Chapter 01: An Interest in Sports Shapes a Fascination with the Body
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Description
Dr. Fisch begins the interview by sketching his family background and then talking in detail about his lifelong interest in sports. He explains that he “understands the world through sports and sports metaphors.” He explains the process of visualizing how to execute a series of plays and links this to mindfulness skills he would become interested in as a medical professional. He cites his mentor, Dr. Waun Ki Hong [Oral History Interview] who told him (ironically) that his job is “easy,” since meeting healthy goals is a step-by-step process. He observes that his interest in sports probably led to his fascination with the physical body.
Identifier
FischMJ_01_20150205_C01
Publication Date
2-5-2015
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Michael Fisch, MD, Oral History Interview, February 05, 2015
Topics Covered
Personal Background; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Personal Background; Inspirations to Practice Science/Medicine; Influences from People and Life Experiences; Formative Experiences; Discovery, Creativity and Innovation
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So now we are officially recording. (laughs)
Michael Fisch, MD:
Okay. Good morning.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Good morning. So let me just put the identifier on. I’m Tacey Ann Rosolowski, and this morning I’m interviewing Dr. Michael J. Fisch for the Making Cancer History Voices Oral History Project run by the Historical Resources Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Dr. Fisch joined MD Anderson in 1999 as an assistant professor in the Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitative Medicine. Is that correct?
Michael Fisch, MD:
That’s correct.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Since 2004 he has been the Director of the Community Clinical Oncology Program, and since 2009 has served as Chair of the Department of General Oncology. He is tenured in that department. I will also say that Dr. Fisch will soon be leaving the institution for a new opportunity, and I’m sure we’ll have an opportunity to talk about that a bit later. This session is being held in a conference room in the Department of General Oncology in the Faculty Center on the main campus of MD Anderson. This is the first of two planned interview sessions. Today is February 5th, 2015, and the time is about thirteen minutes after ten. So thank you very much for—
Michael Fisch, MD:
You’re welcome.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
—agreeing to participate at this very busy time when you’re packing and getting ready to leave, leave Houston.
Michael Fisch, MD:
Well, I’m delighted. I’m delighted to have a chance to reflect with you.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s a pleasure. Well, as I mentioned before we turned on the recorder, I kind of organized this as a chronological story, so I wanted to ask you where you were born and when and where you grew up.
Michael Fisch, MD:
Well, I was born in Queens, New York, in 1964. Both of my parents were born and were raised and lived in Brooklyn, New York. I didn’t stay long in New York. My parents moved to Maryland by 1967 and then to Chantilly, Virginia, in Fairfax County, Virginia, shortly thereafter, and that’s where I was born and raised. So I spent basically my entire childhood in Chantilly, Virginia, and went to Chantilly High School. My mom was an elementary school teacher at a nearby elementary school, and my dad worked in the defense industry with defense contractor companies and then for the Pentagon.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What did he do?
Michael Fisch, MD:
He was in electronic surveillance defense. He was an electronic engineer. He had gone to City College in New York and my mom had gone to Brooklyn College. And like a lot of people in the northern Virginia area, they worked in D.C. or surrounding industries.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Your birth date?
Michael Fisch, MD:
June 11th, 1964.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, tell me a little bit about your education and kind of what you were thinking about doing when you were a kid. I mean, I was interested in how many interests you have right now, I mean how many facets.
Michael Fisch, MD:
Yes.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How did your interests start evolving?
Michael Fisch, MD:
Well, so I’ve always been interested in sports, first of all, so when I think about my childhood, I think about the sports, playing baseball, basketball, football, hockey, street hockey.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
You were a doc-jock. (laughs)
Michael Fisch, MD:
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s where my mind was, and that’s where my mind actually has continued to be.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting.
