Chapter 19: A Career Devoted to Interdisciplinary Teams; Earning the name, Dr. Fixit
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Description
Here Dr. Goepfert comments on his accomplishments and a significant award and shares some details of his life outside of work. He says that as he looks back on his work at MD Anderson, he says he is very gratified that he got three sons through medical school and a daughter through college with no debt. Taking a more serious tone, he says that he believes he used resources in his Department and Section wisely and made Head and Neck surgery visible enough to be recognized as the number five program nationwide. He is proud of the fellowship program and hopes that his focus on interdisciplinary care will be carried on. He is also proud of the Distinguished Surgeon Award he received from the Association of Operating Room Nurses of Greater Houston in 1999. He notes that he was brought up as a scrub technician in his father’s operating room and knows the value of nurses to a team. Speaking about his hobbies, he immediately talks about his love of riding motorcycles. He only stopped riding about four and a half years ago, when he felt his reflexes were not quick enough to insure safety. Otherwise, he reads and listens to music. He enjoys car trips and looks forward to taking driving trips up both the east and west coasts of the country. He notes that he washes his own cars. He tells an amusing anecdote about fixing bicycles for kids in the neighborhood in Sugarland, Texas, an activity that earned him the nickname, Dr. Fixit.
Identifier
GeopfertH_02_20120828_C19
Publication Date
8-28-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Helmuth Goepfert, MD, Oral History Interview, August 28, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - View on Career and Accomplishments; Contributions; Activities Outside Institution; Career and Accomplishments; Post Retirement Activities; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Personal Background; Definitions, Explanations, Translations; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Funny Stories
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
As you look back over what you accomplished during your time prior to your retirement from MD Anderson, what is it that you’re particularly gratified to have accomplished?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
That I got three sons through medical school without them having any financial debt—(laughs)—and a daughter through college without financial debt that never had to pay a penny. So that was the most gratifying thing. But, as I say, I think I sort of built upon what other people before me had done. I tried to use the resources of the institution wisely in order to make sure that it became visible. Head and Neck, ever since then, has been on the national scene as the number-five program in the country—otolaryngology program in the country—although we treat cancer only. We don’t treat any benign disease. But—what is it? —the news report?
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Something News and World Report.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
News and World Report—the News and World Report. The Head and Neck Department is number one in the institution, and it’s number three or four in the nation, which is astonishing because we treat only cancer. But that has been always there ever since they started that. I don’t know how they measure that—I don’t care—but, as I say, it is a visible hallmark. And, as I say, the fact that we have a very well-run fellowship training is something that has been built upon ever since Dr. Jesse was the first one who took fellows in training specifically for head and neck only. Before that—before the ‘60s—they would become surgical oncologists, but they would do abdomen, they would do breast, they would do colon, they would do sarcoma, melanoma, everything. Dr. Jesse focused this on head and neck only, and we continued that tradition.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there something that you wish you had accomplished but for some reason were not able to bring to completion?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
No, I don’t bemoan anything. The fact the electronic book went by the wayside, and everybody has forgotten it, but that’s an issue of the times—that’s an issue of the time. The one thing that bothers me now is that— Fortunately SCOPUS has come about, and SCOPUS allows us to review literature prior to 1985.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I’m missing the name of that.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
SCOPUS. S-C-O-P-U-S. SCOPUS is a program that exists here in the organization that is run by Elsevier. It basically has reviewed the literature all the way back to the 1940s so that finally, on the electronic version, you can get articles from way back then. For almost two decades, ever since the electronic system came to bear and the Index Medicus has disappeared—you remember the Index Medicus? Index Medicus, before the advent of the computer, was a publication of articles in the literature, and it was basically hardbound. It sat in a library. You would pull it down, look up whatever disease it was you wanted to look up, and there were the references. Then, that all translated into the electronics. Index Medicus sort of disappeared. It was changed, yes, and then it eventually became for publications prior to. So, SCOPUS is the place to find that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s neat.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Remember that for if you ever need to look up somebody; go into SCOPUS. They know it up in the library. They taught me that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Great. And you passed it on. Thank you. What do you hope—? Is there something in your philosophy or a program that you’ve created that you hope has been carried on and will be carried on in this department?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
The respect for interdisciplinary care. The only thing that I’m sort of ambivalent about is I have a youngest son who is doing his residency in Ear, Nose, and Throat right now. He wants to do a fellowship in head and neck cancer. But with all the advents of additional and new treatments that eliminate surgery from the management of cancer, I wonder should he really do this? But it is his life and his decision. (laughs) But, as I say, the big operations that we used to do are not necessary anymore, to some extent. There are other treatments available. There are certain modifications of it. Will head and neck cancer surgery disappear? Probably not for a while, but how soon? It’s hard to tell.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What are some statistics on that? I mean, how have numbers risen or fallen?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
