'Patient is Otherwise Healthy': The Challenges of Cancer Survivorship

Listen to ASCO’s JCO Oncology Practice essay, “Patient is Otherwise Healthy” by Dr. Scott Capozza, Board Certified Oncology Physical Therapist at Smilow Cancer Hospital Adult Cancer Survivorship Clinic at Yale Cancer Center. The essay is followed by an interview with Capozza and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Capozza shares his personal experience with the long-term effects of cancer treatment.

TRANSCRIPT

‘Patient Is Otherwise Healthy’ by Scott J. Capozza, PT, MSPT 

Let me start by saying: I know I am one of the fortunate ones.

Being diagnosed with cancer at any age puts many in a tailspin. I was no different when I was diagnosed with stage II testicular cancer at age 22 years. I was still in graduate school, completing my physical therapy program; suddenly, I had to schedule an orchiectomy, retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, and two cycles of chemotherapy around lectures, laboratory work, and practical examinations. Fast forward 20 years and I have an unbelievably supportive wife who has seen me through so much of my long-term survivorship concerns.  

Despite my fertility challenges, we are so very fortunate that my wife was able to conceive three healthy, happy, and strong kids (conceived only through the roller coaster that is fertility preservation and reproduction medicine, which so many adolescent and young adult survivors must deal with and is emotionally very challenging, but that is a discussion for another day). I have a great career as a board-certified physical therapist in oncology, where I can help enhance the physical well-being of patients throughout the cancer care continuum. The journey to this path as a survivor was not a straight line, though that also is a discussion for another day. 

What I do not remember signing up for was all the late and long-term side effects of cancer treatment, or maybe I did sign for them in a sort of deal with the devil so that I could finish PT school on time and return to my precancer life of running and being with my friends. We sign on the dotted line to rid the cancer from our bodies, but just like the mortgage, student loans, and back taxes, we end up having to pay in the end. Unfortunately, paying off this debt comes with a high interest rate (a multitude of adverse effects) heaped on top of the principal balance. 

And while it would be very easy to blame my hyperlipidemia on my cancer treatments,1 I am pretty sure there is a likely strong genetic component. My grandmother had high cholesterol for as long as I could remember. As your quintessential Italian grandmother, she was 105 pounds soaking wet and ate like a bird (while being insulted if I did not have a 4th helping of her lasagna) but had to take her blasted pills for high cholesterol for all her adult life. She died a month short of her 103rd birthday and was still sharp as a tack until the very end. I will gladly sign on the dotted line for that outcome.

My immediate postcancer treatment years were great. I resumed running and ran several marathons, returned to a relatively normal social life, and started along my career. I met my wife, and she was enthusiastically willing to live her life with a cancer survivor. Marriage, house, kids, job…everything was going great.

Until things started going downhill.

About 10 years postchemotherapy, I noticed that my exercise tolerance was decreasing. It was harder and harder to keep up with friends on our long runs. I felt more fatigued overall. I went from running 10 miles to seven to five to now barely being able to complete two miles. My chest would feel tight as if a vise was clamping down on my ribs. Running up short hills in my neighborhood, which I had routinely done in the past, felt like I was ascending Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen or Sherpa support. 

When I brought this up to my primary care physician, he looked perplexed. I am young(ish), no family history of heart disease, nonsmoker, healthy weight, and only enjoy a hard cider once a week. He performed an ECG in the office, just to double check to make sure I was not crazy.  

When my heart rhythms started throwing out inverted T-waves, his eyes got larger. He said that I did not fit the description of someone who should be experiencing these symptoms. 

“I had cancer, remember?” I remind him although he is very familiar with my medical history and we know each other well.

“Oh. Yeah.” My doctor nods…. 

My doctor thankfully took my concerns seriously and directed me to a series of referrals to cardiac and pulmonary specialists. Through the Pandora's box which is patient access to electronic medical records, I was able to read his postvisit report. He very accurately described the results of the physical examination and our conversation. He did write in his report that he would be placing referrals to cardiology and pulmonology. It was a very thorough evaluation, and I could tell that he was truly listening to me and not dismissing my concerns. What caught my eye, though, was the opening line to his assessment: “Patient is an otherwise healthy 42-year-old male…”

Otherwise healthy? I have high cholesterol; had to endure heartache and struggle to have a family because of treatment-induced fertility issues; I wear hearing aids because of cisplatin induced ototoxicity; and now, I have to go for a full cardiopulmonary work-up, all because, I had testicular cancer at age 22 years. To me it did not feel like that I was otherwise healthy. To further work up my symptoms, I was scheduled for cardiac testing. I have a new appreciation for what my own patients go through when they have to get magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after I had a cardiac stress MRI. I had no idea just how tiny and claustrophobia-inducing an MRI machine is, so now I nod my head in agreement with my patients when they tell me how anxiety-producing it is to get an MRI. I had a treadmill stress test and echocardiogram, and these all came to the same conclusion: I have a thickened left ventricle in my heart, which throws off the ECGs but is just my normal anatomy. Phew. 

