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| Dr. Anna Meadows, on to new challenges |
Dr. Anna Meadows was
at the top of her game. The illustrious cancer researcher had pioneered the
idea of “survivorship” – following children through life who had been cured of
cancer in order to monitor the side effects of their treatment. She had been
chief of oncology at the
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and she had
launched a new center within the National Cancer Institute.
Then, on December 31, 2010, Anna very determinedly walked
away from it all.
“I didn’t want to do anything involved with medicine and
haven’t for two years,” she said recently, as we prepared for a joint talk
(along with former Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Flora Wolf) on
“unretiring”
at the
Cosmopolitan Club. (More on Judge Wolf in a later blog)
“I just got tired of it. I’d had enough,” Anna said. “I was bored.”
This is a sentiment I’ve heard often from creative, purposeful
people who champion an issue like a lonely voice in the wilderness, only to
find the challenge gone when everyone else finally catches up.
“I started in 1975 to think about what would happen to
children cured of cancer,” she said. Then, only 10 to 20 percent of children
were making it through the disease. Gradually
she discovered the consequences of certain types of radiation, and began to
work on clinical trials that changed treatment without sacrificing outcomes,
but with fewer and less severe longterm complications.
“I went to lots of
meetings talking about survivorship and after 25 years, the rest of the world
decided it was an issue. All of a sudden, it was as if they’d invented it,” she
said. “For 25 years, I was beating my head against a wall. I could see what was
going to happen…Where had they been?”
Today, she explained, 80 percent of kids are cured of their
cancer. There’s even the
Office of Cancer Survivorship,
which she launched under
President Clinton. And, unrelenting, she snagged seed money from Lance
Armstrong’s foundation to set up a
survivorship institute at Penn, where the
issues of childhood cancer survivors are understood.
Then, said Anna, “I
decided it was time to quit. There
wasn’t anything more in medicine that I thought I could contribute, and I wanted
to do other things.”
She craved a new challenge, and even contemplated law school
10 years ago. (Why not? she thought. After all, she’d entered medical school at
age 34, tackling it as a mother of three.)
She eased her way out of CHOP. “I worked part time for five years and
started to do other things. I found a gradual transition helpful.”
She discovered a new calling in
Penn’s Village, which
is neither Quaker nor a retirement home.
It’s a burgeoning concept in an era when people want to “age in place” – stay
in their homes until they’re carried out feet first, if at all possible. To stay put, people may need support services
– folks who can climb ladders, offer transportation, find plumbers, and help
them with doctors’ appointments. And with this service focused on Center City,
people can also continue to take advantage of the area’s flourishing cultural
activities. That’s the mission of Penn’s Village, which aims to cover this “naturally
occuring retirement community” or NORC.
Anna saw Penn’s Village as an opportunity to implement an
idea that she had been trying to launch
– to help patients navigate the medical system. Now, she’s using her
organizational skills – particularly her ability to run meetings and reach
consensus – to “set up a protocol to help with people with their medical
choices, empowering them to ask the right questions.”
Retirement, she says is “taking advantage of opportunities
to expand on what you want to do and think you’re good at. You make use of the
skills and knowledge of your professional life but do it in a different way.”
As for choices, Anna is relishing those she is making, post
medicine.
“My life is so full
of things,” including her marriage and travel with cancer geneticist Alfred
Knudson Jr., noted for coming up with the theory that cancer mutations require
“two hits.” She’s president of the retired faculty at Penn. And she’s recently
board emeritus of the
New Century Trust, which supports women and girls. More recently, she’s been energized by the
Cosmopolitan Club, a historic women’s social group where she now chairs a
program committee.
Instead of spending her days immersed with medical
folks, she now can “interact with people
with different skills -- lawyers,
artists, ministers” and more. “It’s made me quite satisfied.”
Oh, and I forgot. There’s her tennis game. Phew!
At 2 p.m. on January
29, Penn’s Village will host talk by Thelma Reese, co-author of “The
ElderChicks’ Guide to the Rest of Your Life” at the Rittenhouse Square Free
Library, 19th and Locust Streets, Philadelphia.
