What's New

This year we will celebrate our 30th year in practice.  Ten days after leaving the Army, on July 17, 1967 Susie and I started practice together in Mountain View. We have observed and been part of a lot of changes.  We expect to be serving the community for many more years.  It continues to be deeply satisfying to care for patients and be an important part of their lives.

Today we have technologies that could not have been imagined in 1978.  Daily we use monoclonal antibodies specific for individual cancers.  In our office pharmacy we have drugs tailored to treat critical cell processes and prevent cancers from growing.  Chemotherapy is gentler today, with better drugs to prevent or treat side effects.

Information and information access has grown also.  If you doubt that, count the number of battery chargers you take with you on a trip: cell phone, PDA, iPod, laptop, pager, digital camera, etc.  This year we will be adopting an electronic medical record system that will permit us electronically to receive laboratory tests, refill prescriptions, and permit you secure access to your own records.  It will allow us to communicate with you, if you wish, by email as well as the established phone and fax we now use.  The “go live” time will be early 2009.

What has not changed is the importance of the doctor-patient relationship.  Technology may be necessary for curing, but is not sufficient for healing the person.  We have always practiced patient-centered medicine.  Our goal is to connect the best scientific medicine with the most compassionate caring and live up to the standards expressed in our logo: wisdom, compassion and service.

Modern cancer care is a team effort.  The partnership of a physician and psychologist—Drs. Bill and Susie Buchholz—is the core of that team effort.  More skills are needed and so we have developed an Integrative Oncology Network to assist in providing the breadth of services necessary.  This is a group of professionals with different specialties to whom we refer patients if they need their services.  The network concept is maintained as we remain in communication with each other to coordinate care.  Please see the section Integrative Oncology Network for details.

We also work closely with the rest of the medical community.  As one of the oncologists who admits patients to El Camino, I am working to establish an Oncology Service in the new hospital.  All of the physicians who use El Camino are part of this effort and all of our patients will benefit.  One aspect of the team approach to cancer care are tumor boards.  Every Wednesday I meet with other doctors—oncologists, surgeons, pathologists, radiologists, etc.—and we discuss individual cases to establish the best treatment plans.  This service is free and I often present cases to get a “second opinion” or advice from the assembled physicians.

El Camino Hospital has established its own cancer center.  I work closely with them and their physicians.  Our office is partnering with them to provide cancer survivor consultations.  This will help their patients get the same in depth survival care you receive in our office.  See the section Cancer Survivor Program for details.  The hospital is cosponsoring our workshop, Creative Healing, in October as they seek to provide more complete care for cancer survivors.

In October we will be offering two exciting Cancer Survivor workshops to the community: Integrating Care and Creative Healing. These free events will be on Sat. Oct. 25 and Sun. Oct. 26.  (Details are below.)  They are a response to patients’ need for more support as they face the “What’s Next?” part of the cancer experience.  During acute cancer treatment patients get plenty of attention.  When the treatment (chemotherapy, surgery or radiation) is over, they may get follow-up appointments, but the attention is on the cancer more than the person.  These workshops address the human needs of cancer survivors and provide a framework to organize ones life to heal from the inside.  Check out the sections on our website Integrative Oncology Network and the updated Cancer Survivor Program.

In closing, I offer the following “To Do” list

• Meditate daily: Breath in, breath out. Repeat.

• Enjoy the sacred ordinary.

• Say thank you to 10 plants, objects or persons daily.

• That’s enough for one day.  Take the rest of it off.

William M. Buchholz, M.D.