, I worry that I am missing things, that I have forgotten what prostate cancer looks like under the microscope. But over time, it all evens out. From month to month, the percentage of cases I diagnose as cancer is the same. The diagnostic peaks and valleys cancel each other out. Statistics just don’t lie.

Whatever Remains…

Sherlock Holmes once said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Over a long career, I have realized that a pathologist’s most valuable skill is recognizing the many faces of non-cancer. While scanning prostate tissue, my brain automatically eliminates the benign, the inflamed, the reactive.

Whatever remains is where my concentration needs to be focused. Those areas might not be malignant, but I need to look at them carefully to make sure they aren’t. When in doubt, a second look the next morning, or a special stain, or a consultation with my colleagues will guide me to the truth. The Holmesian method of diagnostics.

I am sure I have learned a few other things, but I will save them for another snowy day.

This blog is the opinion of the author and not UroPartners LLC.


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Am I A Prostate Guru? Someone Thinks I Am!

As a 12-year-old camper in the summer of 1968, I was my cabin’s nominee for the title of Guru of Camp Chi, 3rd Session. I ran a strong campaign, with a catchy jingle based on “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Sadly I lost in a heated battle with a candidate from another cabin. As was customary way back then, I graciously conceded the election to my opponent, without asking for a vote recount. However, I never returned to Camp Chi.

I haven’t thought about being a Guru in the 53 years since then. People who weren’t alive in the 1960s may ask “What is a guru?” Webster’s has several definitions for the word, including “a personal religious teacher and spiritual guide in Hinduism,” and “a person with knowledge or expertise.” Definitely an honorable thing to be. So I was quite surprised (and quite pleased) to have that appellation given to me the other morning.

Dr. M, one of our more senior urologists had stopped by to introduce his young new associate to the corporate and laboratory team at our facility. I gave the two physicians my standard lab tour, one that I have been giving to new employees of our group for years–a little lab history, a bit of explanation of our lab processes, and some back-patting of our staff. Fifteen minutes of time, and a chance to put a nice shine on the lab’s place in the corporate hierarchy.

As the tour moved from histology to chemistry, from cytology/FISH to our new molecular studies lab, Dr. M became more and more effusive about how excellent the lab was, and how we were the glue that held the group together. I was certainly smiling behind my mask.

And then came Dr. M’s final pronouncement. “Les is the Guru of Chicago prostate pathologists.”

OK, Chicago prostate pathologists are not the biggest set of which to be Guru. The network of Chicago area pathologists who do mostly urologic pathology isn’t enormous. But between all the university medical centers, the giant private hospital systems, and a few big commercial labs in the area, there are a lot of great pathologists and lots of prostate biopsies being analyzed. But yes, I probably see more prostate biopsies than anyone else in the metro areas — 18,000 prostate cases seen under my microscope over the last 15 years would be my best guess.

But I think Dr. M’s comment about “Guruness” was meant as more than just a comment on the number of cases I have seen through the years. I hope he was summing up that along with my associates, I have helped our large urology group provide sterling health care to our patients throughout Chicagoland. That is certainly our goal, and it’s good to know the lab is appreciated.

And after more than 50 years, I am proud to say I am finally a Guru. But I still don’t think I am ever going back to Camp Chi!


The opinions above are those of the author and not necessarily UroPartners LLC.


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Every Paper Clip Is Another Life Changed

Each clip=one prostate cancer case.

A small cylindrical plastic container sits on the desk behind me. I am not sure what it originally contained but now it is filled with paper clips. A quick glance tells me it must have a couple of hundred clips inside it, and every day I add a few more. I empty the receptacle a few times a year, but in the meantime, each clip tells me that someone’s life has been changed.

How is that so?

Medicine is more and more digital these days. You complain to your friends about how your internist spends more time typing into their laptop than they do talking to you. Your prescriptions go out to the pharmacy electronically, and reminders about your next appointment zip to your cellphone, instead of coming on a little postcard in the mail.

