MANATEE — Cancer doctor Scott Tetreault has a painting in his Sarasota office at Florida Cancer Specialists that depicts a swarm of aggressive University of Miami Hurricanes ganging up on former University of Florida running back Earnest Graham.
The doctor, who graduated from the University of Miami School of Medicine in 1991 and also has an office in Lakewood Ranch, glances at the painting every morning for a few seconds before he puts on his white coat and sees the first of 40 people with cancer.
The symbolism is clear to Tetreault.
Graham, like cancer, is well-known, with a feared name stitched on his back. The Hurricanes in the painting are a nameless throng. They all must work together to stop him.
“It can get lonely,” Tetreault said recently. “Every day, I have to tell someone that they have cancer. You can’t imagine how that is for a doctor and for a patient.”
Tetreault, however, said he no longer feels he is fighting a futile battle.
That hope, he said, is because of people like local cancer fighter Dick Vitale, who is about to host his fourth Dick Vitale Gala to fight cancer.
Tetreault wrote a six-page letter to Vitale recently, telling the ESPN sportscaster and Lakewood Ranch resident that knowing people are ganging up on cancer gives him hope to keep fighting, too.
“We are in the trenches day after day,” Tetreault said. “The chemotherapy room is one of the most profound places on earth. You see the side of life with all the varnish chipped away and that is not bad.”
For the 2009 Dick Vitale Gala, which begins at 6:30 p.m. May15 at The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota on the Sarasota bayfront, Tetreault will be sitting next to new Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris, a dream come true for the football crazy doctor.
Triple-teaming, rather than gang-tackling, however, is the theme of this year’s gala, Vitale said.
“Sarasota will become the basketball capital of the world for one night,” Vitale said of this year’s event, which honors Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan and Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino.
Individual tickets, which cost $1,000, are still available, as are group purchases of tables, from $15,000.
All the money goes to The V Foundation for Cancer Research, Vitale said.
Among the basketball coaches attending are Maryland’s Gary Williams, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Texas’ Rick Barnes, Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl, Kentucky’s John Calipari, Pittsburgh’s Jamie Dixon and Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, among others.
And Tetreault will be swapping his X’s and O’s with them.
The infusion or chemo room at Florida Cancer Specialists may have the softest chairs in the world.
Perhaps that’s because the people sitting there with expensive drugs dripping into their bodies to fight cancer are dealing with the weightiest of issues.
The nurses in the chemo room get to know their patients on a deep level because they spend hours with them.
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