While one’s medical school days spark myriad memories of tough classes, long hours of studying and even longer hours in rotations, Watson Gutowski, D.O., best remembers how his class bonded at the Des Moines Still College of Osteopathy and Surgery, now DMU. “We were all in the same predicament,” says the 1958 graduate.

“We all helped each other out and were all very enthusiastic about the school and the osteopathic profession.”

Gutowski applied his enthusiasm and education to his general medical practice in Pennsylvania, retiring in 1997. His career gave him another take-away about DMU. “The school gave me a good education and a good life,” he says. “The least I can do is give a little back.”

Gutowski and his wife, Catherine, have done much more than that. Longtime donors to DMU, they recently made a major gift to establish the Watson and Catherine Gutowski Scholarship at DMU. Their son, Paul Gutowski, and his wife, Kim – both members of the DMU Class of 1990 – also have contributed to the fund.

In addition to wanting to support DMU students, the Gutowskis hope their gift will inspire his classmates and other alumni to reflect on their DMU days and give back, too.

“If you didn’t have the opportunity to go to DMU, what would your life be like now?” he says. “If every one of my classmates gave even a little back to the University, it would have a huge impact.”

Find out how you, too, can make a difference at DMU by investing in its students and programs. Contact us at 515-271-1387 or via www.dmu.edu/donations.

Originally issued in 12 parts from 1822 to 1826, the volume is among the holdings of DMU’s Kendall Reed Rare Book Room.

Dedicating the volume to “his late majesty George the Fourth,” John, who worked at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal Infirmary there, stated in its introduction, “The voice of antiquity, the nature of disease, the casualties of ordinary life, and the hazards of war, all conspire, with the dictates of sound philosophy, in enforcing the claims of anatomy and physiology, as the basis of a successful system of Medicine and Surgery.”

Information courtesy of DMU Archivist Lindsey Smith, M.A., the DMU Archives and the Kendall Reed Rare Book Room.

My practice partner’s face said it all that Monday morning. While we were at my parents’ vineyard planting new vines, I can honestly say I hadn’t given much thought to the lump my husband had found the week before. I mean, I was 31, in excellent physical health, and had zero family history of breast cancer. So when my practice partner suggested I get a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy to be safe, I thought the likelihood of any bad news was nil and that it was just a harmless fibro adenoma. However, when my partner sat down in my office and pulled up a chair to take my hand in his, I knew it wasn’t good news.

I had no idea at the time how much this diagnosis would radically change my world and my outlook on it. I was diagnosed with breast cancer on June 6, 2011.

Prior to that day in June, I felt like I was living the dream I had worked so hard to create. I was a family physician in my second year of practice in a wonderful physician-owned group in Monticello, MN. I was hitting my stride as a physician, building up a lovely patient population, expanding my OB practice and even finding the time to put my name in the running for one of our hospital board seats. I had a beautiful, very busy and amazing twoyear- old son, Oliver, and the best stay-at-home dad I could ask for, my husband Dustin. So when my partner diagnosed me with breast cancer, I felt like I was ripped from my selfcreated paradise and thrust into the terrifying unknown.

When my practice partner sat down in my office and pulled up a chair to take my hand in his, I knew it wasn’t good news.

The thing that frightened me the most was not the painful treatments and surgeries I faced, but more the sudden uncertainty of my future. Being a “type A” personality like many physicians, I was used to being in relatively good control of my future, working hard and achieving my goals. Quite unexpectedly, I was faced with a diagnosis I knew surprisingly little about, and which I had no control over.

At first I felt understandably angry, frightened and confused. However, the immediate and continued outpouring of support from my family, friends, colleagues and even patients was staggering and indescribably wonderful. Through the next six months of doctor’s appointments, highdose chemo and surgeries, I never once felt alone; that gave me the hope I needed to make it through it all.

Now, three months out of treatment, I am getting back to my “semi-normal life.” I am back to work full-time, reconnecting with my patients and colleagues, and moving past my diagnosis and on to recovery. Even though to an outside observer my day-to-day life now might appear identical to my previous one, I think that all of the hardship, suffering and triumphs have made me a better person and physician. I understand that life cannot be perfectly planned or predicted. Therefore, focusing on the things that truly bring joy and meaning to my life make it more fulfilling. For me, these things are as simple as playing “cars” or “tickletime” with my son, camping with family or sharing the joy of listening to a baby’s first heartbeat with expectant parents. I feel I enjoy these simple pleasures much more than I did just eight months ago, and I am a better wife, mother, friend and physician because of it.