Here in the lab, we are digital too…but we still use a lot of paper. While most of the blood tests we do are managed without anything written down (each analyzer “talks” directly to the interface that sends results to our docs), we handle our biopsies quite differently.

Our Laboratory Information System (fancy name for lab computer) contains all the necessary information about patient age, and gender, and the site from which a bladder or prostate biopsy has been taken. But when I am looking at cases from 15 or 20 different patients, it really helps to have this data printed out. Also, I like to create paper worksheets for my prostate cases on which I can mark my findings for each of the dozen or so cores from each patient.

When my final diagnosis for the case is benign prostate, I can enter my findings from the worksheet directly into the LIS myself with a few keystrokes, and then add my electronic signature. No extra trees need to be cut for those cases.

But for patients in whom I find cancer, I turn my completed worksheet over to our administrative team. They keyboard the complex findings into the LIS and then print a copy of exactly how my report will appear to the clinicians.

When those printed cancer case reports come back to me, I review the information, correct the rare typos, have one of my colleagues concur on the malignant diagnosis, and affix my electronic signature in the LIS. The report can fly off to one of our urologists through an electronic labyrinth.

But because I need to select the appropriate charge to the patient for the laboratory and pathologist services, the reports are paper clipped to a billing slip. When I separate the report from the billing slip I toss the paper clip into the little container behind me. The container fills, each added clip representing another person given the diagnosis they were dreading and hoping to avoid.

Making those diagnoses is a pretty awesome burden and at times a humbling experience. I just hope that I can be as consistent as a bucket-full of paper clips; doing my job, holding it together, and remembering that there are people whose lives may be altered by every one of those diagnoses. They all deserve the best that I can be.


The above is the opinion of the author and not UroPartners LLC.


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Prostate Cancer Doesn’t Stop

Microscopic image of invasive prostate cancer.

Another telephone call. Another new diagnosis of prostate cancer. I see so many cases of prostate cancer each day, but some are more personal to me than others.

This time the worried young man on the phone is a friend, and he is indeed young. Carefully followed because his father is a prostate cancer warrior (survivor) his diagnosis has been made before his 40th birthday. He will benefit from all the advances in diagnostic techniques, prognostic methods, and therapeutics that have been developed in the last decade or so. Testing of the abnormal genetic material in his tumor, as well as his “germline” genetics (the genes he was born with) may assist in some decisions, as well as serve as a guide to family members about their own potential risk for prostate and other cancers.

Something else that will be available to him as he begins his prostate cancer journey is the presence of information seminars and support groups sponsored by UsToo, an international organization based in Rosemont. (Full Disclosure: I am on the Board of Directors of UsToo.) These resources bring prostate cancer patients updates on the latest in medical, surgical, and radiologic advances, as well as the ability to discuss with peers what to expect and how to deal with the life changes that the diagnosis and treatment may bring.

One month from today, on September 26th, UsToo along with UroPartners (More Full Disclosure: I provide pathology services to UroPartners) will be sponsoring the SEABlue Race/Walk in Lincoln Park, to raise funds for Support, Education, and Advocacy related to prostate cancer. I would love to invite you to join in on a fun-filled morning by the lake, but with no knowledge of what COVID restrictions we might be dealing with in a month, I will instead ask you to support me in my personal fundraising campaign. You can donate (any amount is welcome) by clicking here. Donate in honor of all the men you know–those who have prostate cancer, those who have lost a battle to prostate cancer, and those who just by being a male are at risk.

To my young friend–keep your hopes high and know that there are many resources to help you. Your dad is a success story, you can be too!

Just one note in closing. UsToo is merging with Zero-The End of Prostate Cancer in an effort to combine the strengths of each of these two great non-profits. You can learn more about the merger here.

Thank you for being a supporter.

Once more, the link to donate to my fundraising is Ustoo.rallybound.org/sea-blue-2021/lesraff

The opinions expressed above are the opinions of the author and not necessarily UsToo or UroPartners.

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