Brewers medical director finds 'awesome' support in battle with pancreatic cancer

As medical director for the Milwaukee Brewers, and the team’s head athletic trainer before that, Roger Caplinger is accustomed to taking care of the health needs of others.

On Dec. 1 of last year, however, it became time for others to care for Caplinger. That’s the day he heard two of the scariest words a doctor can utter: pancreatic cancer.

“I googled it and it said there was a 9% survival rate,” Caplinger said.

“To be brutally honest, there was a lot of crying that day, a lot of shock.”

Caplinger, who had watched athletes for years battle the toughest of health issues, sometimes overcoming long odds to return to peak form, decided immediately it was time to display that same fighting spirit.

Only 51 and with a wife and two children, he wasn’t going to accept an unwelcome fate and crawl into a corner and die.

“I’ve been in baseball my whole adult life, so I have a baseball analogy for this,” Caplinger said. “It’s like a curveball. You can either take it or you can crush it. I chose to crush it. Meaning I’m going to take this disease head-on.

“I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. I don’t want anybody feeling sorry for me. I want to try to be as normal as I can.”

Lessons in early diagnosis

Caplinger had given himself a fighting chance by being in tune with his personal health. He advised athletes for years to recognize immediately if something didn’t feel right and seek medical advice before things got worse, and that’s exactly what he did upon experiencing what he soon learned were the classic symptoms of pancreatic cancer.

“Dark-colored urine, fatigue, stomach pain, some jaundice,” Caplinger said, reeling off the symptoms he was experiencing. “I called one of our team physicians, Mark Niedfeldt, and he diagnosed it, along with Doug Evans at Froedtert Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

“The good Lord put your pancreas way back in your abdominal cavity. A lot of people don’t know they have a tumor there. Fortunately for me, I had a tumor by my common bile duct that gave me symptoms. I checked it out within a week and was diagnosed within 10 days.”

An endoscopic ultrasound and biopsy revealed the small tumor, only 1.6 centimeters in diameter, was malignant. That was the bad news. The good news was that clean lymph nodes in the area later revealed it to be Stage 1 pancreatic cancer, the least severe.

“Stage 4 is the worst,” Caplinger said. “That’s when they give you ‘x’ amount of months (to live).”

On Sunday, Caplinger will use lessons learned from those early weeks of diagnosis and treatment to deliver a message as guest speaker at PurpleStride Milwaukee 2018, “The Walk to End Pancreatic Cancer.” The event, to be held outside of Miller Park, will feature a 5K run/walk to raise money for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, which sponsors advance research and continued care for patients and their families.

Caplinger will be represented by a large contingent of walkers/runners known as “Roger’s Purple Platoon,” which has raised tens of thousands of dollars from donors.

“My major message is you need to have annual checkups with your physician and do not ignore symptoms,” he said. “Some people ignore symptoms and think they’re just going to go away, and get better with time. ‘I don’t have time to see a doctor; I’m too busy.’

“You have to be an advocate for your own health. If I can touch one person to go get checked by their regular physician, and they get diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and get cured, I’ve done what I’ve set out to do. This is about awareness and this disease that has a large mortality rate.”

In many ways, Caplinger’s training in team medicine served him well in getting his disease quickly diagnosed and treated. In major league baseball, with games nearly every day, you can’t hesitate in addressing health issues. The manager needs to know who’s available to play that day, and needs to know now.

“When a player comes in and says, ‘My shoulder hurts,’ you’re not going to say, ‘We’ll check it next week,’ ” Caplinger said. “You check him right now and see the doctor right away. You might get an MRI that same day. I’m used to having things regimented like that because of the experiences I had as an athletic trainer.”

His 'dream team'

Though the cancer was caught before it spread to a point of no return, Caplinger has undergone chemotherapy, with five more months to go, as well as radiation and a complicated, intrusive surgery known as the “Whipple procedure.” That eight-hour procedure involved removal of the “head” of the pancreas as well as a portion of the common bile duct and gallbladder.

As Caplinger put it, “They rewired my plumbing.”

Along the way, Caplinger lost 25% of his body weight, dropping from 200 to 150 pounds. He proudly announced he had gained five pounds back, but digesting even the blandest of foods is still a daily challenge that makes meal planning a science.

“I have to take this pill called Creon, which is a pancreatic enzyme,” Caplinger explained. “I have to take it with food. But my body couldn’t even break down the capsule it came in, so I have to open it up and put it in a spoonful of pudding.

“I’m getting stronger. My prognosis is excellent. I’m going to be cured. I don’t think I’m lucky. I think the good Lord put this there for me to have this platform. He’s tried to teach me patience. I don’t think it’s working but that’s what he’s trying to teach me.”

Caplinger is quick to point out the role his wife Jackie has played in the process, along with college-age sons Kyle and Brett. In essence, his wife has become his personal medical director, leaving him time to still serve in that role for the Brewers, though with a somewhat reduced schedule at present.

“She is the absolute rock of my life,” he said. “This has been her second full-time job. You would not imagine the effort she puts in every day. She has to plan every meal around me and what I can and cannot eat. I can’t digest stuff the way I used to.

“This may not be forever. But right now I can’t digest certain foods very well. My wife has taken responsibility of how to ‘fuel’ me. One time, I didn’t eat for five days. I just didn’t want anything.”

Caplinger said he couldn’t be luckier than to be living in Milwaukee, with the cancer treatment specialists at Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, led by Evans, considered the foremost expert on pancreatic cancer in the country.

