Argus Leader: Living with Cancer

Jill Callison • jcalliso@argusleader.com • July 23, 2009

Brothers Rich and Chris Hill shared a clarinet as boys living in New Jersey.

They would go to lessons together. Chris would play first, attaching his reed to the clarinet.

Then it was Rich's turn to put a reed on the instrument purchased for $25 from a neighbor.

Eventually, when the brothers became good enough to play in a band, their parents bought a second clarinet that was advertised in the newspaper classifieds.

"Chris got the better clarinet," Rich recalls. "I wasn't particular."

Chris decided in high school to devote his life to music. Today, he plays principal clarinet with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, belongs to the Dakota Wind Quintet and directs the Sioux Falls Municipal Band.

Rich first entered the field of pharmacy, then joined "the industry," working for the drug companies that produce life-saving pills and potions.

He became immersed in the research, publication and education associated with Taxol, then a relatively new weapon in the battle against breast cancer. It also has been effective in treating other cancers.

He helped Taxol obtain FDA approval.

"If you were a doctor or nurse or pharmacist or even a patient, you either called me or the people who worked for me," Rich says. "If I didn't have the answer, I knew where to go."

Rich also became an expert on Procrit, a medication that increases the production of red blood cells, thereby reducing fatigue among people undergoing chemotherapy, and several anti-nausea drugs.

That expertise has been needed in his own family. He and Chris lost their father to cancer in 2007, but Taxol extended his life.

"He was the first one in my family to use Taxol," Chris says. "He had bladder cancer, and it spread to his liver. Taxol was designed for breast cancer originally, but they discovered it did work well on other cancers."

That same year, Chris' fianceé, Susan, learned she had breast cancer. Susan's treatment included Taxol. She married Chris on May 17, 2008, eight days after a final radiation treatment.

"We took a look at her records, and the doctor actually wrote in there, 'The husband's brother is an expert on Taxol,' " Chris says.

But Taxol is not effective on pancreatic or endocrine tumors. That made it even more difficult for the Hill family when they learned another family member has cancer.

This time it is Rich, who was diagnosed with an extremely rare neuroendocrine tumor of the pancreas in 2006.

Chris was thinking of his brother when he chose "Heroes" as the theme of Friday's Sioux Falls Municipal Band concert. The performance will kick off the annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life in Sioux Falls.

Not only did he have Rich in mind, he asked his brother to come to Sioux Falls to play a clarinet solo.

Despite the pain he experiences as his tumor grows, Rich decided to make the trip.
But he shrugs off the hero label.

"When I got diagnosed, (my dad) was more devastated by me getting it than his own cancer," Rich says. "He said, 'Son, you have two choices: Fight like hell, or you die. Those are the only two.' And it's very true."

Rich, 50, is the oldest of the four Hill brothers. Chris came next.

The others, and their mother, live within 15 miles of each other. But in 1987, Chris, now 49, moved to Sioux Falls to pursue his dream of being a professional clarinetist.

As boys, Rich wanted to play trombone, Chris violin. But a neighbor had a clarinet, and the brothers had parents who doubted they would stick with it.

They couldn't have been more wrong. Eventually, all four Hill brothers learned to play at least three instruments in high school.

"The two of us were very competitive with each other," Chris says of Rich.

"We auditioned against each other 14 times. We each beat the other one seven times. We were exactly tied by the time we were done."

Rich didn't choose music as a career, but he didn't leave it behind. For years Chris has used his brother as an example to his clarinet students, pointing out how music as an avocation enriches one's life.

When Rich's illness permits, he continues to play in five bands, including the Virginia Grand Military Band. It is comprised almost exclusively of musicians who once played in military bands.

Its director invited him to join after hearing Rich play the piccolo clarinet with the Blawenburg Band, one of New Jersey's oldest community bands.

"He said, 'The piccolo clarinet is my least favorite instrument in the entire band, and you're one of the only people I've heard play it that I like the way it sounds. Do you ever get down in Virginia?' "

Chris, Rich says, is the true musician in the family.

"The times Chris has come out here to play, I insist he sits next to me," Rich says. "It's a free clarinet lesson. I learn an awful lot from him."

Chris, however, says Rich is the one giving lessons now. His brother is facing the future with a positive attitude. Rich, the father of daughters Kim, Kristen and Kerriann, is engaged to marry Jennifer Elliott, who has two daughters, Katie and Lizzie. He lives in Flemington, N.J.

Chris says his father and his wife shared Rich's attitude.

"I've learned about the positive spirit of those who have cancer," Chris says. "They decide to live with the cancer and not die from the cancer."

Jill Callison's column runs Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Argus Leader.