Get to know the man behind CARE: Dr. Frank Senecal

Dr. Senecal speaks at a Beer & Bites fundraiser.

Why did you decide to become a doctor?

My parents were always big on education. When I was in college, I ended up getting really sick, I had a congenital defect in my kidney and ended up spending quite a bit of time in the hospital. I had toyed with the idea of going to medical school but this just made me more committed to the idea. The care that I received from good doctors inspired me. I’ve always loved the science behind it as well. 

I of course had moments where I felt like it wasn’t for me. There were a lot of ups and downs but I just remained committed to it.  

I went to medical school in Indiana where there was quite a bit of clinical work seeing patients. I ended up coming out to the University of Washington because of this exchange program that they had where you could go to other schools and work for a couple of months. I just fell in love with the Northwest. I applied to be a resident at the University of Washington and was able to come out here. 

 Another thing I’ve learned in my education—the models that you have are really important. The University of Washington had a marvelous program. You would pick up a medical textbook and half of the authors in there would be from the University of Washington. I was walking around learning from these professionals that were literally writing the book on how to practice medicine. They were uniformly really good models.  

They could have just been superb doctors but they were also really kind, compassionate, and thoughtful. It was good exposure to great doctors. You try to model after that and you see how good these people are and you try to emulate them. That experience had a lot to do with how I practice medicine today. 

What led you to study and treat cancer?

I was going to be a cardiologist and had done extra training in cardiology and was actually brought to the University of Washington to pursue cardiology. I got a little bored with it, which is kind of silly because there is a lot to cardiology. But I wanted to find something that was going to keep me interested in the future. I began looking into other areas.

The most intimidating training that I had was at Fred Hutch. It was so technical and with stem cell transplantation, patients become so ill and have so many problems associated with them that it was just such a challenging area to work in. Some of my comrades just couldn’t do it, it was too much.  

It was crazy scary. You had to be really on your toes and thoughtful about what you did. For me, it was also the most satisfying. We did a lot of good. And sometimes a patient who wasn’t going to get out of the fire, recovered and went on to have an amazing life. The science is good and it still is at The Hutch. They are so darn good and they are so committed. 

What inspired you to start South Sound CARE Foundation?

Mark Nelson (CEO of Northwest Medical Specialties) and I were talking about how we were going to pay for clinical research. That’s what it came down to. How were we going to get the trials that we wanted to implement down to Tacoma? Some of these trials were pretty well funded by pharmaceutical companies and some weren’t funded at all but were important for patients to have access to. 

So that’s really how it started. We determined we needed to start a non-profit and do some fundraising. It was that conversation over coffee in the cafeteria. It then took about a year to get things together and form a board.

It’s very difficult for many oncology groups to carry out the kind of clinical research that South Sound CARE does. Many of the trials that we do are important, but they’re not well funded. You can’t do the work if you don’t have the money. So, it’s not easy. Because people have been so generous, we’ve been able to do it. It’s really pretty remarkable that it’s grown like it has. 

Over the last few years, I’ve also noticed that physicians were becoming a little complacent and a little less enthusiastic about research. Many physicians felt that research was something that you did while you were at the University of Washington, not in our community. My partner Sibel Blau and I were pretty passionate in the opposite direction—we feel that we have to bring this research to our patients, we’re just not doing our job if we’re not. 

I’m passionate about energizing other physicians about this as well. 

What do you wish people understood about fighting cancer?

I think as a non-medical person, you have to overcome your fear over talking to your loved one about the fact that they have cancer. It’s important to be available to listen.  Be there, you don’t have to say anything magically, just be there to support them. Have a cup of tea, go to a Rainer’s game. Just be there.

A lot of people thirst for normality sometimes. Sometimes it feels like your whole life revolves around your cancer. To have a moment of normalcy is a great gift to give someone. 

I enjoy seeing people outside of the hospital and outside of the clinics. Sometimes my relationships with patients are very close. I enjoy getting together with patients and having a cup of coffee with them at their house or going on a walk with them. I know that the majority of those folks enjoy it as well. 

I also visit people at home toward the end of their life. I do that because, first of all of it’s hard for people to come in. Most patients are pretty weak at that point. But it’s probably more important for me than it is for them. I’m sure they are glad I come over to visit with them but mostly, it’s an opportunity for me to bring some closure to what’s happening at the end of their life. In some cases, I just can’t stand to say goodbye.  

This work can be really difficult, what motivates you to continue the fight?

To a certain extent, I’ve gotten myself in this role. It’s who I am and it’s what I do. People are used to me being a good doctor and doing everything I can do to find an option for them. It’s just what I do.

In terms of what allows me to do that—first of all, I have great staff. I also do mundane things. I meditate and I pray. I work out every day, early in the morning. It’s quiet and I can beat myself up on the bike and get rid of stress.

I also have a great family. I can talk to Mary [my wife] about anything. She was an oncology nurse and got out of that field a few years ago and she knows all about oncology and knows about the stresses and such. She can tell when I’ve had a difficult day and just not happy. She knows when something is up. She’ll peel back the onion so to speak. I don’t often volunteer, but she’ll get it out of me and we’ll talk.

You know, I also have five grandchildren, and I just can’t wait around and feel sorry for myself. There is also a tremendous amount of joy and fun in my relationships with them. I can just be a grandfather; they don’t expect me to be anything more than that. I can do things that are just fun. 

What are some of the advances you have seen over your 40 years in the medical world?  

It’s unbelievable. It’s so great in some areas and still so lousy in other areas. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, we thought it was great if we could get the cancer in some degree of remission for 6 months. The drugs were pretty toxic, the radiation therapy was pretty toxic. The science and biology of it was just being learned. There wasn’t immune therapy, there were no genomics, no targeted therapies, nothing like that. 

Then some remarkable things happened. For example, when they developed Herceptin for HER2+ breast cancer which is a targeted antibody or vaccine. It revolutionized the treatment of that disease. It was amazing. Women who were definitely not going to live, were living all of a sudden. 

That has occurred in several other areas of cancer. We never used to cure some of the more aggressive lymphomas and now the majority of them are cured. Same thing is true in Hodgkin’s disease. The majority of them are cured as well.  

The understanding of the biology of the disease and the treatment have been incredible. The future is really bright. Immune therapy is definitely going to play a major role. Manufacturing the patient’s own immune system in a test tube to strengthen them into more potent immune cells to attack the cancer, that’s just developing. In the next 10 years it will be so much better. 

A lot of really great things are going on. It’s really wonderful to watch that. At one of the early South Sound CARE Foundation fundraisers about 9 years ago, I was talking about a particular drug that looked promising for women who inherited the BRCA mutation. It’s only in the last month that all of the large trials finally got done, all major research has come back and we proved that those medicines really work and prove that those ladies won’t have a major relapse. 

To have this become standard of care and observe that is really amazing. And there are so many examples of that.