Synthesis is published by the UC Davis Cancer Center. If you SYNTHESIS receive multiple copies of this publication, please share them. VOLUME 9 • NUMBER 1 If you need to change your mailing address, please call the Cancer Center administration office at (916) 734-5800. CONTENTS Ralph deVere White Director UC Davis Cancer Center 2 COVER STORY Carol Gan 2 Center stage Executive Editor Jim Otto blocks for a new team Claudia Morain 6 Capital initiative Editor launched Pat Grind $35 million drive will Art Director 6 expand clinics, endow research Circle Design Graphic Design IN 10 Building an arsenal TRANSLATION A new weapon against Bill Santos advanced prostate cancer? José Luis Villegas Photographers F OC U S ON 14 Fight club Beth Ellenberger 14 P ATIENTS Lung cancer patients make Cory Golden themselves more visible Camille Rey Writers O U TREACH 22 Mothers’ wisdom About the cover: American Indian women break Pro Football Hall of Fame Center their silence about breast cancer Jim Otto is the volunteer chair of a $35 million capital initiative to 22 B U I L D I N G O N 26 On target expand UC Davis Cancer Center and BASICS endow eight cancer research chairs. Treating cancer (See story on page 2.) with tomotherapy B ENE F ACTORS 30 They think pink South Placer County’s $1.5 million pledge 30 NEWS 33 In brief The University of California does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, Living strong, welcome national origin, religion, sex, sexual findings for pregnant women orientation, disability, age, veteran’s status, medical condition, ancestry or with thyroid cancer, marital status. The University of and other news California is an affirmative action/ equal opportunity employer. Call (530) 752-2071 for more information. Speech or hearing impaired persons may call (530) 752-7320 (TDD). SPRING/SUMMER 2006 1 Jim & Sally Otto 2 SYNTHESIS COVER STORY CENTER STAGE Jim Otto, chair of the UC Davis Cancer Center’s Capital and Endowment Initiative, is blocking for a new team No sport requires more children in the pediatric ward, teamwork than football, and and, well, that eats your heart in a game in which sacrifice is out. Something has to be done.” fundamental, there is no better teammate than Jim Otto. A personal vendetta NThese days, the legendary Double-O has declared a Oakland Raiders center doesn’t “personal vendetta” against block so that star quarterbacks cancer. And the disease has a like Daryle Lamonica or Ken formidable new enemy. Stabler can complete passes in In his playing days, Otto front of 60,000 cheering fans. liked to hit. Hard. Back when He doesn’t punch holes in the he wore 00 for the Oakland lines of 275-pound defenders so Raiders, he built a reputation that running backs like Clem for toughness that took him to Daniels or Marv Hubbard can “Jim has the Pro Football Hall of Fame. grind out a few more yards in During his 15 years with the the team’s march downfield. joined this Oakland franchise, he started in Now Otto is at the center 210 consecutive regular-season of a drive of a different type. fight because games, a record that stands to Following treatment for prostate J this day. cancer at UC Davis Cancer he loves life.” A football team cannot Center, the Auburn resident function, let alone win, without agreed to chair the center’s $35 the center – the man who million Capital and Endowment snaps the ball and prevents the Initiative. hulking defensive linemen from “I would just love to see smothering the quarterback. more people being saved and In a 1990 column, Jim being cured from cancer,” Otto Murray, the late Los Angeles Times said. “That’s why I’m doing this. sportswriter, wrote in praise of You don’t want anyone else to the center generally, and Otto have to go through the agony in particular: “You can almost that comes along with a cancer always tell a center. He’s the one diagnosis and cancer treatment. who’s got this little cut on the Especially kids. I’ve visited the bridge of his nose from getting SPRING/SUMMER 2006 3 Widely regarded as the best center ever to play the game, Jim Otto was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980. He and his wife, Sally, now live in Auburn. his helmet slammed down on it by a charging nose tackle.” And he quoted Otto: “You have to be a special kind of person … You have to kind of like pain.” Against the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl II in 1968, Otto persevered despite a case of double pneumonia, a dislocated knee, broken fingers and a broken jaw. He was named All- Pro after playing a full season with every ligament torn in one knee. He was the starting center, and the