IN LOVING MEMORY OF BILL AISHMAN

Since this article was written, Bill Aishman has died from prostate cancer on May 20, 2004. During the time he was fighting this disease he helped thousands fight their disease. With his death his memory will continue on and help thousands more through the papers he wrote for this web site. He will be missed - there were few around like him and even fewer still who had the knowledge of this disease that Bill had. I have lost a another great friend to this disease! I will forever miss him and miss the help that he gave me and many others. He will never be replaced in my memory.

These pages of this web site on Chemotherapy will forever be dedicated to the memory of this exceptional man who was so dear to so many. Through his research, his papers, his posts, his personal phone calls, he has extended the life, if not saved the life, of many. There has to be a special place in heaven for a person like this.

Don Cooley

Taking charge Patients take active role in their care at Bennett Cancer Center

By Louis Porter Staff Writer

April 30, 2002

STAMFORD -- Bill Aishman is helping manage the treatment of his own cancer.

"I urge people to be part of their medical teams," Aishman said. "You are the one who has the terminal disease, you are the one who is going to die."

Several years ago, Aishman was diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread to his bones and that he acknowledges will be fatal.

"Technically, I should be dead by now," he said.

After a few years at larger cancer programs, he went to Stamford Hospital's Carl and Dorothy Bennett Cancer Center for medical care close to home. He also receives care at a smaller institution.

"They are not too big, but are not too little," he said.

Cancer patients are increasingly sophisticated, knowledgeable and want more involvement with their treatment, said Deanna Xistris, director of nursing for the Bennett center, which turned 10 years old last week.

That was one of the center's selling points for Aishman. It helped him oversee and study his treatment.

It has been difficult at times to come to terms with his disease, Aishman said. Pain is rated on a scale of one to 10, he explained. Ten is unbearable. "When I have level eight pain at 3 o'clock in the morning, my mind goes to the same dark place as anyone's," he said.

"On the other hand, I think it is sort of the ultimate challenge," he added.

The Bennett Center has allowed him to study his disease and develop treatment, said Aishman, a businessman trained as a lawyer and engineer. During his time there, he also has written eight medical papers and a pamphlet on cancer.

When the facility opened 10 years ago with a $2 million donation from the Carl and Dorothy Bennett, doctors and staff decided to make it the first cancer center in the area affiliated with a community hospital, rather than as a branch of a larger cancer program.

This year, just before celebrating its 10th anniversary, the cancer center won a research and teaching hospital accreditation from the American College of Surgeons, which places it just below the status of a university hospital.

And the Bennett remains -- when area towns from Greenwich to Danbury have their own cancer centers -- unique for the amount of research that is done there, and one of only a few community hospitals with an extensive research staff, officials said.

"Patients who come here don't have to go somewhere else if they want to be in a clinical trial," said Elizabeth Manfredo, director of the Bennett.

Patients who participate in clinical trials receive new treatments and their progress is evaluated. They are given standard therapies as well, so their care does not suffer, said Dr. Salvatore Del Prete, the Stamford center's director of oncology and clinical research.

Nationwide, 3 percent of cancer patients are involved in the clinical trials, which are crucial to the advance of new treatments.

"It's frustrating for me. Most places are not doing what we are doing here," Del Prete said.

The Bennett Cancer Center, which Del Prete helped found, routinely has nearly 10 percent of its patients participating in trials.

The clinical trials are not only good for the advances they bring to cancer medicine, he said. They also give the patients who join them, such as Stamford resident William Butler, access to new treatments and medicine.

Butler is a partner in a large financial firm in Manhattan. When he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood-making bone marrow, he started talking about it with the other people in his office.

"They were all touting Sloan-Kettering," he said. But Butler said he realized that the course of treatment would not be much different at the Bennett Cancer Center than it would be at a bigger hospital in New York.

"I began to figure out . . . this is going to be a long, arduous process," the Stamford resident said. "If I could be treated near home, my quality of life would be better."

Other evidence reaffirmed his decision to get treatment close to home, Butler said. At a larger institution, he would have seen a cancer doctor once a month, while the bulk of his day-to-day care would be done by residents.

Finally, as he researched his own disease, he discovered that Sloan-Kettering offered a type of treatment that he wanted. He asked his doctors at the Bennett if they could use that technique.

"Their answer was unequivocal: Let's do it," he said.

Butler also got involved in a clinical trial for a new treatment at the Bennett. The center even put him in touch with a doctor who would discourage him from taking part in the trial, he said.

"They encouraged me to seek other opinions," he said. In the end, he decided to join the trial and his cancer is in complete remission, he said.

The Bennett Cancer Center also made a fan of Stamford resident Elaine Rose, when she received treatment for uterine cancer there from 1993 to 1995.

Rose was so impressed that she goes back to the center each week to volunteer. She talks to the patients, brings them food as they go through treatments, which can take all day, and sometimes just sits with them.

That may not seem like much, Rose said, but small acts can make a huge difference for a patient undergoing radiation or chemotherapy.

"I'm there to listen and understand," she said. "I just thought it was something that I could offer and I could do well."

"I'm comfortable being around people who are sick because I was so sick," Rose said. "You learn to cope, and that you can make a difference." Copyright © 2002, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.