I never would have chosen such a dramatic and difficult life diversion if presented with the choice, but I have become thankful for the new outlook it has awarded me. There is no doubt that the breast cancer “road” is a difficult and complex one at its best, but it has given me many insightful gifts.

Nathania Hammel, D.O.’06, practices at the Monticello, MN, Clinic, works emergency room shifts in Wadena, MN, and takes geriatric call through the Health Partners System in the Twin Cities. Her husband, Dustin, says she continued to work on call through much of her breast cancer treatments and surgeries. “She is the strongest, most determined woman I know,” he adds. She returned to practice full-time in January.

Elected to a one-year term on the Iowa chapter’s board of trustees was Timothy Piearson, D.O.’02. He is board-certified by the American Board of Osteopathic Family Physicians and is in private practice at the Adair County Medical Clinic in Greenfield, IA.

Daniel Hepplewhite, D.O.’88, and Adrian Woolley, D.O.’95, were re-elected to two-year terms on the Iowa chapter board. Both are board-certified in family medicine by the American Osteopathic Board of Family Physicians. Hepplewhite practices at the Altoona Family Care Center in Altoona, IA.

Woolley is vice chair of DMU’s osteopathic manual medicine department and an assistant professor in OMM and family practice. She is also board-certified in neuromuscular and osteopathic manual medicine by the American Osteopathic Board of Neuromuscular Medicine and has been awarded the certificate of competency in cranial osteopathy by the Osteopathic Cranial Academy.

Still remaining on the Iowa chapter ACOFP board are past president Terri Plundo, D.O.’92, assistant professor of family medicine at DMU, and immediate past president Bruce Ricker, D.O.’83, who practices at Mount Ayr Medical Clinic in Mount Ayr, IA.

Heather Fowler, D.O.’94, reads to children at a police check point near the Chittagong Hill tracts of Bangladesh as she and some of her colleagues at Memorial Christian Hospital wait for permission to proceed. They were on their way to provide patient care as well as village midwife training. Fowler is the hospital’s director of reproductive health and pediatric services and serves as a family physician. Since 1999, she has worked in Bangladesh, a densely populated and highly impoverished nation in South Asia.

Barbara Krugler, PA-C’01, could be the image next to the word “selfless” in the dictionary. She wanted to join the military after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, but she reconsidered because she and her husband, Larry, had fourth-grade daughter Elizabeth and firstgrade son Ryan at home. That was just a delay. In 2008, at the age of 47, Krugler got a waiver to allow her to enlist.

Two years later, she found herself a U.S. Army captain taking care of soldiers in “full battle rattle” at a remote base in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan.

“I feel as a nation, you should have some sort of way to give back to society and your community,” says Krugler, who works in the pain clinic at Veterans Administration Central Iowa. “It seems that would give people a different perspective on their country.”

For her service and commitment to her profession, last fall the Iowa Physician Assistant Society named her the Iowa PA of the Year.

Krugler, who also holds a master’s degree in business administration from Drake University, pursued a medical career after an unhappy stint in pharmaceutical sales. Her clients included staff of a burn unit. “I talked to a PA there and realized that’s what I wanted to do,” she recalls.

She also wanted to serve her country. She deployed to Afghanistan in November 2010 after three months of training in Mississippi. She worked part of her nine months there – a time of increasing violent insurgency – at Forward Operating Base Kalagush, the last U.S.-run operating base in Nuristan Province.

“It was very dangerous. Prior to our getting there, there was incoming mortar fire that almost blew up the entire base,” she says. “One hit a diesel fuel tank. They had no fire trucks. It took almost a week to burn itself out.”

Krugler and her fellow medics focused on treating U.S., Afghan and NATO soldiers, contractors and local Afghans. “We forget when we’re in country just how dangerous it is,” she notes. “You live your life and get into a routine.”

She acknowledges the huge challenges Afghanistan continues to face, from its highly limited infrastructure to its many tribes and languages.

“We flew over mountains and saw villages with no roads going into them. Most of the people have been at war most of their lives; they live in fear but have very little mental health care,” she says.