team needed him. “We have a champion in charge of our initiative,” said Ralph deVere White, director of the UC Davis Cancer and associate dean for cancer programs at UC Davis. “We’re fortunate and enormously grateful that Jim is on our team.” Expecting to win Otto came of age in an era when teams stuck together. He was the Raiders’ only starting center from 1960 until 1974, the team’s glory years, when, in the words of Sacramento Bee sportswriter Ailene Voisin, “the Black Hole was a perilous pit, when the impassioned, often unruly fans resembled a cult following, when the Raiders always expected to win.” 4 SYNTHESIS UC Davis Cancer Center Capital and Endowment Initiative Steering Committee Jim Otto, Chairman Susan Mathews Loyalty was a virtue. It is a Ralph deVere White, M.D. William McGowan testament to Otto that more than Robert E. Chason Fred Meyers, M.D. 30 years after his retirement, his Burt Douglass Trong Nguyen teammates are still there for him. When Otto and his wife of Barbara Fingerut Aldo Pineschi 43 years, Sally, host their annual Carol Garcia Robyn Raphael “Take a Swing at Cancer” celebrity golf tournament James E. Goodnight, Sandy Smoley to benefit UC Davis Cancer M.D., Ph.D. Jeanine Stiles Center, some 30 of his fabled Gary Little teammates show up. The event, Virgil Traynor, D.V.M. held at the Auburn Valley Country Club, raises about $150,000 in a weekend. Otto says off handedly that he has who come to UC Davis Cancer Chester, a former Raider to place maybe 32 phone calls Center each year for cancer teammate and close Otto friend. to get 30 ex-Raiders to come. treatment. “When Jim Otto commits Ben Davidson, still sporting his “With Jim picking up the himself to something, he gives handlebar mustache, has shown gauntlet for UC Davis Cancer 110 percent. He absolutely up. So have Lincoln Kennedy, Center, the capital drive is walks his talk. He won’t stop Fred Biletnikoff, Willie Brown, assured victory,” said Raymond until he wins.” Daryle Lamonica, Otis Sistrunk and many others. Cancer is life-related On the day he completed prostate cancer treatment, Jim Otto arrived with jerseys and sweatshirts for his UC Davis Cancer Center team. Otto himself no longer golfs. He has undergone 52 major surgeries. He’s had 12 artificial knees and four artificial shoulders. His spine is supported by steel rods. But none of those health threats shook the Hall of Famer like prostate cancer. “His injuries and surgeries have all been football-related. Cancer is different. It’s life- related,” said Dave Newhouse, a veteran Oakland Tribune sportswriter who collaborated with Otto on his 2000 autobiography, “Jim Otto: Pain of Glory.” “This is about life. Jim has joined this fight because he loves life.” Double-O is back in the game, this time blocking for the 9,000 people, young and old, SPRING/SUMMER 2006 UC Davis Cancer Center will nearly double to 109,000 square feet. Top left: The new complex viewed from 45th Street, with the existing Cancer Center on the right and the three-story addition on the left. Top right: A bridge and courtyard will connect the buildings. Center: Inside the new lobby. Bottom: The new complex as viewed from the north. 6 SYNTHESIS COVER STORY UC Davis Cancer Center seeks community support to expand patient-care space and endow research Capital & Endowment Initiative LAUNCHED UC Davis Cancer Center Halfway to has announced a $35-million the goal line Capital and Endowment The launch of the initiative’s Initiative, the first in its history, public phase comes five years to expand patient-care facilities after UC Davis Cancer Center Uand fund the university’s first began gathering a nucleus of chairs in cancer research. support from members of the “Sooner or later, cancer steering committee and other affects almost all of us generous contributors. So far, – and when it does, you want more than $16 million has a winning team on your side,” been pledged, including $1.3 said Jim Otto, chair of the million from steering committee initiative’s steering committee. members. Otto, a longtime center for the The many commitments to Oakland Raiders, was treated “The outlook the initiative include: for prostate cancer at UC Davis $5 million from the in 2002. has never Oakland-based Wayne and “The money we are raising Gladys Valley Foundation. will allow UC Davis Cancer been more $1 million from Susie Center to expand so that it T Mathews, a Sacramento can take care of the growing promising.” businesswoman, in honor numbers of patients who come of her late husband, Robert, here each year,” Otto said. “It who died of prostate cancer will also create endowments in 1987.