LEILA FADEL, HOST:
You might know Patrick Dempsey from the 11 seasons he spent playing a neurosurgeon named Derek Shepherd, better known as McDreamy, on "Grey's Anatomy."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GREY'S ANATOMY")
PATRICK DEMPSEY: (As Derek Shepherd) Alright, everybody. It's a beautiful night to save lives.
FADEL: But it's something he says his mother did not love watching.
DEMPSEY: She never liked the show. That was quite frank.
FADEL: She didn't?
DEMPSEY: No, no, she did not like that at all.
FADEL: Oh, wow.
DEMPSEY: It was too gory for her.
FADEL: But the fame he gained from that show is what helps his advocacy now.
DEMPSEY: I think sort of that projection really helped me establish the Center. It was one of the best things that came out of that show for me.
FADEL: The center he's talking about is the Dempsey Center, a cancer care facility he established in 2008 while his mother was in the throes of a yearslong battle with ovarian cancer. Amanda Dempsey died in 2014. But Patrick Dempsey says her experience and the memory of what she went through inspires his philanthropy, most recently through the Beat the Odds initiative. It's a partnership with the American Cancer Society that focuses on care for not just the patient but also their families.
What was something about her care that you just wish had been different?
DEMPSEY: Well, I wish we had had a better understanding of what the resources were that were available. Thank God, my sister, who was the primary caregiver because she worked in the hospital - so she knew how to navigate what the nurses were doing, what the doctors were doing, and she could be there. And I felt helpless, and I wanted to be able to do something, too. It's a devastating piece of news to the family, and it's also something that you don't really think about how hard it is for the caregivers. And all of these things with what we do with wraparound care - we're not treating the disease. We're treating the person...
FADEL: Yeah.
DEMPSEY: ...And everyone who's been impacted.
FADEL: I was just talking to a friend the other day whose mom is dealing with an advanced melanoma and the fact that nobody really tells you anything.
DEMPSEY: Right.
FADEL: And there's so - like you said, there's so much waiting and no real advocacy unless somebody's really on top of it.
DEMPSEY: Right. And it's overwhelming, and sometimes, you go into a state of shock and denial, right?
FADEL: Yeah.
DEMPSEY: And if you're getting a cancer diagnosis, I recommend that you bring someone with you to take notes, or you bring a tape recorder so that you can record everything, and also make a list of everything that you want to ask them before you go in because there's so much emotion that it - sometimes, it paralyzes you.
FADEL: You're from - or you grew up in a more rural area outside of Lewiston, right?
DEMPSEY: Yeah, I grew up in a little town called Turner, Maine, and Buckfield, Maine. And we were probably about an hour away from the local hospital.
FADEL: Right.
DEMPSEY: When I grew up, in Turner, we actually had a doctor who would come visit you with a bag and was sort of - he'd come to your house. If you had a cold, you'd call him up.
FADEL: Oh.
DEMPSEY: You can do that now, but it's such a huge cost to have that type of...
FADEL: Yeah.
DEMPSEY: ...Private care that - rural communities are really isolated, and they don't sometimes have all the information that they need. So it's like, how do we get awareness to that?
FADEL: How? I mean, because we've done a lot of work on just the difficulties in rural areas of accessing - like you said, the cost of driving an hour to get to a hospital or getting to your appointments.
DEMPSEY: Well, here's a great part of the program, is the road to recovery, right? So all you have to do is go to the website, cancer.org. Change the Odds. In the Road to Recovery, you sort of type in your zip code, and you'll get someone to come and pick you up and get you to your treatment.
FADEL: Cancer can be a hard thing to talk about. I mean, my mom had breast cancer, very good prognosis. She's fine. But I remember when she said the word, you kind of, in your mind, associate worst-case scenario, no matter what. Why do you think it is so difficult to talk about cancer?
DEMPSEY: Well, I mean, look, the numbers are staggering. You see...
FADEL: Yeah.
DEMPSEY: ...One in 3 women in their lifetime will get a diagnosis. One in 2 men will get a diagnosis. But if it's detected early enough, the chance of surviving is that much greater, and it's just really building awareness and just take the stigma off of it of not whispering it. I remember doing the play "Brighton Beach Memoirs," and there was a big thing - and the line was, they would always whisper cancer. And I think the more openly we can talk about it, the better off we're going to be.
FADEL: Millions of people will be listening to this. If you had one piece of advice - just one simple thing that any person should be doing in their life to prevent or check if they have cancer.
DEMPSEY: Yeah, I think the most important thing is, you know, exercise, have a great conversation with your doctor, get your physicals, make sure you get your screenings, understand your family history. That makes such a huge difference.
And, you know, it's very scary. There's a lot of challenges and mental barriers. I even find it for myself - like, I had my screening this week, and it was hard. It was hard to go to sleep because I was scared.
FADEL: Yeah.
DEMPSEY: But once I got through that, I felt much better. And the results came back, and I was all fine and clear. It's like, if you do these simple things, you're going to be OK. And then if not, then there's this support out there for you. You're not alone, and that's the most important thing.
FADEL: Patrick Dempsey, advocate, actor, racer. Thank you for your time.
DEMPSEY: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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