Adolescents and young adults suffering from cancer have a new place to hang out in Boston.
A new room for this purpose opened Thursday, Sept. 22 at the Tufts-New England Medical Center.
"Jen's Room," as it is called, is operated by the hospital's social services department. The room was built thanks to the Jen Di Reeno Foundation.
The room and foundation are named for a woman who died from Melanoma in 1999. She was a patient at the hospital and was diagnosed in 1998.
Larry Warnock, the foundation's executive director, said hospitals tend to deemphasize the number of adolescent and young adult cancer patients. "It is important to realize that it's not just young children or older adults who are suffering from this disease," he said. "Young adults suffering from cancer shouldn't be ignored."
The room is on the main floor of the hospital and has a plasma TV and three computers. It was designed, Warnock said, "for teens and young adults to hang out, to deal with cancer in their own lives or in the lives of others, [and] to hold support groups."
The foundation was created in 2000 by Warnock, Di Reeno's father, Walter Di Reeno, and Tom Ensminger (LA '99), a close friend and neighbor of Jen Di Reeno.
Ensminger, who visited DiReeno frequently at the hospital, decided to turn his grief into action by developing the room in Di Reeno's memory.
The foundation chose to build the room at the hospital, Warnock said, because it had "treated Jen incredibly well" during her fight against cancer.
The foundation contacted the hospital in 2002 to ask about the possibility of a room. Steve Perna, the hospital's donor relations coordinator, began working on the project in 2003.
The room is a "huge resource to social services in general," Perna said. It was used before the official opening ceremony to host Red Cross training sessions for social service worker dealing with victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Walter Di Reeno said the room is "for teens and young adults to...be away from all the hustle environment" of a normal hospital ward.
The foundation has other events planned to honor the memory of Jen Di Reeno. It hosted the 6th annual Jen Di Reeno Sunset Music Festival in August, and foundation members are considering starting a lecture series at the hospital on grief and healing.
They have also discussed a quarterly newsletter with content submitted by young adult cancer patients.