When I went for my pulmonary function test (PFT), though, the results were different. The pulmonologist came in with that same perplexed look, as he is expecting to see someone other than an early 40s, healthy weight individual sitting there. Our conversation went something like this:

Pulmonologist: Do you, or did you ever, smoke?

Me: No.

Pulmonologist: Do you have carpets, rugs, or animals at your house? 

Me: No.

Pulmonologist: Do you work in a factory or someplace where you're surrounded by potentially toxic chemicals?

Me: No.

Pulmonologist: Do you think you gave your best effort on the PFT?

Me (slightly annoyed): Yes.

Pulmonologist: I don't get it; you have the lungs of someone with chronic obstructive lung disease, but you don't fit into any of the risk factors.

Me: I had bleomycin as part of my chemotherapy regiment for testicular cancer 20 years ago.

 Pulmonologist: Oh.

Yeah. Oh. 

This is the crux of long-term survivorship: We look OK on the outside, but inside our body systems deteriorate faster than the noncancer population.2 For pediatric cancer and adolescents and young adult cancer survivors who could potentially have decades of life ahead of them, these late and long-term side effects are a perpetual consequence for surviving cancer. There is no light at the end of tunnel for us; the tunnel extends endlessly, and we grasp for any daylight we can to help us navigate the darkness moving forward. While there have been multiple studies addressing the long-term toxicity sequelae of cancer therapy, there is still inadequate understanding of optimal screening, risk reduction, and management and inadequate awareness of potential late effects among both medical professionals and survivors alike.3

Given the complexity of long-term toxicities for long-term survivors, a multidisciplinary team of health professionals can provide a comprehensive approach to patient care. For me, a key member of this team was the cardiac advanced practice nurse, who called me at 4:45 pm on a Friday afternoon to tell me that my cardiac evaluation was normal. Physical therapists do this by addressing fatigue, balance deficits, and functional decline through our multitude of rehabilitation tools. Cardiologists, pulmonologists, primary care physicians, dietitians, and mental health care workers can all meaningfully contribute to the well-being and long-term care of cancer survivors. The many health care providers in the lives of cancer survivors can also empower through education. However, the education pathway ends up being a two-way street, as so often it is the survivor who has to educate the nononcology provider about our internal physiological needs that belie our external appearance. 

As for me, I am trying out new inhalers to help with my breathing. I take a low-dose statin every morning with breakfast. I am now plugged into annual cardiac follow-ups. I do not run anymore, though, as the psychological toll of not being what I once was has affected me more than the physical toll. I march on, trying to be the best husband, father, physical therapist, and cancer survivorship advocate that I can be. 

While we may be living clinically with no evidence of disease, we live with the evidence of the history of our disease every day. Like petrified trees or fossilized shells, cancer treatments leave permanent physical and psychological reminders of our cancer experience. As greater attention is being focused on the optimized management of long-term toxicities in cancer survivorship, my sincere hope is that there will be effort to educate cancer and noncancer medical staff alike about the real physical and psychosocial adverse effects as well as advances in treatment that will both prevent development of long-term toxicity and yield better solutions for when they do occur. I hope better options will be available to all cancer survivors with all stages and all disease types in the not-so-distant future.

I am OK, really, but I am not sure ‘otherwise healthy’ really applies to me.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the field of oncology. I'm your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Today we're joined by Scott Capozza, Board Certified Oncology Physical Therapist at Smilow Cancer Hospital at the Yale Cancer Center. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology article, “Patient is Otherwise Healthy.”  

At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures.  

Scott, welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us.

Scott Capozza: Thank you very much for having me. This is a great honor.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: I look forward to chatting with you about this. First of all, what a great title. How did the title and the idea of sharing your experience with this audience, the readers of JCO OP and JCO publications, come to you? Tell us a little bit about the motivation and the inspiration.

Scott Capozza: So the title actually came from my doctor's note, as I alluded to in the article, the Pandora's Box, so to speak, of patient access to medical records. I was reading his assessment of my regular wellness visit. And in that visit, I had discussed that I was having some breathing issues and some endurance issues with running, and I just didn't feel myself. And I knew that I hadn't had any significant cardio or pulmonary workups anytime recently. On top of that, we'd already discussed some of my other comorbidities, like my blood pressure, that sort of thing. So his intro line was “Patient is a 42-year-old otherwise healthy male.” Well, that's what caught my eye. I said, “Am I really otherwise healthy? I've got high cholesterol. I have this history of cancer. I am dealing with all kinds of late effects, and we're working those late effects up. And so am I truly otherwise healthy?” And I love my PCP, and he listens to me. And so I'm grateful for him and for him taking me seriously, because not everybody has that. Not every survivor has that person, that quarterback, so to speak.  

