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When Dr. Joel Grossman thinks about his career in oncology, he thinks about a scene from The Lord of the Rings: The unassuming hobbit Frodo is tasked with destroying a ring that will otherwise annihilate their world. “He wants to get rid of it—just as my cancer patients want to get rid of their cancer,” Grossman explains. “Frodo says, ‘I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.’ The wise wizard, Gandalf, replies, ‘So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to him.’”  Grossman makes the most of his time, keeping up with the ever-changing advancements in cancer care. “There’s a challenge every day in the office about how we can do something better or more efficiently,” he says. The varied pace drew Grossman—who comes from a long line of doctors—to oncology. “I wanted something that would never become overly routine, and it was obvious during medical school that oncology was going to get more and better treatment options over the years,” he explains.   The Tennessee-born father of two studied at Duke and Wake Forest University. He did his residency at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he also got experience with the nearby county hospital and Veterans Affairs center. He completed his fellowship in medical oncology and hematology in California at what is now the Scripps MD Anderson Cancer Center, John J. Hopkins Drive. After nearly four years working on the West Coast, Grossman returned to the East Coast to Florida, where he is now the division chief of medical oncology and hematology for NCH Healthcare System.   Grossman—who’s served on the board for Florida Cancer Specialists, Cancer Alliance of Naples and the Winged Foot Scholarship Committee—enjoys working in a close-knit community, where he can treat people within the same family, and parents and grandparents of kids he coached on his son’s little league teams.   Working with patients long-term, he can follow them through their journey, and the steady flow of seasonal patients in Southwest Florida allows him to see innovative treatments they’re getting at their hometown cancer centers. “I’ve been doing this a long time now, and it amazes me that I still learn something every day,” Grossman says. —Emily Flournoy

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