Doug Moe: Book still a boon
to cancer patients
by Doug Moe
The
Capital Times - 3/17/06
IN 1999, when Joe Wiederholt's cancer came back
after five years in remission, he was sitting in a clinic waiting
room one day when a patient next to him pulled out a book to read.
The book was a personal health tracker and planner
for cancer patients. The author was Joe Wiederholt.
In a life full of accomplishment, that moment
ranked right up there for Wiederholt, an award-winning UW-Madison
pharmacy professor who succumbed to the disease in 2001.
Having a stranger in the next chair pull out
"The WriteTrack" was a serious rush. The book, which encouraged
and helped patients track their treatments and reactions, both
empowering them and assisting their communication with doctors,
was praised and embraced by medical professionals and patients.
Eventually 150,000 copies of the book were printed,
with financial support of a pharmaceutical company.
Recently, Joe's widow, Peggy Wiederholt, herself
an oncology nurse coordinator, wanted to bring out a revised and
updated edition of "The WriteTrack." Corporate backing was no
longer available, so Peggy swallowed hard and financed the new
edition herself. "It meant so much to my husband," she was saying
Thursday. "It's his most important legacy."
The new edition is now available, with a foreword
by best-selling local author Jacquelyn Mitchard.
"Everyone who works with cancer patients, is
a cancer patient or loves a cancer patient needs this book," writes
Mitchard, who lost her first husband to cancer.
The book, published by Goblin Fern Press in
Madison, is expected in local stores soon, and meanwhile, it is
available through a Web site, www.thewritetrack.net.
While the new edition of "The WriteTrack" is
to be applauded for the people it will help, it also stands as
something more - a loving tribute.
I first spoke to Peggy Wiederholt in 2001, the
year her husband died. It was around the holidays. Joe had died
in May.
We spoke after a holiday lawn ornament, a Santa
fashioned as the famous "Peanuts" cartoon puppy Snoopy, had been
stolen from the front porch of the Wiederholt home on Rolla Lane.
Of course, to understand about the Snoopy Santa,
I had to understand the man who inspired it.
Joe Wiederholt grew up in Sioux City, Iowa,
attended Creighton University in Omaha, and came to Madison with
Peggy in 1981. By that time he had already redesigned the U.S.
Army pharmacy technician program and received an Army Commendation
Medal. His humor and enthusiasm made him a fast favorite of students
in the UW School of Pharmacy. Wiederholt won various teacher of
the year awards and, in 1988, received the Rufus A. Lyman Award
for Best Published Paper in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical
Education. Later, there would be a Distinguished Educator Award
from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and the
Presidential Citation from Creighton University for his service
to pharmacy education.
For all of it, Wiederholt refused to take himself
too seriously. He liked recalling a year-end student evaluation
that elicited the following: "You are a great teacher. But your
ties suck." Which, according to his wife, they did. Immediately
Joe's sister sent him a Snoopy necktie - with the dog doing his
famed "Joe Cool" bit with the sunglasses. Eventually the legend
of the bad ties was superceded by all manner of Snoopy paraphernalia.
The year Joe's cancer returned, 1999 (it was
originally diagnosed in 1994, when he was 45), he received the
Snoopy Santa ornament as a gift. After he died, Peggy displayed
it on the porch, and friends and former students would make a
point of driving by to remember Joe. Then, right around Christmas,
it was stolen. I wrote about it, and eventually Peggy got the
Snoopy Santa back.
This week Peggy was recalling that when Joe,
who had rarely ever been sick, was first diagnosed with colon
cancer and began chemotherapy, he felt overwhelmed. His mind constantly
raced. Eventually, Peggy said, he took a yellow legal pad and
began keeping track of his medications and his reactions to them.
This became a kind of diary/workbook that eventually, Peggy said,
"allowed him to predict and anticipate his good days, and his
not so good days. He felt like it gave him some control."
The legal pad jottings, of course, became "The
WriteTrack." Peggy said the book continues to bring cards and
letters of thanks from cancer patients around the country, and
they factored in her decision to publish the new edition.
Its influence continues. Not long ago, Joe Wiederholt's
sister-in-law, married to Joe's brother in Colorado, was diagnosed
with cancer. The doctor in Colorado said, "There's a book that
you really must have. It will help you." The book was "The WriteTrack."
