Outdoor adventure part of doctor’s Rx for cancer patients

Menacing waves were crashing at Venice Beach on a recent Saturday morning, but more than a dozen young beginning surfers led by a Jewish doctor from UCLA were up for the challenge. They had come through tough circumstances before.

All of the surfers, ranging from 13 to 25 years of age, had years of experience battling cancer. Almost all were now in remission, but they shared an uncertain future. The aggressive chemotherapy they endured in their individual battles had left them at a high risk for heart dysfunction, kidney disease or high blood pressure.

But on this day they came to get their minds off such concerns. They were there to participate in one of the activities of the Teen Adventure Program, co-founded by the day’s leader — that doctor in the Quicksilver wetsuit — Dr. Noah Federman, director of the Pediatric Bone and Soft Tissue Sarcoma Program at UCLA. The program brings together current and former sarcoma patients, their siblings and friends every other month for outdoor activities such as surfing and rock climbing — adventures that take them away from hospitals and clinics and into social, engaging and invigorating environments, without their parents.

The fledgling surfers were among the more than 500 patients Federman has treated at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica.

“This program was designed to get our patients together in a supportive environment to push them, under supervision, and give them opportunities that are out of reach otherwise,” said Federman, 41, who launched the program along with UCLA nurse care manager Margie Weiman in 2011. The two now coordinate the program’s activities along with Marla Knolls, a social worker in pediatric hematology/oncology at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, and instructors from UCLA Recreation, who are trained in developing therapeutic recreation programs for people with cognitive and physical disabilities.

In Venice, each participant used a soft-top foam surfboard ideal for beginners. Each had three instructors to help them learn, on land, the basics of paddling and standing up on their board before venturing with it into the choppy Pacific Ocean.

Among those facing the challenge was Avi Khanian, 23, an Iranian-Israeli who recently graduated from UC Santa Barbara, and has a proclivity for saying, “Baruch ha-Shem” (Thank God). Khanian is in his ninth year of remission from Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer that affects children and adolescents. He discovered he had the cancer around the time of his bar mitzvah. He underwent 40 rounds of chemotherapy and surgery to remove a tumor in his thigh. While hobbling around on crutches after the surgery, he told his classmates he was recovering from a soccer injury.

Simi Singer, marketing and media analyst at UCLA Medical Center, said Khanian’s story of not wanting to share his diagnosis with his classmates is a common reflection of how adolescents with cancer have to deal with a unique set of issues related to the disease, including body image.

Khanian said he appreciated the opportunity to be involved with the Teen Adventure Program.

“This creates space for patients to get together around a similar interest and not worry about dealing with cancer,” Khanian said. “That’s what we need. We need a community. We need more physical spaces for adolescents and young adults to get together and share experiences.”

Another one of Federman’s patients, Noah Shohet, 20, also was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma. A 2014 graduate of Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School in Irvine, Shohet discovered a tumor in his knee after completing his freshman year at the University of Michigan. 

Shohet recently returned to Michigan for his sophomore year, in good health. He said Federman made him feel at ease during the nine months and 17 rounds of chemotherapy that followed his diagnosis. 

“Dr. Federman has a way of making it feel like everything is totally normal and fine,” Shohet said in a phone interview. “He comes in — obviously my parents are pestering him with questions about what to do and stuff… [but he says] ‘Don’t sweat the details.’ We talk like human beings to each other — what we did over the weekend, what we’re thinking about. He’s an interesting guy, a great surfer. He’s really laid-back and easy to talk to.”

Federman, who is married and has two children, said he comes to as many of the program’s outings as he can, but he acknowledged that life gets busy and he can’t make it to them all.

A self-identified “cultural” Jew, Federman said he and his wife, who also works in medicine and is not Jewish, struggle about the amount of Judaism with which to raise their children. He is a member of Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn, but does not belong to a synagogue in Los Angeles.

Federman grew up in Brooklyn. His family owns Russ & Daughters, the “appetizing” store on the Lower East Side famous for its smoked and cured fish, salads, cream cheeses and all things that go with bagels. His father, Mark Russ Federman, is the son of Anne Russ, one of the three daughters of the store’s namesake. Noah Federman worked in the store when he was young and when he returned home while studying at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Federman said he was interested in medicine as opposed to taking over the store because becoming a doctor offered a more cerebral experience than working with herring.

“I think from a very early age I was not interested in taking over the business, and I sort of followed my passion in science and medicine and ended up doing well for myself and getting into medical school and being able to flee the family business,” he said.

Standing on the beach in Venice, watching his patients negotiate the waves, he looked happy with the opportunities the Teen Adventure Program was giving them. While the return of their cancer is always a possibility, he expressed confidence that their treatments would prove effective in the long term.

“I believe most of these patients will be here 10 years from now,” he said.