Of all the patients Dr. Larry Brennan has cared for during 40 years of practicing medicine, the most memorable was a 17-year-old girl with leukemia. After saving her life, he was invited to her wedding.
“She was a sweet girl,” said Brennan, 66, a medical oncologist. “She actually got a degree in engineering and a job with GE Aviation. She now has three kids.
“My good days are when everybody is responding to treatment, and I don’t have to give anybody bad news,” Brennan said. “A bad day is when I have to tell several people their cancer is progressing. We go through the options. What can we do next? And maybe there is nothing we can do next.
“That’s when I come home beat and drained,” he said. “I see tragedies all the time.”
Brennan, recipient of the Business Courier’s Health Care Heroes Lifetime Achievement Award for 2019, is now focused on elevating the level of cancer treatment at St. Elizabeth Healthcare to produce more good outcomes for patients. He is helping develop protocols that will be implemented in what will be the largest comprehensive cancer center in Greater Cincinnati. Construction is underway on the Edgewood campus of St. Elizabeth’s flagship hospital.
The $140 million center will encompass 233,000 square feet and accommodate 650 workers, including hundreds of new positions. St. Elizabeth’s goal is to expand genetic screening, precision medicine, clinical research and treatment options in Northern Kentucky.
St. E is developing a team concept that will involve multidisciplinary clinics. For example, if Brennan sees a lung cancer patient, he’ll be joined by a lung doctor, a radiation oncologist and a surgeon to jointly decide the best approach.
“In this city, it would be revolutionary,” he said, noting that right now a patient would typically see a pulmonologist first, a medical oncologist second, a surgeon third and others as needed at different times and locations.
The center will focus expertise at one location, including medical oncologists such as Brennan, radiation oncologists, oncology surgeons, nurse navigators, research nurses and genetic counselors.
“We’re going to become a center of excellence,” Brennan said. “Develop a reputation, build up clinical research and hopefully become a referral center for the area. If you build up expertise, research opportunities and patient base, you get better at what you do.”
Brennan specializes in treating lung and genitourinary cancer, which primarily involves the bladder, prostate and kidney. He considered becoming a cardiologist but went into oncology because it was more challenging.
“Cancer is complex,” he said. “The patients know they’re sick. They sense their mortality.”
Brennan smiled at the thought of the best thing about being a doctor who cares for such patients.
“You can make people better – at least for a while,” he said. “And sometimes we cure people, which is even better. It’s very gratifying. You see people get better, and people are grateful.”
Willing to push
Brennan worked in private practice with the OHC physician group for nearly 20 years – including a five-year stint on staff at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center – before becoming a St. E employee.
“It’s always been my vision to try to partner with a hospital in some way to build a cancer center,” he said. “The critical part is the people within the building and how motivated they are to work together and care for their patients.”
Brennan’s strengths include being willing to push the envelope for research and innovative care, said Dr. Doug Flora, St. Elizabeth’s executive medical director of oncology services.
One of the initiatives Brennan advocated was the introduction of clinical pathways – adopting evidence-based guidelines to reduce unwanted variation in patient care.
“This can be a hard sell to providers who may think their creativity and clinical acumen are their greatest strengths, when in fact clinical pathways have been shown to provide better quality care at a lower cost for our patients,” Flora said. “Dr. Brennan is the champion for this sort of thing in our building ... he’s willing to push for initiatives that might cause change in an organization or cost more money.”
Brennan said that doesn’t make him a hero.
“A hero is someone who does something extraordinary – that you don’t expect to be within the realm of normal behavior,” he said. “I’ve done, I think, a good job of taking care of people. And I’ve worked at it and kept up with my field. I’m not sure I’ve done anything heroic.
“People have told me I saved their lives,” Brennan said. “That’s my job. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”
And yet, Brennan often exceeded expectations.
“If the work needs to be done, he does it,” Flora said. “He is a quiet, understated leader who always does the right thing – even when nobody is looking.”
An appreciation for hard work was instilled in Brennan by his parents while growing up in Park Hills. His dad, Lawrence Brennan Sr., sold chemicals for Amsco. His mom, Joan, was a teacher at the School for Creative and Performing Arts.
“You need to put effort into things,” Brennan said of what his parents taught him. “Nothing’s free.”
While a pupil at St. Agnes elementary, Brennan stayed after school to sweep floors in exchange for lunch. As a student at St. Xavier High School, he washed dishes in the cafeteria for four years – also in exchange for lunch.
At age 16 he landed a job in the hardware department at the Ontario’s department store in Newport, working 32 hours a week – including nights after school and on weekends. He earned $1.70 an hour. The real payoff was meeting Karen Enzweiler, who worked in the shoe department and now has been his wife for 40 years.
As a junior at Xavier University, he began working in the microbiology lab at Jewish Hospital. The lab paid better than Ontario’s and afforded more time to study. He earned straight A’s the last two years of college while working an eight-hour shift at the lab each Saturday and Sunday. That was where he had his first interaction with patients, drawing blood for samples.
While maintaining a full-time practice in oncology, Brennan has been involved with St. Elizabeth Hospice since its inception and was medical director from 1990 until 2017. In addition, Brennan has been chairman since 2012 of the Campbell County Board of Health, which he joined in 1995. Both were unpaid positions.
His work with St. E hospice, which makes terminally ill patients as comfortable as possible, is probably his top accomplishment, Brennan said. No. 2 would be his work with the board of health, whose projects include funding a clinic for the needy and a heroin diversion program.
Brennan’s work to help establish a cancer center should cement his legacy.
The Palliative Care Center that will be located within the St. Elizabeth Cancer Center will bear the names of Brennan and his wife. The couple contributed $500,000.
‘It’s an exciting time’
Brennan said there is a huge unmet need for palliative care, which can involve a team that works with the patient and family to provide medical, social, practical and emotional support. That includes treatment to make a patient more comfortable and help with matters such as living wills.
If palliative care is begun early, a patient can live longer and better, Brennan said.
He and his wife decided against making the gift anonymously because they hope to inspire others.
“I’ve had a good career and done well, and I would like to somehow give back to the community,” Brennan said. “I think we all should give back.”
Construction of the cancer center is to be completed by summer 2020.
“I don’t want to miss that,” said Brennan, who noted he probably will retire at age 70. “I think this new cancer center is going to enable us to do a better job of caring for patients. I’ll be here for that, but still ...
“One of my regrets is there’s been such a revolution in our field, that if I retire in four years I’m going to miss a lot of stuff,” he said. “There’s been such an explosion in our field – so many new medicines, so many new advances. There are new therapies that target mutations on the cells and immunotherapies.
“It’s an exciting time to be in cancer treatment,” he said. “So that might keep me going a little bit longer.”