Michael Fisch, MD:
In many levels, I’ve sort of come to understand the world through sports, sports analogies. And even one of my sort of proud moments here recently was getting to write a medical article about a sports metaphor, talking about evaluating physician performance in Medical Oncology. Money ball becomes impact ball, and so it’s basically kind of a money ball type story in our field. And coauthoring that with Waun Ki Hong, my boss, and Jim Abruzzi, head of GI Medical Oncology, also big baseball fans, and we always think and talk in baseball terms, so actually having that project together and publishing that was really quite a thrill for me. So sports was a big theme, but—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Can I ask you kind of a little follow-up question about that?
Michael Fisch, MD:
Yeah, sure.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Because, I mean, people who are really adept at sports, I mean, they have like a physical confidence, I mean a physical awareness, and I’m wondering if that connects somehow to meditation or, you know, the ability to kind of put the mind inward and understand your own body states, your body movements.
Michael Fisch, MD:
Well, I think there’s a lot to be said for that, right? So if I’m talking to my son about how to be an effective pitcher, so much of it is not just the mechanics of pitching, the strength, the working out, but it’s noticing where your mind goes and noticing what your job is to do, you know, and to prevent yourself from catastrophizing, like, “If I walk this guy and then another guy gets a hit, then they’re going to tie the game and we’re going to lose.” Your mind can’t have those thoughts as a pitcher. You have to be able to get back to where you are, tune out those thoughts and other sorts of distracters, and execute the next pitch. That’s all you can do, execute the next pitch. And then that seemed like it would have been a strike, but the umpire called it a ball, you’ve got to get over that thought and then execute the next pitch. (laughs) That’s all you can do. You see this come to fruition in sports, in the most recent NFL playoffs and Super Bowl. It’s a remarkable year, 2015, where a lot of unlikely things happened, but they happened because the athletes and their coaches were able to execute the next play, the series of plays that were required. Sometimes it would seem unlikely that a series of things would have to happen for them to get the best result, but they had to be able to have that vision and focus and find that opportunity. To create an opportunity for that to happen required tremendous mindfulness skills, highly developed, extraordinary mindfulness skills of the sort that none of the fans watching these games could possibly bring to bear, but the players could, and it’s just really a remarkable thing. So I think that has a lot to do with sports. And, in fact, very recently since the playoffs started, I was talking to a patient who had a condition which was very serious and the possible causes of the condition were extremely frightening. So we talked about the sports mentality and noticing where the mind goes and knowing that there’s just a series of steps that need to happen and sort of figure out how to walk through the step-by-step process. I remember when Dr. Hong, my boss, when I first became chair of General Oncology, I remember him saying, “Your job is very easy.” And I paused, like, “Really?” He said, “Healthy goals. Step-by-step processes.” And I think of that all the time. I always think, “Your job is very easy.” It could be you can impute that to a patient. “Your job is very easy as you wait to see what this diagnosis is and how you’re going to be a member of your own healthcare team, and how you’re going to manage the reactions of your husband and of your children and of your mom and of your family and perceive your future in the way—.” There’s all this stuff that needs to happen, and without saying this to the patient, because it may not be an effective to say, but, “Your job is very easy.” Healthy goals. What’s the goal? Step-by-step process. What’s the step-by-step process I need to get from here to there? For that patient, it was from pre-diagnosis, about to have a series of diagnostic tests, and you can’t really plan until you get through those, and then there’ll be a diagnosis. There’ll be no more mystery, and then the goals of care and ways of navigating can be thought of then. But you sort of have to shorten the game, just like, again, sports teams learn to shorten the game so that they can get the best results. So sports has always been important to me and probably led to my fascination with the body, right? You know, your muscles, your injuries, how you make your body work in sports. So I was interested in that. And I pretty much decided when I was eleven years old that I wanted to be a doctor.
Recommended Citation
Fisch, Michael J. MD, MPH and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 01: An Interest in Sports Shapes a Fascination with the Body" (2015). Interview Chapters. 824.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/824
Conditions Governing Access
Open