So that was really what kind of drove me to write the article. It was just an idea that it was in my head. I did not write the article right away. I'm now 48. So this was actually even a couple of years ago. But I think I wrote it because I really was writing it more for the non oncology provider, for the PCPs, and for the pulmonologists and the cardiologists who don't work in the oncology space like you and I do, to be cognizant of these late effects. And just because somebody is a year out from treatment, five years out from treatment, or in my case, 20 years out from treatment, that these late effects are real and they can play havoc with our quality of life.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: So let me talk a little bit about nomenclature and the semantics. You know this field very well, and you know that not every person with a history of cancer identifies as a survivor. But the term is really helpful for us. And in the original article that Fitzhugh Mullan wrote in New England Journal called the “Seasons of Survival,” he reflected as a physician with cancer that you go through different periods in your survivorship, journey or life. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what it's been for you? When did you feel that you were a cancer survivor? Do you use the term and what have those seasons or those stages felt like for you?

Scott Capozza: That's a great question. And for my old patients, I have this conversation with them as well. For me specifically, yes, I do identify as a cancer survivor. I will say, though, that when I was going through my treatments, I did not identify with that word. I also think that because I was young, I was 22, 23 at the time of my diagnosis, and I did not want any association with cancer, that I really did not want that label attached to me. At that time, I was a physical therapy student and a runner. Full disclosure, I'm a Boston Red Sox fan. You can hold that against me if you want. So I didn't want this extra label, so I didn't want it anyway in the first place. I do, I remember having a conversation with my nurses, and they said, “Oh, you should go to this walk or whatever that was happening for cancer survivors.” And I said, “But I'm in the middle of chemo. I've still got my port. And I don't think I should go because I'm not done with treatment.” And so that's why I think it's great that we have, the American Cancer Society and NCI have come out with very clear definitions that say that a person is a cancer survivor from the mode of diagnosis, and I use that for my own patients as well, because they have that same question. They ask me, “Am I really a survivor? Am I really done?” That sort of thing. And I say, no, I go by those definitions now. And so I always frame it as, you have to survive the words “You have cancer.” So that's me with the relationship with the term survivor.  

To your other point of the question, as far as the seasons of survivorship. Absolutely. And I think that we see this more prevalently with our younger population, with our pediatric survivors, and for me, as an adolescent, young adult survivor, an AYA. So I have gone through these seasons of survivorship. When I was diagnosed, I was young and I was single and I was finishing school. That's one thing. I was not dating anybody. So when I did just start to date somebody and move towards marriage and that sort of thing, and all of a sudden, now my fertility issues, because of my treatments, now that came to the forefront. So that became a new season, so to speak. How are we going to tackle that? And now as a father, that's a different season because I have three children, two boys, and it's on my mind that they have my genetic makeup. So are they at higher risk of developing testicular cancer because of me? So I'm in a different season now than I was when I was single and 25. 

Dr. Lidia Schapira: And so you also talk about having cisplatin induced ototoxicity. And now this latest problem, which is the bleomycin induced lung problem. That is what sort of unraveled this new season of trying to put these pieces together. How have you thought about this and perhaps shared it with your wife and your family? This idea that the exposures you had to toxic drugs which cured you and gave you this fortunate possibility of being a long term survivor keep on giving, that they keep on manifesting themselves. And fortunately, you have, it seems, a very receptive primary care doctor who listens but may not be particularly able to guide you through all this and may not know. So he's sort of taking his cues from you. How do you negotiate all this? The idea that there may still be something that's going to happen to you as a result of these exposures?

Scott Capozza: Being vigilant, I think, is really important. And I think open lines of communication with my providers, open lines of communication with my wife. And also, again, my children are at this point now where I can have those conversations with them. I don't think that I could have done that when they were younger, but now I think they can start to understand why daddy wears hearing aids now is because daddy had to get a certain medicine to help get him healthy, to help get rid of the cancer. So to frame it in that context, I think it makes it easier for them to understand why I have this cytotoxicity from cisplatin. And they even know now with my pulmonary issues that daddy can't necessarily run with them. That was always going to be a goal. I was going to be able to run with my children, and I can't do that. I am still able to bike. It does not stress my pulmonary system as much as running does. So we are able to cycle as a family, and so we are able to do that. 

