For many women diagnosed with breast cancer, the diagnostic period—the time between the screening mammogram and the start of treatment—is often filled with uncertainty, anxiety, and distress. One patient compared the feeling to an inner tube being popped. “First you get popped, then your head explodes, and everything floats around like in cartoons,” they write. “You don’t know what’s happening to…

When a dangerous pathogen threatens public health, UI Health Care’s Special Pathogen Unit (SPU) stands ready to respond. Designed with state-of-the-art infection control and isolation, this unit is able to transform a portion of the Surgical and Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit at our university campus into a secure biocontainment care space equipped to handle highly infectious diseases. “We’re…

Amanda Eleazer remembers when she started using drugs. It was 2014, and she was a 25-year-old mother of four living in Tennessee. Her husband was a patient at a local pain clinic, which she now realizes was a “pill mill,” a facility that illegally prescribes opioid painkillers such as oxycodone. He would offer to share his pills with her, and at first Eleazer declined. But one day, she accepted —…

During the winter, the air is drier, which causes our skin to lose moisture. Jennifer Powers, MD, FAAD, says there are a few simple tricks to counteract the painful effects of cold weather. Moisturize within three minutes after showering or bathing to seal in the moisture. Additionally, using lukewarm to cold water, rather than hot, will cause less skin irritation. Due to COVID-19, we’re all…

Three-month-old Nathaniel Corso may be the tiniest patient to participate in the best tradition in college sports. Nathaniel, from Washington, Iowa, was in the stabilization room in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital during the Iowa-Wisconsin football game on Nov. 2. It was a night game and, as is Hawkeye Wave tradition, the…

Donna Dolezal, MSN, RN, a nurse manager in the Ambulatory Surgery Center at our university campus, was recognized with a DAISY Lifetime Achievement Award for her dedication to the field throughout her career. One might think that after 38 years as a nurse, Donna Dolezal, MSN, RN, has little left to learn. But Donna Dolezal wholeheartedly disagrees.

There’s often a sense of magic under the Friday night lights and even more so when a player becomes a champion. For high school senior Nathan Schiesl, it’s a moment of wonder that was almost taken from him. Nathan helped Dubuque’s Wahlert Catholic High School win the Class 3A state football championship this November, a first in the school’s history. A placekicker and punter, he made all seven…

University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center once again ranks among the nation’s top hospitals for maternity care according to U.S. News & World Report. The medical center on the university campus is once again listed as a 2025 High Performing hospital for Maternity Care. This is the highest award a hospital can earn as part of U.S. News’ Best Hospitals for Maternity Care annual study. U.S. News…

For years, cancer had its way with Linda Jacobs. The DeWitt, Iowa, woman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. She had a lumpectomy to remove the tumor only to have a different type of cancer develop in the other breast a few years later. At that point, she opted for a double mastectomy and radiation therapy. But in 2021 she developed radiation-induced angiosarcoma, a cancer that forms in the…

Throughout 2018, Kami Waalkens noticed the pain in her left hip only occasionally. She’d feel a twinge when she worked out on certain machines at the gym, or when she raised a leg to climb into the car, or when she ran a virtual 5K race. Then a 25-year-old hospital social worker in Mason City, Iowa, Waalkens ignored the intermittent pain for six months—she assumed her sciatic nerve was acting up…