In general, head and neck cancer has fallen in all aspects of the squamous carcinomas of the upper aerodigestive tract, except tonsil and base-of-tongue that are increasing. The reason that that is increasing is with the advent of the human papilloma virus as a causative agent. But as smoking has decreased, much of the cancer of the oral cavity has sort of diminished significantly in incidents. We used to see a lot of floor-of-mouth cancer. Not anymore. We used to see a lot of cancer in the oral cavity, the side of the tongue. It’s much less than it used to be because there’s less smoking. I’ll never forget the picture in the ‘60s of a painter that, in order not to get his cigarettes wet with paint, would push it out of the cigarette box, put it in his mouth, turn it on, and let it hang there while he was painting. Then, so he would have to light another cigarette, before the cigarette was over, he would get out another cigarette, put it in his mouth, light it with that cigarette, and keep smoking. So this was the real chain smoker.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I think Jackson Pollack used to do that.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Yeah, and he used to do it for eight hours a day. So that is how— Now that has disappeared, basically. So there is a change in the epidemiology of certain cancers. Thyroid cancer may or may not be on the increase. It seems to be, or is it that we are treating more because we’re finding more the thyroid cancer with all the imaging that we do? God knows. But, as I say, there are the salivary glands still treated by surgery, but as new molecular identifiers evolve, there may be a molecular target that will eliminate that type of cancer as well. It will be treated by that plus radiotherapy or something like that. So, I don’t know, but I really don’t— The basic philosophy that I always espouse—I lived, during my professional career, in Sugar Land. So I traveled in twenty miles and drove back twenty miles, and it was during the time that Highway 59 was sort of being rebuilt and 288 didn’t exist yet, so it was a long trek back and forth, but I sort of developed the philosophy that you have to be happy to come to work in the morning, and you have to be happy leaving work at night to go home again. So those two things were important. And driving for twenty miles allowed me to calm down enough so I wouldn’t kick the door when I got home. (laughs)
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Let me ask you one more kind of institution question. When you were going through the various presidents, you mentioned Dr. DePinho, but you didn’t give me your impression.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
I don’t know him.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And you have had no contact with him?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
No. I haven’t even seen him.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Pictures only.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Pictures only? All right. I wanted to ask you about the various awards that you’ve received over the years. There have been a lot of them. You mentioned the Helmuth Goepfert Society that was created in 2002 yesterday when we spoke. I’m just wondering, are there any of those awards that have meant something special to you?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
The one that was interesting was the award I was given by the Nurses Association of Houston.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That was in 1999?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
In ’99, and it was together with Denton Cooley.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, Distinguished Surgeon Award from the Association of Operating Room Nurses of Greater Houston.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Yeah, that sort of fell on me. I’d never heard of it. (laughs)
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So what did that mean to you? Why was that a good award?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Because you work a lot with nurses in the operating room, and you interact with them. Yes, you work with them, and it’s sort of interesting that they see you as somebody that deserves an award like that, because it’s them who decide it. It’s not anybody else. So here you have an organization that is non-physician giving you an award. That was sort of the unique thing about it.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What’s your—I mean—when there’s sort of a—how would you say it? —sort of a cultural view of the surgeon as the tough—?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Yeah, the macho—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
The macho person, yeah, who yells and screams and gets the job done. So, what’s your style in the operating room when you work with the team? I’m wondering why the nurses felt this is the man to give the award to.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Because I tended not to, by and large, vent my frustrations at them, and they can be easy targets for that. When things get haywire or get sort of abnormal and intense, usually the ones that feel the brunt of it is the nurses. When DeBakey threw instruments and stuff like that, that’s what it was. But, as I say, it is the perception that—I mean—from the very beginning, because I was brought up as a scrub technician—helping my dad way back then—I knew what these people meant to the whole teamwork in the operating room. That’s what it was all about. So that when I got an award from them—because the nurses from the different hospitals that are in whatever society this was, they had to decide on certain people. So how they selected me I don’t know, but it was a recognition probably of my influence I had in the operating room. So that’s an interesting award. The other ones are sort of, yeah, you get them. They’re there. You don’t know what to do with them after you retire because there is no space in the house anymore. (laughs) I can give you the key for the place that I pay fifty dollars a month to keep everything in there. (laughs) And I don’t know what my kids are going to do with them. I said, “Kids, if it has any wood on it, use it for the pyre where you’re going to burn me.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, that’s funny. Is there anything that you would like to share from how you spend your time away from all your activities that kind of—?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
I used to ride a motorcycle.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What kind?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
I started off when I was in medical school. It was my only means of transportation. My dad gave me a motorcycle. That was in 1954. It was a one-cylinder BMW. I don’t know if you have any knowledge of motorcycles. You don’t seem to be the character for that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
