Heroes: Dr. Samuel Hassenbusch

“The Ride of My Life”

Neurosurgeon Dr. Sam Hassenbusch discovered nearly two years ago that he had a large brain tumor. He talks with Katie Couric about his fight against brain cancer.

VIDEO : Click to view “Eye to Eye: Sam Hassenbusch.”

Dr. Sam Hassenbusch once had an MRI done on himself – and found out he had a massive tumor in his brain.  Katie Couric has more on his battle against brain cancer.

VIDEO : Click to view “A Doctor’s Own Cancer Battle.”

Dr. Sam Hassenbusch, diagnosed with a deadly brain tumor nearly two years ago, has had his life prolonged by an experimental treatment. Katie Couric reports.

VIDEO : Click to view “Heal Thyself: Part Two.”

I’m a neurosurgeon and, for the past thirteen years, I’ve been on the neurosurgery staff at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.  As a neurosurgeon here, I’ve been taking care of patients with cancerous brain tumors and patients with severe chronic pain.

In April 2005, I started having severe headaches.  They began after I had run the 5K Run for the Rose, a fundraising event for brain tumor research.  The race was founded in honor of one of my former patients - Marnie Rose, a physician specializing in pediatrics – who died from a brain tumor, specifically a glioblastoma. 

After my headaches did not go away over the next four weeks, I had an MRI, or brain scan, done to prove to myself that the headaches were simply stress-related or perhaps migraines.

When I got out of the MRI scanner, I saw one of my MRI films on an X-ray viewing box and, from ten feet away, I could see a three-inch tumor in the right side of my brain (temporal lobe) just behind and to the side of my right eye.  I knew immediately that it was a glioblastoma: one of the most malignant brain tumors, and curiously enough, the type or tumor that I usually operated on with most of my patients.  Immediately, I saw the next year of my life flash in front of my eyes.  I had taken care of people with this type of tumor for almost twenty years at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and at Cleveland Clinic Foundation before that. 

One of the most difficult parts of all this was explaining the good and bad about the glioblastoma to my wife Rhonda, who was there with me.  This was just a totally bizarre irony of life.  By the way, you can’t catch a tumor like this from other patients – it’s not contagious.

That night at home wasn’t much fun, and the questions were flying.  Had twenty-five years of neurosurgery just gone down the drain?  Was I still signed up at work for disability insurance?  Had we kept up payments on my life insurance policies?  How much did we owe on the house mortgage?

Even more importantly, what would all this do to Rhonda and our three children, all of them in the mid-20s?  And where would I go for the necessary operation and follow-up treatment?  I’ve always told my patients that they were at the right hospital when I saw them – did I really believe what I had said when it was MY NECK on the line?

Well, to make a long story short, I DID have my operation at M.D. Anderson.  It went well with no deficits or problems.  Then I received six weeks of radiotherapy to my brain – and thankfully, I was able to keep working as Medical Director of our M.D. Anderson physician practice plan, which covers about 664 staff physicians. 

Better yet, I kept riding my motorcycle to and from work - and everywhere else - starting seven days after my operation!

Now here’s where it got complicated.  After the radiotherapy, I had to choose long-term therapy of some sort.  Glioblastoma is notorious for sending small microscopic cells far into the surrounding brain.  Without aggressive long-term therapy, there is almost a 100% chance of tumor recurrence, even with a good “apparently total” resection (removal) of the tumor.  My therapy choices were to explore a relatively new vaccine therapy (immunotherapy) at M.D. Anderson and at Duke University Hospital or stay on conventional chemotherapy.

Well, being a typical pushy neurosurgeon, I asked, “Can I do both (chemotherapy and immunotherapy) at the same time?”  The first answer was, “Well, no one has ever done that for a brain tumor.”  But then Amy Heimberger, my neurosurgery colleague and the head of our tumor vaccine program, said that she and others were thinking about doing exactly that, based upon some small studies in mice. However, they couldn’t be sure it would work out okay in humans until it had been tried with at least one patient. 

My answer: “Just think of me as a six-foot tall lab research rat and go for it.  Let’s see if we can, each month, use the chemotherapy to depress (squelch) my immune system, and then give the vaccine injection when the immune system (white blood cells) start to rebound from chemotherapy.  In that way, you can “supercharge” the bone marrow to make the immune system much more sensitized to attacking any tumor cells the immune system can find.

Now, twenty-one and one-half months after my diagnosis, I’ve been through 18 cycles of chemotherapy and vaccine therapy.  In April 2006, at twelve months after the onset of my first headache, I achieved my “big goal” for the first year after diagnosis: I again ran the 5K Run For the Rose race and then served as grand marshal for the event on my motorcycle, leading 600 other motorcyclists on a 50-mile group ride to raise more funds for brain tumor research. 

The vaccine therapy protocols, based upon my treatment and that of the patients who have followed me, have all been changed to always give the vaccine treatments synchronized with chemotherapy at both M.D. Anderson on and Duke University, with many other hospitals across the country soon to follow.  My most recent brain MRI scan (February 12, 2007) shows no evidence of any tumor or any suspicious areas for tumor.  And I’m still working every day, seeing patients in clinic and doing special pain procedures and special radiotherapy procedures (radiosurgery, focused radiotherapy). 

Rhonda has been the solid rock upon which I’ve survived through all this time and has been there even when I’ve not been the best-spirited patient in the world.  In my opinion, she’s a good candidate for sainthood!  The kids have all stayed in college or at their jobs.

Yes – I’m still riding the motorcycle every day to and from work and on group rides.  My big goal for 2007 is to ride 1500 miles in August to the big national motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.  I even have two other cancer patients/survivors that will ride their motorcycles with me from Houston to Sturgis.

What is the bottom line of what I’ve learned over twenty years of taking care of cancer patients - and then the past almost two years as a cancer patient?  STAY ACTIVE!  Cancer patients need to force themselves to keep moving and also keep eating so that A LOT of calories are coming into the body.  We need to have long-term goals, supportive understanding families, and strong faith that can serve as a foundation upon which we can land when the inevitable bumps in the road occur. 

It’s important to have a superior attitude, stay positive, and share your cancer story and journey with others to encourage and inspire them - and then let them do the same for you. 

Finally, be persistent: go to the Internet, educate yourself about your tumor and new treatment options, and plan your therapy after studying those Internet articles and talking to different doctors.  Never underestimate the power of prayer.

In short, get back in the saddle…and ride on!.