Radiation oncologist and six-time cancer survivor offers hope to patients as volunteer
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When Aparna Surapaneni, MD, began working in Memorial Hermann Health System’s radiation oncology department 6 years ago, she noticed a pull-up bar right outside her office.
“I said, ‘What’s this doing here?’” Surapaneni recalled.
The bar belonged to Arthur D. Hamberger, MD, FACR, who used it daily to keep in shape.
“I don’t know if I would ever be able to do a pull-up,” Surapaneni said during an interview with Healio. “It might be a goal I could achieve eventually, but I certainly can’t do one now.”
Perhaps no one would fault the 76-year-old Hamberger if he cut back a bit on his pull-up regimen. Over the course of his 50-year career as a radiation oncologist, he has been diagnosed with cancer not once, but six times.
Yet Hamberger doesn’t spend much time feeling discouraged. Literally and figuratively, he has not lowered the bar for himself.
“He truly loves what he does, and that’s why he’s still very much involved,” Surapaneni said. “Now, as a volunteer, it’s amazing what he is able to offer our patients.”
Hamberger still spends an hour and a half at the gym every day and enjoys time with his family. He seems to possess the kind of optimism that comes not from self-help books, but from an inherent enthusiasm for life and for helping others.
“I’ve seen my children grow up; I’ve seen grandchildren grow up,” Hamberger told Healio. “So, if something happens to me, I’ve had an opportunity to do things. I’ve had an opportunity to live my life.”
A turning point
From the beginning, cancer has been an unwelcome visitor in Hamberger’s life. In the middle of his first year of residency training in internal medicine, his mother died of cancer. A few months later, he read an article in The New England Journal of Medicine about a young man with metastatic testicular cancer.
“The article was titled ‘In Search of a Cancer,’” Hamberger said. “So, I examined myself and, lo and behold, I found the lump.”
At the time, 25-year-old Hamberger had a wife and a 5-month-old daughter. He underwent surgery for testicular cancer, followed by 4 weeks of postoperative irradiation.
The treatment not only saved his life but changed his career path from pulmonology to radiation oncology.
After Hamberger gained board certification in internal medicine, he and his family relocated from New York to Texas so he could begin a 3-year fellowship at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Hamberger worked at MD Anderson for 10 years as a tenured professor of radiation oncology and director of the radiotherapy training program. While in that position, he was recruited to lead a new radiotherapy department at Memorial City General Hospital, now known as Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center.
During his career as a radiation oncologist, Hamberger didn’t discuss his own cancer experience with his patients, although it gave him greater empathy for those living with cancer.
“It never came up,” he said. “I never said, ‘I know exactly what you’re going through,’ although I do think it helped me to relate to them. I didn’t want to make myself part of the story.”
A new set of challenges
Having found a career he was passionate about, Hamberger worked full time until age 69 years. He continued to work part-time after that, covering for different clinicians at Memorial Hermann.
During these years of semi-retirement, Hamberger received two more cancer diagnoses. He underwent a robotic prostatectomy for prostate cancer in 2017 and, because all nodes removed came back negative, he did not require further treatment. However, small cell lymphocytic lymphoma was found in all pelvic lymph nodes removed at the time of the prostate surgery.
Hamberger went to a hematologist and underwent total-body CT scans. These revealed some small nodes, but nothing of significant concern, he said.
“I’ve just been followed with CTs, and everything has stayed perfectly quiet,” he said.
Just before Thanksgiving in 2018, however, Hamberger noticed the faintest tinge of red in his urine.
“If this had been the middle of the night, I’m telling you, I never would have noticed it,” he said.
‘It doesn’t stop me’
Hamberger got confirmation of blood in his urine, and a CT urogram showed a 4 cm tumor in the bladder, on the side where he had previously received radiation. The test also incidentally picked up a mass in Hamberger’s pancreas.
“They were able to take care of the bladder tumor with a couple of transurethral resections,” he said. “I had the pancreas mass biopsied, and that came back as a garden-variety adenocarcinoma.”
Because the bladder tumor showed no invasion into the muscle, Hamberger decided to focus on the pancreatic adenocarcinoma. His physician recommended chemotherapy with a modified FOLFIRINOX regimen, followed by surgery.
“I know a little bit about chemotherapy, and this regimen looked like it would kill me,” he said. “So, I said, ‘How do you feel about going straight to the operation?’”
His oncologists agreed, and Hamberger underwent robotic distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy in February 2019, followed by 12 courses of modified FOLFIRINOX.
“I do have some peripheral neuropathy, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling the accelerator or brake on a car,” he said. “It hasn’t affected my handwriting or anything like that.”
Hamberger’s ordeal has given him the opportunity to contemplate and guide treatment for a very challenging case: his own. Surapaneni said tackling tough cases has always engaged Hamberger’s interest and intellect.
“When I would have a difficult case, I would call him up and ask him how he would deal with certain scenarios, and he is just a great sounding board,” she said. “He’s had so much experience in his career, and he always asks interesting questions. He’s very helpful to someone like me.”
‘A wonderfully sincere rapport’
Hamberger has surmounted what seem like impossible obstacles and continues to live his life with enthusiasm and compassion. He and his wife of 53 years, Ella, enjoy travel, the theater and spending time with their children and grandchildren.
Hamberger volunteers for the organization CanCare and at Memorial Hermann Hospital Greater Heights, where he talks one-on-one with patients with cancer.
“I try to help them through the emotional issues and the side effects,” he said. “I give them advice and encourage them to talk to their doctors about their concerns. Just having someone there who wants to talk to them makes them feel less alone.”
In August 2021, Hamberger was diagnosed with what is most likely a sixth cancer in the right kidney. It has been present on CT scans for a few years and has not significantly increased in size.
“It’s a slow-growing kidney cancer, so we’re just doing surveillance on that,” Hamberger said.
Surapaneni said she was delighted to see Hamberger resume his weekly in-person volunteer visits, which were disrupted by the pandemic.
“He just has such a wonderfully sincere rapport with everyone,” she said. “He typically chats with our patients in the waiting room before their appointments. Then, when it’s time to come for their visit with me or their radiation treatment, they’ll be torn, because they really want to stay there and talk to Dr. Hamberger.”
He encourages patients to advocate for themselves, noting he was fortunate to have the ability to affect decision-making in his pancreatic cancer treatment.
“I think the thing people don’t realize is that they have a choice,” he said. “It doesn’t always occur to them to ask, ‘What are my options?’”
Hamberger urged oncologists to consider their patients’ preferences and avoid being too unrealistic or too bleak.
“The important thing is to try to get the patient to have a reasonable expectation of what their chances are,” he said. “At the same time, we need to give them enough hope to get them through a treatment that might be important for them. And be ready to stop if the treatment is going to wind up being worse than the disease.”
Surapaneni said she feels lucky to know Hamberger and to discuss everything from their mutual status as native New Yorkers to complicated cancer cases.
“It’s really been a pleasure to be able to work a little bit alongside him,” she said. “Every time he sends me an update on how well he’s doing, I’m just so happy for him. I’ve never known anyone quite like him. He’s truly unique.”
For more information:
Arthur D. Hamberger, MD, FACR, can be reached at Northwest Radiotherapy Association, 13700 Medical Complex Drive, Tomball, TX 77375-6554.
Aparna Surapaneni, MD, can be reached at Memorial Hermann Cancer Center, 1631 N. Loop W Ste. 150, Houston, TX 77008.
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