Profile of a Famous Oncologist
- Dr. Lawrence Piro has been treating regular patients and celebrities for years, including Farrah Farah Fawcett, Liza Minnelli, and Shannen Doherty.
- He’s an oncologist and President and CEO of The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, an affiliate of Cedars-Sinai. Dr. Piro is board certified in oncology and internal medicine and is an expert in the field of hematologic malignancies. He’s also a clinical professor at the USC Keck School of Medicine. Somewhat unusually, especially for an academic oncologist, he also supervises treatments across a variety of tumor types.
- Most academic oncologist recommend that patient see a specialist in the specific cancer subtype with which they’ve been diagnosed in order to access the latest knowledge and deep experience needed to achieve optimal care and outcomes
- In smaller, so-called community hospitals, it is more common for oncologists to treat multiple kinds of tumors. Academic and community oncologists often say they struggle to keep up with the fast changing new protocols and drug approvals that push the limits and change the standard of care for cancer treatment as designated by an organization called the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN)
Dr. Piro is board certified in oncology/internal medicine and is an expert in the field of hematologic malignancies. In recent day, Doherty, who is fighting advanced breast cancer, has been sharing her podcast interviews with the legendary oncologist, offering some insight into his optimistic outlook on cancer treatment and the wonderful relationships he maintains with his patients.
In the podcast episode Dr. Piro likened going through cancer treatment to riding a horse, and staying on that horse as long as possible.
Back in August 2017, Doherty took to Instagram to share a sweet photo of her alongside Dr. Piro, captioning the post, “Dr Lawrence Piro. Not just my doctor. My friend. This man saved my life. I’ve since referred many of my friends to him. He’s helped every single one.
“Selfless, intelligent, kind, classy, stylish, funny… I could go on. It’s his birthday. I’m honored to be sharing it with him. Cancer brought this man into my life. For that, thank you cancer.”
Doherty is currently living with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. It went into remission in 2017 but returned as stage 4 (or metastatic) in 2019. Metastatic cancer means the disease has spread to distant areas of the body, like the bones, liver, lungs, or brain.
“People will run away from the disease and the treatment if they are too afraid of it and they’re going to have fear if they aren’t learning about it in a way that makes them comfortable,” Dr. Piro explains.
You’re a Person not a Patient: One Doctor’s Priority When Meeting a New Patient
Which is why he takes the time to get to know his patients as people, something that is easily seen through his time spent with Doherty, so he can understand how best to convey what can often be difficult information to digest.
Meanwhile, months prior to Farrah Fawcett passing away on June 25, 2009, of anal cancer at age 62, Dr. Piro spoke about her health on Good Morning America.
“She has challenges every day from the fight with cancer. So long as she is able to fight, she’ll keep fighting,” Dr. Piro said.
He continued, “She has courage and she has strength, and she can do what so many people aspire to do, and what the journey of cancer teaches you to do is the ability to look in the face of fear and not shudder.”
Referring to Fawcett’s younger boyfriend at the time, Ryan O’Neal, Dr. Piro said, “It has been an amazing relationship and Ryan has been an amazing companion and partner for her.
“He has been with her all the way through this, at her side, what ever she needs. It is something that all of us could only hope for if we had to walk in this kind of path, someone who has been so dedicated as Ryan has been to Farrah.”
And although Fawcett had battled a rare disease, Dr. Piro recalled her never complaining about it.
“Never once have I heard her ask, ‘Why her,’ which is a very natural thing to ask. But she has never perceived herself of being in a position of life where she assumed she should be immune,” Dr. Piro told GMA.
“She has courage and she has strength. She can do what so many people aspire to do and what the journey with cancer teaches you is the ability to look in the face of fear and to not shutter.”
Dr. Piro has also been seen helping out 77-year-old veteran singer and actress Liza Minelli as she went to dinner with friends in West Hollywood last year.
Footage of Dr. Piro helping Minelli as shared on BackGrid’s YouTube page. BackGrid described Dr. Piro as Minelli’s “constant companion” who “extends his caring support by gently lifting her from the wheelchair to the passenger seat.”
Dr. Piro’s Perspective
Dr. Lawrence Piro previously told SurvivorNet about his overall perspective on treating patients.
A doctor’s job is to present all the treatment options, outcomes and side-effects to patients. Some patients may choose the most aggressive treatment, while others may decide they can’t live with the severe side effects and would rather pursue an alternate treatment. That’s each individual’s call, Dr. Piro says. “It’s my job to support and help [people] on their journey.”