Krugler and her colleagues worked to promote good will where they served. In addition to providing medical care, including to many Afghan children, they distributed information in the local language on health topics including malaria prevention, water sanitation and the benefits of pre-natal vitamins. Her experiences broadened her views and reinforced her love of military medicine.

“It’s some of the most cutting-edge medicine you’ll ever see. The prosthetics are out of this world. You can access medical records [of military personnel] around the world,” she says. “You get to see and train on things you wouldn’t see on the civilian side. That has helped me work in different kinds of medicine and enhanced me as a provider.”

Jeff Nichols embraces his wife, Madonna, a breast cancer survivor.

On Jan. 6, 2011, Madonna Nichols began a journey that no one wants to face. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, which dragged her through 20 weeks of chemotherapy, a bilateral masectomy and weeks of radiation.

On Jan. 6 of this year, Nichols found herself on an entirely different yet related journey. She and 18 other cancer survivors, ages 29 to 73, and 21 caregivers were trekking through five ecosystems to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Those caregivers included Nichols’ spouse, Jeff Nichols, D.O.’90, and Bradley Hiatt, D.O.’97.

“It was the experience of a lifetime not only from a personal standpoint, but also emotionally, physically and spiritually,” says Hiatt, an oncologist with Medical Oncology and Hematology Associates in Des Moines. “You become so close to people in the group. You share everything – the sickness and the joy.”

The group – which included a priest, a viola player, an Army officer, a cage fighter and an insurance executive – took their journey under the auspices of Above and Beyond Cancer, a nonprofit organization established to reduce the burden of cancer. Last year, the organization took another group of 14 cancer survivors to the base camp of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak.

Above and Beyond Cancer founder Richard Deming is flanked by DMU alumni Jeff Nichols and Bradley Hiatt.

“Above and Beyond Cancer is a transformative experience for the people on the trip as well as for the people at home,” says Richard Deming, M.D., the organization’s founder and chairman and the medical director of Mercy Cancer Center, Des Moines. “We want to raise awareness of what we can do to reduce the incidence of cancer.”

Toward that goal, the Kilimanjaro group, which had the American Cancer Society as its premier sponsor and Mercy Medical Center, Des Moines, as a major supporting sponsor, conducted the highest-altitude Relay for Life in history at the top of the mountain on Jan. 11. Relays for Life are American Cancer Society events in which teams of people walk or run laps to raise awareness and money for cancer research and other related programs. For its Relay, the Kilimanjaro group set out luminaria to spell the word “HOPE,” which they circled for their laps. They also strung up on the mountain’s 150-foot-high glacier of vertical ice 800 prayer flags, each decorated with photographs, drawings and phrases commemorating the lives of cancer survivors or those who had died of the disease.

“That was a very emotional experience,” Madonna Nichols says. “I’m so glad I did this trip. Cancer changes your perspective on things. We bonded as a group and have kept in touch since.”

That 37 of the expedition participants – 17 cancer survivors and 20 caregivers – reached the top of Kilimanjaro, at 19,336 feet the highest peak on the African continent and the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, is nothing short of extraordinary.

“Everyone had issues – nausea, diarrhea and altitude sickness in addition to the patients’ pre-existing conditions,” says Jeff Nichols, an anesthesiologist at Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines. “Once people found out I am an osteopath, I had a lot of requests [for osteopathic manual treatment]. I did a lot of OMT on the mountain.

“The trip was a metaphor,” he adds. “The patients all climbed their own mountain with their cancer treatments. Now they were standing at the top of a real mountain.”

Nichols credits the group’s success to the expertise of Deming and Charlie Wittmack, executive director of Above and Beyond Cancer who’s reached the summit of Mount Everest twice, in planning such epic expeditions. Deming gives credit to the two DMU alumni.

“There are cancer survivors who wouldn’t have made it to the top of Kilimanjaro without the professional and compassionate care given by Dr. Hiatt and Dr. Nichols,” Deming says. “They represent the best of what doctors are with their wonderful combination of professional skill and kind care given in a healing manner.”

“I sent him an e-mail and he wrote right back,” Womack says. “He was totally flexible in when I could shadow him. It was so refreshing to get out into a clinic, because we don’t get that our first year.”