But as far as other late effects that might show up another five years or 10 years from now, those are things that I will continue to have those conversations with my PCP to say, do we need to continue to do cardiac screening every so often? Do we need to continue to do pulmonary screenings, blood work, that sort of thing? I also know that I am very fortunate that I work in the field, so I am surrounded by it, which sometimes is good and sometimes can be a little discerning, knowing what's out there also. So it is an interesting balance to be able to wear both of those hats at the same time.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: I have a couple questions that arose to me reading your essay. Now, I am an oncologist, so I know you know about these late effects. One of your lines is, this is the crux of long term survivorship that is appearing healthy, being labeled as otherwise healthy, but really having these exposures that predispose you to getting other illnesses and diagnoses. Do you think it would help if your PCP and pulmonologist wrote that you had an exposure to bleomycin in requesting the PFTs? Instead of just saying 42-year-old with such a symptom, 42-year-old with an exposure to bleomycin and dyspnea. Do you think that writing that in your chart, instead of just saying ‘otherwise healthy’, just putting cancer survivor, testicular cancer survivor, and adding the exposures every time they require a test, could that in any way have made your life easier as you reflect back on the last few years? 

Scott Capozza: That's a really interesting question. I never thought of that before, and I think that could go one of two ways. A, it could be validating, but I could see the flip side of that where it's, you're constantly reminded of it. So I don't know that there's a perfect answer to that. I don't know what I would prefer, honestly. If we could hop back in time and change the documentation, then we make an addendum to the documentation. I don't know that I would really want that because obviously I know it. But do I want to continue to see that every time I open up my chart? I don't know. And I can see how it can be frustrating for my patients that when they get through my chart notifications or whatever it might be, that they're constantly reminded by it, and then that can lead to fear of occurrence, and that can lead to anxiety and depression. And all the things that you and I know, being providers in the oncology space, we know that these are all things also that our patients experience. So I don't know. I'll have to think about that a little more.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: Maybe the next essay you send to us is about shared decision making, even, and how this is used, playing it forward a little bit in the cancer record, it's there and prominent. But in your primary care and other records, how important is that as a qualifier? All of these things are really interesting, and I wonder how you have used your personal experience in treating other patients and whether or not you disclose to your own patients that you are a cancer survivor. 

Scott Capozza: I don't lead with it because it's not my story. It's their story. It's their experience. So I never lead with it. I do think that patients are savvy. They do want to know who's on their care team. So I tell this story often that I was working with a young woman with breast cancer. She was still in the middle of treatment. She was very understandably upset. And I was about to say something along those lines of, “I can appreciate what you're going through, because I went through this, too.” And she said, “I know who you are. I looked you up.”

Dr. Lidia Schapira: Wow. 

Scott Capozza: Yes. But she followed that up with saying, “And because I looked you up and because you're a survivor, that's why I want you working with me.” So again, it goes both ways. So in that instance, it did, it did work out. So, no, I never lead with it. I think patients a lot of times just figure it out on their own. If I'm working with a patient and we've been working together for a while, we might have that conversation, then it might come up. But again, it's about our patients. It's about making sure that they have the highest quality care. And so that's why they're at the center of everything that we do. So, no, I don't lead with it.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: So as we wrap up, I have two questions. One is, did you share your essay with your primary care doctor?

Scott Capozza: I have not yet. I have not actually seen him since it was published. My annual physical is coming up later in the summer. I was thinking that I would bring it to him to see what his reaction would be.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: That sounds cool. Will you let me know what he says or she says? And the other question is, since you did decide to put your story in front of an audience of oncology professionals, what is your message to them?

Scott Capozza: I think the message, again, is to listen to your patients. And again, you alluded to it a moment ago, the shared decision making, I think that's so critical. I think that's where we are now, and that's where we need to continue to move as a profession, not just in oncology, but I mean, across all health domains. And so I think that for oncology providers specifically, listen to our patients and to validate those concerns, to educate and then do something about it also, I think, is really critical.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: And involving other members of the multidisciplinary team is key. I mean, we acknowledge we need that during treatment, but I think post-treatment, it's equally important to refer people to think about it, to think about referring for rehabilitation or prehabilitation in certain cases. To minimize the baggage that people carry into survivorship. 

Scott, thank you. Thank you for writing. I wish you good health, and I thank you very much for sending us your story.

 

So until next time, thank you for listening to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. Don't forget to give us a rating or review, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all of ASCO podcast shows asco.org/podcast.

  

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Guest Bio: 

Dr. Scott Capozza is a Board Certified Oncology Physical Therapist at Smilow Cancer Hospital at the Yale Cancer Center.