When Robert Templeman, Sr., then 80, learned he had an advanced cancer of the ureter and bladder, the decorated World War II pilot and retired Air Force colonel didn’t have to choose between battling his illness or receiving supportive care to ease his suffering. He enrolled in a study at UC Davis Cancer Center that allowed him both.

Templeman ultimately lost his fight with cancer, but his daughter, Sacramento Lobbyist Kathryn Rees, credits “simultaneous care” with making her father’s last year a good one. Templeman, who built a second career in commercial real estate, was able to spend his last months in the company of his wife, children and grandkids, take in the Amador County Fair and attend an important party at the home of a dear hunting buddy.

“When my father died, it was with enormous peace and dignity and grace,” Rees says. “Simultaneous care helped make that possible.”
With simultaneous care, cancer patients receive aggressive treatment to fight their disease, together with aggressive palliative care to improve the quality of their remaining weeks, months or years.
Templeman took part in a clinical trial of an intensive chemotherapy regimen that successfully shrank his primary tumor and, for several months, restored his strength and energy.

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Robert Templeton,
a fourth generation Sacramentan, died of cancer at age 81.