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He explained, “In fact, you’re the patient, you’re the consumer, and you’re the one who’s building your team. So as a doctor, I feel like you’re asking me to join your team. I’m, I’m not feeling like you’re, you’re coming on my team or you should feel so honored and privileged that I chose you for my team. I’m honored and privileged that you’re choosing me for your team, and I want to help you on your journey.
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“And by the way, as a doctor, my main goal should be to be on your journey, not to totally prescribe your journey. There are people who very well understand the facts of what’s the recommended treatment, but they want to take an alternative path. And as a doctor, I don’t think it’s our job to say, ‘Well, you, you’re not wanting to take the standard recommendations I’ve made, so therefor I can’t be your doctor. You’re gonna have to find another doctor.”
“I think it’s important to be a doctor, be someone’s partner, and if they want to follow an unusual path, I’m willing to follow it with them so long as they’re fully-informed about what standard medicine would recommend as the best options and what their risks are in following that alternative path. But we’ve got to be partners with people,” he continued. “We’ve gotta try to make your dreams come true. And sometimes there’s more to the story than just outcome of cancer treatment.
Dr. Lawrence Piro On Joining a Patient’s Cancer Journey
Dr. Piro also recounted treating patients who are hesitant to move forward with cancer due to the side-effects of treatment, and offered insight into how he moves forward with people are have these types of worries.
He said, “It could be something as putatively simple as hair loss. Some people will say, ‘I understand that drug is a better, uh, treatment, but it causes hair loss, and the other drug is less effective but it doesn’t cause hair loss. I don’t want to lose my hair.’
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“And I can say, ‘Yes, I understand that, but isn’t overcoming the cancer more important than hair loss?’ And for many people the answer is yes, but for some people the answer is no. Some people don’t wanna lose their hair, almost no matter what the cost is. That’s not really my place to evaluate that judgment.”
“It’s their job to decide what’s important to them, and it’s my job to support and help them on their journey,” Dr. Piro added.
Help Through Treatment
As Dr. Piro remains dedicated to his patents, like Shannen Doherty, he understands all too well how cancer can change a person.
In an earlier interview with SurvivorNet, Dr. Piro explained, “When you have cancer, you’re never going to be, again, the person that you were. And it takes time to figure out who you’re gonna become, incorporating the whole cancer journey as part of your being.
“And so, very often, when you’re in treatment, or especially when you just finished treatment, you may be lost for awhile, because you haven’t yet assimilated the new you, and you, your, your first reaction is that you just wanna go back to the way life was before cancer. ‘I just wanna get my life back. I wanna take my kids to school. I don’t wanna think about going to treatments.’
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He continued, “But yet, you find you can’t quite get back into that life, because you’re, you’re a different person. You’ve changed. You’ve seen a view and a picture that most people don’t see. And so, you don’t yet know how you’re gonna incorporate that.
“What are you gonna do differently in your life? How are you gonna be a different person? And so, you really don’t belong in the past, and you don’t yet know where your place in the future is.”
“This surprises most people, because most people think, um, as they go through the treatment and they’re a warrior, and they’re trying to get through the side effects, and they’re trying to handle everything that’s going on, they’re being strong, when they finally finished, they’re like, ‘Aha. Okay. I’m there. I now have the treatment behind me, and now, I can get my life back.’ And then they’re surprised to find that that’s not the case,” Dr. Prio explained.
Finding a Doctor That’s Right For You
As for how he obtains a relationship with his patients, Dr. Piro insists, “I think talking to patients is important because people who have gone to different doctors and have a sense for who that person is can really give you not only a sense of their knowledge-base and their effectiveness with, with which they treat things, but they can also give you a sense of who is that doctor as a person and how do they relate to people?
“Because finding the right partnership is really important. The personality match and the partnership, because with most kinds of cancers, you’re talking about a long-term, maybe even a lifetime relationship with someone. They’ve gotta be your partner.”
He concluded,”I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to, to find someone that you have a relationship with, that you can be a partner with through this whole journey.
“And that has a lot to do with those ephemeral aspects of how you click with someone. And so you’re gonna have to talk to other people, get your sense, and maybe even interview a few people and make a choice. Provided everybody’s got capabilities, got, you know, great experience in the field, you have to make the choice of someone who’s gonna partner, who’s gonna listen to you and care about you.”
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Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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