When the Body Balks

Why rush retirement? That pretty well sums up how Carol and Dick Johns approached the issue. Something of a golden couple around Hopkins, the two School of Medicine graduates— she class of ’50; he of ’48—met during their Osler residencies in the years just after the war and built booming careers here. Dick, now a distinguished service professor who handles special projects for the dean, molded Biomedical Engineering into the top department in the country. Carol, an associate professor of pulmonary medicine, was the longtime director of the sarcoid clinic, served as assistant dean for Continuing Education, and even turned in a stint as interim president of her alma mater, Wellesley College, 20 years ago.

Now in their 70s, but with their professional lives still rewarding, they figured there’d be plenty of time ahead to savor life beyond work. Now Carol’s not so sure: Last November, her doctors discovered a potentially deadly melanoma.

As the news sank in, Carol began wondering about the slow-but-sure approach to retirement that she and Dick had chosen. A decade ago, they’d bought a second home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore so they could spend more time with their cherished 38-foot Hinckley sailboat. Five years ago, Dick had cut back to a four-day-a-week schedule, while Carol went to two days and started putting more time into church activities and luxuries like reading.

Aware of the unpredictability of her malignancy, their idyllic retirement, full of long sails on Chesapeake Bay and trips to faraway locales, seemed all but lost. “I began thinking we ought to hurry up and move to Broadmead [a Baltimore County retirement community] while I could still walk in,” she confesses. Her thoughts even turned to the simple chores she soon might not be able to perform, like the boxes in her basement and attic she’d planned to tackle: “That’s hard, physical work,” she says, “but I’m basically an optimist.”

Only after the initial shock had worn off did Carol recall something her mother used to tell her: “Old age isn’t for sissies.” It had never sounded more true. Just as they had when Carol was diagnosed with Parkinson disease several years ago—“the first chink in my armor,” she notes with a wry smile—the Johns shared Carol’s diagnosis with friends and relatives. “The numbers of people who have sent flowers and cards, come by, called up, it’s just about overwhelming,” she says. “And there’s no question it makes a difference.”

Over the winter, Carol underwent surgery to remove the original melanoma lesions and for lymph-node resection. Now, her prognosis is basically a wait-and-see affair. She’ll stop working at Hopkins for good this June, shortly after the publication of a major article in Medicine outlining her work on sarcoid.

The major concession the Johns have made to Carol’s condition is an attitude adjustment. “It adds a new dimension to thinking about what you want to do in retirement, something you’re going to have to cope with as best you can,” she says. In frustrating moments, she now leans on a bit of wisdom she’s often shared with her patients over the years, Reinhold Niebuhr’s “The Serenity Prayer”: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which could be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

“That’s sort of my philosophy about this,” she says. “I believe that strength comes from family, colleagues and friends, with a ‘Power’ beyond ourselves. One thing that characterizes so many of us in medicine is that we’ve been in charge—in our careers and in our lives. Something like this makes you acknowledge that you’re not quite as much in control as you were. My message would be to remain flexible. Be ready to adapt.”