Joe Caperna
Service and adventure are the defining characteristics of Joe Caperna's life
C aring deeply about your patients in an era of managed care can be frustrating. For Joseph Caperna '84, knowing when to care most, and making the time for the patient who needs it, is part of the juggling act he performs every day.
"Often, we have to cram patients into fifteen-minute slots at a moment in their lives when they really need someone informed to talk with," he says. "If I'm telling a forty-year-old man or woman that he or she has a terminal illness, I need more than fifteen minutes." As a cancer specialist, this is an all-too-common experience for Caperna.
He entered Kenyon with a career in medicine as his goal. One of six children, Caperna was the most likely choice to fulfill his father's dream of having someone in the family become a doctor. "Science, and especially biology, were my favorite subjects in high school," the native of Centerville, Ohio, recalls. "I was always interested in how things work and grow and especially in the workings of the human body. And I felt very drawn to what I viewed, and still like to view, as a service profession."
Caperna chose Kenyon because, he remembers, it felt small and personal and a place where he might have some control over his destiny.
A graduate of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, he also holds a master's degree in public health from the University of California at Berkeley. Now at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Caperna says he chose it, in addition to its ranking among internal-medicine programs, for the sense of intimacy despite its being part of a huge university complex. "At Kenyon," making the time for the patient who needs it, is part of the juggling act he performs every day.
"Often, we have to cram patients into fifteen-minute slots at a moment in their lives when they really need someone informed to talk with," he says. "If I'm telling a forty-year-old man or woman that he or she has a terminal illness, I need more than fifteen minutes." As a cancer specialist, this is an all-too-common experience for Caperna.
He entered Kenyon with a career in medicine as his goal. One of six children, Caperna was the most likely choice to fulfill his father's dream of having someone in the family become a doctor. "Science, and especially biology, were my favorite subjects in high school," the native of Centerville, Ohio, recalls. "I was always interested in how things work and grow and especially in the workings of the human body. And I felt very drawn to what I viewed, and still like to view, as a service profession."
Caperna chose Kenyon because, he remembers, it felt small and personal and a place where he might have some control over his destiny.
A graduate of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, he also holds a master's degree in public health from the University of California at Berkeley. Now at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Caperna says he chose it, in addition to its ranking among internal-medicine programs, for the sense of intimacy despite its being part of a huge university complex. "At Kenyon," he says, "there was such a strong sense of people having long-term relationships. It seemed a very desirable thing to carry over into my postgraduate life."
Caperna hopes to be moving soon from his fellowship in AIDS, hematology, and oncology to a full-time position in the university's AIDS clinic. An AIDS researcher for the past five years, he has become an expert in the field. Caperna admits that he hopes and expects that one of the primary benefits of working in the clinic will be the ability to devote more time to each individual patient. "Being able to treat a few people well is a dream of mine," he says.
In fields such as AIDS or cancer treatment, dealing with death and dying is an everyday phenomenon. "I'm interested in dying and what it means to die," says Caperna, "and I've found ways to cope with the losses. The most difficult times are when a patient seems to be doing well, with no bad omens, and then suddenly dies. In those cases it's hard not to feel like a failure. You always wonder what you missed or what you could have done differently to prevent the outcome."
Caperna says he believes his experiences in the classroom at Kenyon fostered caring and thoughtfulness. Having to speak in class and engage in learning in small, tight groups teaches you to think, he says. Now, as a clinical instructor, he tries to bring that sense of caring and sharing to the students who rotate through his clinic.
In addition to his vocation, Caperna has an avocation that combines his desire to serve with his love of adventure. For the past four years, he has been traveling to Peru to do medical work--and to explore the mountains and their civilizations.
Caperna, who took the College's intensive Spanish language classes, first visited Peru for three months after graduation. "That first time," he laughs, "I was the youngest person, and hence the strong back, in the group. I knew when I went back that I wanted to bring some very specific skills with me."
Returning to Peru took nearly ten years, but Caperna feels he now has the requisite tools to help people. "Service to mankind is a big part of my life," he says, "and it is a constant struggle to integrate this with the necessity to make money. In an ideal world, I would spend all my time in humanitarian pursuits, because I love the way it feels."
The need is great and the resources are limited, so Caperna has elected to concentrate his efforts in the rural area of Huaras, where he can develop relationships and work on larger projects. His most recent effort has been the establishment of a blood-bank system that will serve a population of about three hundred thousand. Sponsored by the Peruvian-American Interchange Society, run by a Peruvian doctor who is a cardiologist in the United States and his wife, Caperna expected to return to Peru in June to continue his blood-bank work and other public-health initiatives such as vaccinations and waste disposal.
AIDS education and treatment are other areas in which he is able to put his expertise to work in Peru. "AIDS is spreading there," he says, "but they are five to ten years behind the epidemic in the States. Because of the macho culture in Peru, which is in denial about homosexual behavior, prostitution, and drug use, men, who get the disease from prostitutes or other men, are infecting their wives." According to Caperna, the new drug therapies in use in the United States are not feasible in Third World nations. "In addition to the cost of $1,000 to $1,500 per month, the drugs must be taken on a rigorous schedule that's difficult to impose unless the patient is extremely motivated and has good follow-up care," he says. However, he is grateful to be part of an initiative to train several Peruvian physicians who work in the country's social-security system hospitals and who have come to UCSD to learn about the American model of AIDS treatment.
Caperna says he doesn't get back to Ohio as often as he would like. Nevertheless, the seeds of interest in the workings of the body and the needs of the soul, nurtured at home in Centerville and later at Kenyon, are bearing fruit in California and Peru.
--L.M.
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