Expanding Expertise

Some patients who have been traveling to Chapel Hill or Durham to receive specialty care are finding more options locally as area practices expand their roster of physicians.

One of them is KARENNE FRU, (above) a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist.

“These are emotionally wrought relationships you build with patients and then to have to travel. It’s not ideal,” says Fru, who recently joined Coastal Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, a new NHRMC Physician Group practice.

“Infertility has largely stayed in the shadows, and patients feel isolated and alone, but it touches 10 percent of the population. I understand it makes them feel helpless – something that should happen didn’t, and your power has been taken,” she says. “Each patient is unique, but they all want control over their reproductive destiny. I think they should be in control – I give it back.”

For the younger set, a UNC pediatric pulmonologist has been coming to see local patients monthly, but the five-to-six-month waiting list indicated a critical need for someone based in Wilmington.

MARZENA KRAWIEC, a pediatric pulmonologist, now is practicing with Coastal Children’s Services, held her first patient clinic in August, which was full.

She joined the pediatric subspecialty team in the Nunnelee Clinic at New Hanover Regional Medical Center’s Betty H. Cameron Women’s and Children’s Hospital. In addition, she was planning to start seeing patients in Jacksonville.

Krawiec, who was born in Warsaw, Poland, came to the U.S. with her family at the age of four. She was drawn to the Wilmington area by the plan to augment care here.

Krawiec comes to Wilmington from East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine after serving as section head of pediatric pulmonology there.

She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Boston University and medical degree from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center School of Medicine (UCHSC) in Denver. Krawiec did her fellowship in pediatric pulmonology at UCHSC and National Jewish Health in Denver.

With more than eighteen years of experience in the treatment of children with various respiratory disorders, her clinical passions include allergic asthma, infantile wheezing, airway inflammation, and vocal cord dysfunction.

“Allergic asthma is a passion,” Krawiec says about her focus. “That’s an area of research that I’ve done, and there’s a tremendous need for ongoing and collaborative care with general practitioners in the area.”

Krawiec looks forward to collaborating to create a multispecialty clinic. She also has a special interest in autism, as one of her twin boys has that diagnosis.

“I want to make a difference and see the growth of the care of the children who have these disorders,” she says about respiratory illnesses. “Wheezing, coughing, sleepless nights. It’s the most expensive disease because of days of work lost, school days lost, and burden on the family and the siblings.”

Marianne Muhlebach, the visiting pediatric pulmonologist from UNC, will also continue to see patients.

Like Krawiec, Fru also moved to the U.S. from abroad.

At the age of fourteen, she and her family left their native country of Cameroon. She later graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, and went to medical school at the Medical College of Georgia.

She completed her residency in the Greenville Hospital Systems in South Carolina and did a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, where she also practiced in vitro fertilization at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“I always knew I wanted to take care of women,” Fru says. “Growing up in Cameroon, I saw what it meant; you could be replaced by another woman that could reproduce. That made them feel devalued. I wanted to be able to help them. Reproduction is survival of the species.”

Returning to the South and the beaches made coming to Wilmington an attractive move, Fru says, but knowing that there was no other fellowship-trained reproductive endocrinology
and infertility specialist in the area was a real draw.

Fru treats several disorders in her practice including polycystic ovary syndrome, irregular menses, hirsutism, infertility, fibroids, blocked tubes, diminished ovarian reserve, and endometriosis.
There were twenty patients in her first clinic, and the caseload is expanding daily.

Daniel Goodwin, vice president of the NHRMC Physician Group, notes there are about 220 specialists now in the NHRMC Physician Group.

“As Wilmington’s population continues to grow,” Goodwin says, “New Hanover Regional Medical Center and the NHRMC Physician Group continue to analyze where care is needed.”

To view more of photographer Chris Brehmer’s work, go to www.chrisbrehmerphotography.com/