Edward B. Arenson, M.D.
BACKGROUND * EXPERIENCE * TREATMENT PHILOSOPHY
A Personal Statement
I was born in Philadelphia, on April 11, 1945. President Roosevelt
died the next day, and the war ended soon after. My father, Edward
B. Arenson, Sr., was in the Navy and was anxious to return to civilian
life and his father’s steel business in Toledo, Ohio.
I grew up in Toledo where I attended high school in the beautiful
village of Ottawa Hills. There were 100 students in my graduating
class. I had good grades, played saxophone in several bands, and
went to Cornell University, which both my parents had also attended.
At Cornell I was an English major, an Art History minor, as well
as a pre-med student. I was in a fraternity of which I became president,
washed dishes for 80 brothers after lunch daily, which paid for
all my food, and was a coxswain on the heavyweight crew. I helped
desegregate Cornell’s fraternity system while there, and received
grades sufficient to get accepted at Hahnemann Medical College in
Philadelphia where I matriculated in 1967.
 Throughout my medical career, I have also kept busy being a husband and father. My wife, Julie is a pediatric nurse practitioner with an interest in adolescents. My 21-year-old son, Robin, is in his senior year at New York University and is thinking about law school. My 18-year-old daughter, Patty, is a freshman at Connecticut College, where she loves the sciences, especially biology, and is a talented photographer. My oldest daughter, Jennifer, 37, is mother to my two grandchildren, Annie, age 4 and Ben, age 2. They live in Massachusetts, so visits are not nearly often enough! My 34-year-old daughter, Rebecca, lives in Leadville and loves true Colorado living. It's a busy life!
I also have many interests outside of medicine that I believe help
me to maintain my passion for my work and keep me feeling young.
I tend to seek activities that are life-affirming, such as cooking,
eating gourmet food, keeping fit by running, hiking and biking,
organizing educational programs for my local place of worship, reading
extensively, enjoying art of all kinds and playing the drums.
Medical Career
After graduating from Cornell University in 1967 with a Bachelor
of Arts degree, I attended Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia
where I finished in the top 5% of my class with honors and membership
in the AOA Medical Honor Society.
I then moved to Denver where I did my internship, residency and
first year fellowship in pediatrics and pediatric hematology-oncology
before interrupting my training to fulfill two years of service
in the U.S. Army Medical Corp in Augusta, Georgia. There I
was honored with a Meritorious Service Award before leaving to continue
my training at the University of California, Los Angeles.
I did research on the immune system’s role in cancer and
participated in the early days of bone marrow transplantation. I
joined the UCLA faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1978 where
I stayed until 1982, when I moved to Albany, New York, to become
Director of Pediatric Hematology Oncology at the Albany Medical
College. There I established programs for childhood cancer, hemophilia
and sickle cell anemia. In 1988 I returned to Denver to join the
faculty of the University of Colorado at Children’s Hospital
as an Associate Professor.
It was at Children’s Hospital that I developed an interest
in tumors of the central nervous system. Brain tumors account for
approximately 25% of all childhood cancers and present major challenges
to achieve improved survival while preserving acceptable levels
of function. I helped establish a multidisciplinary team of professionals
and developed several treatment protocols that contributed to significant
progress in the field. I became a member of the Brain Tumor Strategy
Group of the Children’s Cancer Group, an international consortium
of institutions seeking to improve treatment for childhood cancer.
As I later discovered, these challenges faced by children are similar
to those faced by adults with central nervous system tumors.
In 1992 I reluctantly concluded that my professional interests
and areas of expertise would be better served in the freer environment
of private practice. Soon thereafter, four Denver hospitals merged
to form what is now known as HealthOne. This led me to conceive
the idea of developing a program for both children and adults with
central nervous system tumors which would pull together the diverse
expertise at these four hospitals. I contacted Dr. Michael Hitchcock,
a neurosurgeon at Swedish Hospital, now retired, who strongly supported
the idea. We conceived a state-of-the-art, comprehensive program
for all patients with central nervous system tumors in the Rocky
Mountain Region, which would eliminate disruptive and costly out-of-state
travel for medical care. We met with many professionals and eventually
formed a group which met twice a month to review and discuss patient
cases in order to optimize treatment.
Ultimately, we decided that Swedish Hospital, closely allied with
the Colorado Neurological Institute, a nonprofit organization seeking
to provide programs of optimum care, research, education and outcomes
analysis for all neurological diseases, was the best place for our
innovative program. In 1996, our first year, we treated approximately
30 patients. This year, we will treat at least 150 new patients.
After Dr. Hitchcock’s retirement, Dr. Timothy Fullager and
I were named co-medical directors of the program. In 2005, I became
Medical Director and Director of Neuro-oncology of the CNI Center
for Brain & Spinal Tumors.
After 25 years as an oncologist, I had found my niche in neuro-oncology,
which was the culmination of my experience with both pediatric and
adult patients with tumors of the central nervous system.
Treatment Philosophy
Working in the private-practice setting, combined with my years
of experience at university-based medical centers, has provided
me with what I believe is a unique approach to caring for people
with central nervous system tumors.
My philosophy encompasses a careful, continual appraisal of the
latest research in the field coupled with the increased flexibility
I have to tailor cancer treatment to individual patients and their
needs, to optimize survival outcomes and quality-of-life. It is
also in the private practice setting that I feel my special abilities
and attributes as a physician — such as humor, creativity,
unconventionality and advocacy — have been most positively
and effectively expressed.
My philosophy of patient care goes beyond the treatment of the
tumor to include attention to the healing of the spirit as well.
In this way, I have developed several programs of which I am very
proud that address this often-neglected area of patient care. One
of these programs is an interfaith
healing service, developed along with the Swedish Hospital chaplaincy,
which incorporates inspirational readings and music from diverse
sources in a way that provides comfort and support for many of our
patients and their loved ones. Patients feel bonded by their common
medical conditions and by their relationship with the professionals
in our program who regularly attend these services as well.
Additional programs include a monthly
support group, an annual celebration-of-life ceremony called
“Reflecting
the Light”, therapeutic massage and a new program, Reel
Recovery, that provides free fly-fishing experiences for our patients.
Many other services, provided by our nurse, patient care coordinator/social
worker, our neuropsychologists and other healthcare professionals
are offered which impact quality-of-life and reduce the burden for
the patient and family.
People often ask me how it is that I can work in an area of medicine
that can be quite challenging and very often emotionally draining.
My answer is that it is the relationships I form with my patients
and their families that keep me going, and my sense that I bring
unique skills, knowledge, caring and humor to what can be a devastating
illness. My relationship with my patients is a partnership, one
which teaches me something new about the resiliency of the human
spirit every day.
|
