About Dr. Edwin C. Cadman

The Alana Dung Research Foundation gave me an impossible task:
Capture the spirit of Dr. Ed Cadman.

How do you capture something you can’t grasp? I can describe it, applaud it, aspire to it, but I cannot begin to understand it, much less interpret and explain it.

A visionary renowned for an abounding energy and passion is told to sit. An educator bursting with ideas and wisdom is told to be quiet. A healer whose path is seeded with the lessons and cures of medicine is sidelined by a disease for which medicine has no cure. And yet, on this sideline, he searches for the lesson.

Capture the spirit? Such genie cannot be bottled.

By now all kama‘aina are familiar with the vita: Dr. Edwin C. Cadman, dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine from 1999-2005; left a prestigious job as chief of staff and senior VP for medical affairs at Yale New Haven Hospital to build Hawaii’s East-West gateway for the biotechnology industry; catalyst for the new $150 million high-tech medical school campus in Kaka’ako. Stanford University and Oregon Medical School graduate; father of three grown and successful boys; competitive runner with a two-and-a-half hour Boston Marathon to his credit and a sub four-and-a-half-minute mile; hiker, biker, camper; overall athlete extraordinaire, still, at age sixty-one, disease be damned.

Dr. Cadman, a dynamic public speaker when he can find the words, did not speak to me for this introduction. Nor will he speak at the Dreams and Dragonflies: Seeds of Hope dinner. Primary Progressive Aphasia, also known as Mesulam’s Syndrome, gradually and progressively robs words spoken and written. Eventually it can steal words read or heard. No one knows what triggers this brain cell degeneration. No one knows how to stop it.

Cognitive function is not initially or always impaired by it, but communication becomes a tedious, slow device, like going from high-speed Internet to dial-up to nothing. Even the act of writing letters or e-mails is clogged with static. Choosing, arranging, fitting words into sensible order is a chore. Unless you’re the type who ran a mile in 4:22 at age thirty-eight. Then it’s a challenge. Another barrier to break through.

Dr. Cadman communicated with me through e-mail, then provided me with the text from his speeches; a few from a time when thoughts merged effortlessly with language, and some from a time when they took much longer to articulate. Common among them are metaphors and images ofa runner with resolve and a doctorwho heeds his own advice.

In preparing the incoming John A. Burns medical school students of 2000 for the trials and trails ahead, he told them: “Unlike climbing a mountain, there is no top to this journey, only plateaus and vistas along the way. When you reach those vistas, stop and turn around, look where you have been, then turn back and look where you wish to go.”

When informing the UH Board of Regents of his disease in 2005, he said: “This illness has given me the opportunity to do something special, but I don’t know what it is just yet. I see life as choices; do nothing, wallowing in self-pity, or go forward with pride and self-confidence. I am going forward, not stymied by my illness.”

To the incoming students: “There are no correct paths; and on each path you will find difficult and challenging — yet passable — sections that will require both energy and thought to maneuver through.”

To the Board of Regents: “It is a new phase of my life; I will deal with it as I always did and will do, with determination and ingenuity, and most importantly, hard work.”

In his 1999 letter of acceptance to the University of Hawaii, Dr. Cadman agreed to absorb a significant salary reduction in order to lead its floundering medical school. In the letter’s closing, he explained why — it was an extreme challenge. “This position offers me a professional opportunity of extraordinary proportions. Not every Deanship has the mandate todevelop a strategic plan for the purpose of enhancing and essentially recreating the Medical School,” he wrote.

When I asked Dr. Cadman to review this Dreams and Dragonflies introduction for errors, he found a glaring one. I had written that he was not only a runner and biker, but also an avid swimmer. After all, he finished third in his age group in the 2003 Tinman Triathlon. So I had assumed. He gently corrected me. “If you wish to put in, ‘He is an ‘awful swimmer,’ I would like that. My faults as an athlete,” he said through e-mail.

In all of the correspondences I think an image of the man emerges and we get at least a glimpse of the extraordinary spirit; its shades if not all of its color. It’s enough, however, to predict this:

The disease chose the wrong guy thistime. Dr. Cadman might not solve its puzzle, and a cure might not be found in his lifetime, but like the leukemia that picked on a little girl named Alana, expect a slugfest.

Adelia and Steve Dung tell of a plaque at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where Alana received her bone marrow transplant. It’s in the Listwin Courtyard, a place of deceptive serenity. It reads, “Pain and sorrow must not be the only outcome.  Through Grace’s life a powerful addition to the fight against cancer is born.”

Et tu, Primary Progressive Aphasia.
Now we know your name.
Greg Barrett
Alexandria, Virginia