You’d be surprised.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Then I bought a 500 when I was in medical school—in the last year of medical school. I was getting too much sinusitis, so I decided to trade the motorcycle for— I don’t know if you’ve ever had a concept of the BMW Isetta. It was this little vehicle for two people, smaller than the Smart actually, which had a motorcycle engine in it. You opened it from the front, like this. That was the Isetta. I had one of those. And then I didn’t ride a motorcycle until the late ‘70s, so there was a hiatus of at least twenty years. I got into motorcycling again and was basically helped along by Joann’s [Goepfert] oldest brother who is a big motorcyclist, so I joined the group. I rode motorcycles basically and often rode to work, yes, but basically it was tours through the country. We went to California, we went here. It was basically the Honda Sport Touring Association, which is what it was called then. But I had a BMW. And, of course, the motorcycles increased tremendously in power and weight over the years. The BMWs were light—very light—compared to what is available now. So, I basically started off by attending the courses that were given and was on the safe side and lucky side. I never had an accident. But four and a half years ago I said, “This is enough,” because I was—my reflexes were not fast anymore, and I didn’t have the strength to manage that beast if it was in a situation where you had to have strength. So, I said, no, I haven’t had an accident. Let’s leave like that. I have an ability to set things aside, and once they are out of sight, they are out of mind, and I don’t dwell on it anymore. It’s gone; it’s past. Goodbye. Fortunately, I have that from my mother. My mother always had that, so she is still capable of doing that and dealing with adult-onset macular degeneration. She is totally blind. She is ninety-nine, almost 100, and totally blind. She is, of course, desperate because she can’t die. For her, life is totally miserable. She used to listen to music. She isn’t doing that anymore. She cannot see anything. She used to listen to books that would come from Germany. There is a program in Germany for the blind that sends books on tape, and she would listen to that. Not anymore. But she always had an ability to accept what was coming and determine if she could handle it. If not, if it was something that was either unimportant or something that she couldn’t handle, she put it aside and didn’t think about it anymore, so I learned that from her. From my dad I have different qualities that have sort of carried me through life. As I say, it is interesting when you think back at your life, why things happen. I don’t have any big hobbies. That’s one of the problems. I’m not a fisherman. I’m not a hunter. I don’t play tennis. I don’t play golf. I keep my fitness because, yes, I need it in order to survive. But it’s not an issue that I miss anything of that. I read a lot. I like to listen to music. I’m going to make a decision now to probably quit Physicians Network and decide before it’s too damn late to take a car and drive all up the west coast all the way to Vancouver. Joann may join me somewhere along the way. She doesn’t want to go the whole way. I want to do the same thing around Boston. Our two sons, one is here, and the other one is there, so I want to do the coastlines. Another thing we enjoy is— We enjoy car trips, basically, and hopefully the storm is not too bad. We want to go for the holiday to Alabama, where my oldest kids are. So that may happen or may not happen, but now I’m in the process of— I have a BMW, a 3-Series convertible, but that’s not really a good road car for longer trips, so I will very likely buy another SUV and add that to the load of cars around the house, which my wife is going to bemoan, but so be it.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, you kind of reminded me about when you were talking about how at the age of nine you drove a tractor, and at the age of twelve you drove a truck, and you still have your love of vehicles.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Yeah. But I’m not a fanatic about it. Once it has served its purpose, it’s gone bye-bye. So, I like it, yes, I wash my own cars and polish my own cars. I do all of that stuff. I used to change the oil in my own cars, but that’s now very much sophisticated with all the other stuff that has to be done—reset the timer of the car and all of that stuff. Forget about it. I’m not that flexible anymore to get under a car. So those things had their time. I remember we used to fix cars around my house, not that we had them on blocks in the front yard, but, as I say, that was sort of an entertainment. I remember when we lived out in Sugar Land we lived in Sweetwater. It was sort of a cul-de-sac. The kids in the neighborhood called me Dr. Fixit because I would fix their bicycles. (laughs) Dr. Fixit fixed the bike. So, I would fix their bicycles and get them in working order. The last time I hunted really was with my dad. Back in 1959, we went deer hunting in Argentina, and the trophy of that hunt I have hanging on our patio, because it was a nice twelve-ender. So that was the last time I really went hunting. Fishing, I don’t really like fishing in the hot, murky water, so I don’t fish around here. My wife says, “You need to take up fishing.” I said, “Not here.” The climate in Houston I can’t tolerate. Summer climate for me is out, but I have to live with it, so fine.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So do we all.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
I have to live with it. It is because basically I am more or less a loner, but Joann likes friendship. She likes conversation. She has her friends. I said, “Okay. We’ll stay here.” Our kids were here, sure, but now our kids are—one is there and is not going to come back, and Ryan [Goepfert] is in California, and God knows what he’s going to do after residency.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s a good time to make the trip to see them.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Yeah. That’s right.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything that you’d like to add?
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
No.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, thank you very much for talking to me.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
And I will make sure that you get the— Did Mary Jane [Schier] give you that? If you are going to be a historian, check out the Cancer Bulletin history before it’s forgotten.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And SCOPUS.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
Yes. SCOPUS is going to be helpful for you. And you look it up by author. Where was this author? MD Anderson, you put in, and it shows the list of the author, and it even gives an index.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s great.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
So, he has published this much. How many times was it cited? Then you get the citations for all the articles, which is a very interesting way to measure publication because you see how useful that publication has been out there. That didn’t exist either before. All right.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
All right. Well, thank you very much.
Helmuth Goepfert, MD:
If I need to do anything for you, let me know.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I will. And I’m turning off the recorder at 4:32. (End of Audio 2)
Recommended Citation
Goepfert, Helmuth MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 19: A Career Devoted to Interdisciplinary Teams; Earning the name, Dr. Fixit" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1018.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1018
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