“I can’t say enough about Dr. Evans,” Caplinger said. “I wear this bracelet that says ‘Mr. Happy’ to remind me of what they’re doing for me. When I walk into Froedtert and the Medical College cancer center, I have to remember everybody in that community is there to help me. If I’m having a bad day, they treat me the same and I need to treat them the same because they’re all trying to help me.

“The thing about Dr. Evans and his 'dream team,' as I like to call them, is they’re treating the patients of today and treating the patients of tomorrow. I’m helping the patients of tomorrow with clinical trials. I’ve done medication clinical trials. I sent my tumor to MIT. They have a collaboration with the Medical College.

“I’ve done these things to help the patients of tomorrow. They’re not helping me right now but they’re going to help somebody else.”

The Brewers 'family'

It often is said that in times of crisis you find out who your friends are, and Caplinger has discovered his friendship cup runneth over. The major league baseball community is far ranging, and once word circulated that Caplinger had pancreatic cancer, the response was both astonishing and at times overwhelming.

A former assistant athletic trainer with the Houston Astros, Rex Jones, called Caplinger and said he was going to be in town and wanted to have lunch. The two met at a downtown restaurant and Caplinger learned the real reason for the visit.

“I said, ‘What brings you to Milwaukee?’” Caplinger said “He said, ‘You. I came here to see how you’re doing. I needed to see you and hug you.’ That’s the kind of people that are in this game. My phone has been on fire since December. It’s amazing how many people I’ve touched in this game and in this community.”

Caplinger reached out to Bryson Nakamura, the Brewers’ manager of integrative sports performance, and told him a slogan was needed to unite Caplinger and his friends in this fight against pancreatic cancer. They came up with “We’ve Got This” and “Battle Ready,” which was printed on both sides of purple rubber wristbands distributed to those closest to Caplinger.

“We’re ready for the battle every day,” he said. “Every single day, we’re ready for it.”

Brewers manager Craig Counsell is wearing one of those wristbands, and plans to take part in a “virtual stride” Sunday in Chicago, where the team is playing the White Sox, to coincide with the PurpleStride event that morning at Miller Park. Counsell and Caplinger formed a bond when the former played for the Brewers, and it has only grown tighter during this personal battle.

“I didn’t give the bracelet to everybody but I gave one to Craig because he’s a big friend of mine. We’re close,” Caplinger said.

Counsell said pity was never a consideration upon seeing how Caplinger attacked his diagnosis and treatment with the same determination and attitude he used to solve the medical problems of others.

"We've known each other since 2004," Counsell said. "He's a Brewer, through and through, and a man in the middle of his life who had something put in front of him that is the greatest fear of all of us. I've admired his courage and how he has lived his life since given this diagnosis.

"Roger's got a lot 'piss and vinegar' in him, and that works perfectly for him. It's the fighter in him and it's what is getting him through this ordeal. I'd do anything I can, at any time, to support him, and that's the way all of us who know him feel."

During the many medical crises experienced over the years by Brewers Hall of Fame radio broadcaster Bob Uecker, including his own battle with pancreatic cancer, Caplinger always was there with advice and medical direction. Thus, it has been no surprise that Uecker has reciprocated that support, now that Caplinger is on the other side.

“He’s always texting me,” said Caplinger, who moved from head athletic trainer to the team's medical director in 2012. “I told him we’re ‘pancreatic partners in crime.’ He’s a special person in my life.”

Caplinger also is quite close to Bud Selig, going back to the days when Selig ran the Brewers and Caplinger was the head athletic trainer, keeping him apprised of the health of players. That relationship grew tighter when Selig became commissioner of baseball, and relied on Caplinger to help him come to grips with the growing steroid crisis in the game in the late ‘90s.

Selig, who had his own cancer scare with melanoma in 2004, offered to put Caplinger in touch with any specialist in the country and basically do anything within his power to help win this battle. The same offer has come from Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio.

“Bud is very special to me,” Caplinger said. “In times like this, he has no ‘off’ switch. He’ll do whatever it takes. After my diagnosis, he and Mr. Attanasio called me and said, ‘You let us know where you need to go and we’ll get you there.’”

Caplinger still reports to work nearly every day, and recently helped general manager David Stearns and his staff with medical reports on amateur players in preparation for the MLB draft that begins Monday evening. He also has permission to work at home, which allows him to get necessary rest on the days he doesn’t feel so great.

“I’m on a good path right now,” Caplinger said. “It’s going to be another five months of chemo. I have one month down. But I’m here at the ballpark every day. I try to work as much as I can.”

After nearly 30 years of looking out for the health and well-being of both players and employees throughout the organization, Caplinger has felt the love and support of those who now have his back. The man of medicine is now a patient as well, an irony he has refused to indulge.

“I’m so fortunate and humbled and blessed to have all these people around me,” he said. “Some days, I don’t get anything done in the office because people are coming in and saying, ‘How you feeling today? Everything all right? You need anything? Do you need to take a nap?’ It’s awesome.

“I’d do anything for this (Brewers) logo. This organization means the world to me. I’ve poured my heart and soul into this organization, and the organization has been so good to me, even before this.

“Mr. Attanasio says all the time, ‘We are a family.’ And we are a family. They’ve proven it. We’re going to have so many people from the organization out here Sunday (at Miller Park). I can’t thank them enough for the support they’ve given me.”