Greenhagen and other DMU graduates who participate in the University’s mentor program make invaluable differences to students in sharing knowledge and professional expertise. Womack observed him perform three surgeries – a hammertoe repair and two ankle surgeries.

“He was so meticulous. He slowed down during surgery so he could explain everything he was doing,” Womack says. “It was great that he not only gave me his time, but that he also wanted to teach me.”

By helping individual students, DMU mentors ensure the continued high quality of their profession.

Mentors inspire, too. First-year CPMS student Travis Langan wasn’t sure which medical field he should pursue as an undergraduate biology major at Wayne State College; his interactions with mentor Robert Colligan, D.P.M.’95, were among the factors that got him excited about podiatry.

“I was so impressed by how excited he was that I wanted to shadow him. He really painted this picture of podiatry that I could not resist,” Langan says. “He helps me see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

The benefits of DMU’s mentor program go both ways. Colligan recalls his own undergraduate uncertainties about medical careers as well as his grandfather’s diabetic complications, including gangrene in his legs. He gained a mentor in Fremont, NE, podiatrist Larry Lefler, D.P.M., past president of the American Podiatric Medical Association, who had a “profoundly positive impact” on him.

“I realized if I could be just like Dr. Lefler, maybe some day I could save the life of someone else’s grandfather/ grandmother,” says Colligan, who practices with Midwest Health Partners, P.C., in Norfolk, NE. “But I also consider [mentoring] a win-win proposition. Promoting our profession from within helps to promote our profession amongst other medical professions as well.”

Want to influence and inspire a future member of your profession? Join DMU’s mentor program. You control your preferred contact method, and your information will be available only to DMU students on a secure website. Visit www.alumni.edu/alumni/mentor-program to learn more and register.

Seated in the photo are President-elect Robert Suter, D.O.’89, M.H.A.’89, and President Marcia Grassman Hammers, B.H.A.’88. Standing from left are Niru Pandeya, D.O.’69; Vice President Gage Caudill, D.P.M.’05; Bernard Lang, D.O.’61; Sanford Zelnick, D.O.’80; Bruce Scudday, D.P.M.’89; Pam Harrison Chambers, M.P.H.’01, PAC’ 92; and Tiffany Hauptman, D.P.M.’98. Not available for the photo was board member Susan Schooler, PA-C’92.

As a health care consultant with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Marcia Grassman Hammers, B.H.A.’88, works with professionals across the health care spectrum. That’s why it makes sense, she says, to unite graduate representatives of all three DMU colleges into one unified alumni board.

The mission of the DMU Alumni Association Board of Directors is to build lifelong, interprofessional relationships that support the financial stability and future of our University, its mission and strategic plan initiatives.

“Health care is an interdisciplinary endeavor. So why not bring together alumni of all our programs to support the mission of our alma mater?” she says. She’s leading that effort as president of the DMU Alumni Association Board of Directors, which was created last year. Since then, its 10 members – each of whom completed an application process through the University’s alumni office to be accepted – have defined the board’s mission and bylaws and have begun work on board goals. Its top goal is to support the University’s mission and strategic plan, set for implementation this summer. Hammers is the alumni representative on DMU’s strategic planning steering committee.

“Once the University plan is set, we can dovetail the alumni board’s goals with it and also collaborate efforts with the alumni council leaders and class representatives to further engage alumni and support DMU,” she says.

Alumni board members recently reviewed information about DMU’s colleges, programs, their distinctions and challenges. “The board members bring great passion and commitment to serving as strong ambassadors for the University and supporters of its mission,” says DMU Alumni Director Ronnette Vondrak. “Their contributions affirm for me the need for all of our alumni to understand today’s DMU and then get involved.”

The advocacy role alumni can play was evidenced during the recent reaccreditation site visit of the Higher Learning Commission, says DMU President Angela Walker Franklin, Ph.D.

“Alumni were part of our success in presenting a very comprehensive review of our strengths with an accompanying assessment of areas of opportunity,” she says. “The unified alumni board is a great accomplishment for us as we begin to live our mission as a united health sciences university community.”

Hammers, who met recently with the DMU Council of Student Body Presidents, adds, “It’s been fun getting to know other medical professionals through the alumni board members and our students. It’s exciting to have that range of perspectives engaged in collaboration and our collective success.”