Dr. William Applegate's journey started one morning this past June as he knotted his tie for work. He felt a lump in his throat.
He had experience in such matters, first as a doctor specializing in geriatrics, then as the head of the Health Sciences division at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, which includes the med school.
But not experience this personal.
Dr. William Applegate, health-care exec, is also Bill Applegate, cancer survivor. He's found his own comfort on a journey nobody wants to take. "Everything that I do that's related in some way to clinical care takes on a much richer meaning," Applegate, 63, said last week. "It feels not only very real, but very personal."
Soon after finding the lump, Applegate learned he had non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer that develops in the body's lymph nodes. He'd given many a cancer diagnosis, but that didn't make hearing his own any easier to take. He was shocked, then saddened.
Then came what he called "the hardest thing I probably ever had to do:" telling his wife and two grown daughters about the diagnosis. They showered him with love and helped him prepare for treatment.
He's a private man, a soft-spoken native of Kentucky. But there was no way he could keep his illness a secret while being treated in the medical center he helps lead. He didn't want to keep it secret, anyway. He felt that his experience might help hospital workers and med-school students understand what patients go through.
Through rounds of tests and chemotherapy that sometimes left him tired and slightly nauseous, he saw the medical center through a patient's eyes. He generally found its care to be top-notch, he said. But more health-care workers should slow down and make sure they connect in a personal way with every patient, he said.
Medical-center employees, whether working on his care or not, have been very supportive, he said. So have his fellow cancer patients. "I do feel fortunate to have one of the types of cancer that has a fairly good prognosis for recovery," he said. "I see so many other folks with more aggressive types of cancer that I can't find it within myself to ask ‘Why me?' or even be angry about it."
He's laughed with his fellow patients, cried with them and shared stories with them.
Like many cancer patients, he spent the first days after the diagnosis waking up with the realization that he had cancer weighing on him. "For the first two or three weeks, every morning I woke up and thought, ‘Oh yeah, I have cancer.' "
But a new focus soon took over, he said. "You begin to think about how long you will live, and how you would like to live the remaining years of your life."
Some people hit with cancer climb mountains or skydive. Others quit work to take on the job they've always wanted. Applegate realized he was in the right place where he was, in the job he loves at the medical center.
He has an enhanced ability to focus on the joy in each moment, he said. His mind "reset." Things that used to irritate him don't anymore, he said, and he doesn't dwell on the negative. He has more patience. He has slowed down a bit, all the way from 12-hour days to 10-hour days, and spends more time with his family.
Humor has helped a lot, he said. After the chemotherapy caused his hair to fall out, his daughters gave him an Elvis wig, in honor of the years that the family lived in Memphis. He hasn't worn it in public -- yet.
Applegate said the treatment is working. "I'll be around for years."
And much of that time will likely be spent at the medical center, meeting patients with whom he'll be able to identify in a way he never imagined. "I have increased personal passion for wanting to do well for this institution, for all of us," he said.
His journey continues.
jrailey@wsjournal.com
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