David Dresner, MD, gastroenterologist with Gastroenterology Health Partners in New Albany, Indiana, speaks to his patients in clear and simple terms, no hyperbole, just direct.
“I’m very blunt with my patients,” he says. “Folks understand when you speak to them in plain, simple language. So, when I say ‘You’re trying to pass five pounds of mud through a one-pound hole,’ they understand what I’m saying.”
That’s how he describes a blockage in the colon to the patients he treats who have colon cancer. So, when Dresner says he’s genuinely excited about the progress being made in colon cancer survival rates, you can trust it’s not false enthusiasm or misplaced optimism.
“We are putting a distinct notch into colon cancer mortality,” he says. “Without any question, we are making a dent and people are living longer.”
Dresner comes by his love for finding solutions to problems naturally. His father was a nuclear physicist and his mother was a schoolteacher. Dresner grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and attended Washington University in St. Louis, earning a degree in biology. From there, he attended the University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis via the U.S. Navy’s Health Professions Scholarship Program. Per the program regulations, he remained on inactive reserve while attending medical school, except for six weeks of active duty per year. After completing medical school, he had a four-year obligation of service to the Navy.
Dresner completed his internship, residency, and fellowship at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia. He then served as a medical officer on a ship for about 14 months in 1984–85, including participating in the bombing of Benghazi in March of 1985.
“We were off the coast of Lebanon when the journalist Terry Anderson was kidnapped,” Dresner says. “We spent about three months floating around off the coast of Beirut as a platform waiting for negotiations to get him successfully released. They finally flew him onto our ship and from our ship on to the carrier.”
Having completed 10 years of active duty, Dresner was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1994. With a wife and three children under the age of six, it was time to come home. A recruiter connected him with Gastroenterology of Southern Indiana, and he joined in 1994.
