Category: Health

Dear Editor: As the son of a pharmacist from Rice Lake, a 1963 graduate of the University of Wisconsin who started his medical career in the Medical School in Madison, and someone with almost 40 years’ experience in the field of drug abuse treatment and prevention and the last five years evaluating patients for medicinal cannabis, I want to compliment Rep. Gregg Underheim and the Wisconsin Assembly Health Committee for their recognition of the contemporary medicinal value of cannabis.

Should a person who is part of an organ donor network receive a transplant sooner than someone who urgently needs a transplant but is not part of a network?

David Undis, who heads an organization called LifeSharers, says that those who are willing to donate organs should also benefit if they need a transplant.

Dr. Hans Sollinger, who chairs the division of transplantation at the University of Wisconsin Department of Surgery, said that transplant centers such as University Hospital’s can only follow federal rules.

UW hospital celebrated a milestone Sunday – the 1,000th heart and lung transplant.

As part of the celebration, the heart and lung transplant program served as the game sponsor for the Michigan Stateââ?¬â??Wisconsin basketball game Sunday afternoon.

Cheryl DeMars, a 13-year employee of The Alliance, has been promoted to CEO of the employer-owned health care purchasing cooperative.

DeMars, who received bachelor’s and masters degrees from UW-Madison, is involved in a number of national and local health care initiatives, including The Leapfrog Group, Wisconsin Healthcare Purchasers for Quality, The United Way, The Breast Cancer Recovery Foundation, and Access Community Health Centers.

Their goals were lofty this year, admits Derek Johnson, general planner for the David Busta Basketball Tournament and Silent Auction. While they fell short of their $50,000 dream, raising $1,200 more than last year and topping $82,000 in three years is a reality the Busta organization can live with.

Plans include the completion and distribution of a DVD highlighting the basketball tournament and explaining the work of the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin on spinal cord research.

The Green Bay Packers and American Family Insurance donated over $1 million Sunday to 12 Wisconsin breast cancer research and treatment organizations, including three in Madison.

On Thursday, Gabby Mahan will undergo surgery at UW Hospital to receive “brain pacemakers” that could greatly reduce her symptoms from dystonia, doctors say.

As Terri Bohn-Brennum sits in a clinic chair, Dr. Seth Dailey waves a long, black wand before her face, an ice-blue light shining from its tip.
It looks like Dailey is channeling Darth Vader. But he’s actually sparing Bohn- Brennum from a trip to the operating room. The UW Hospital laryngologist is using a pulsed dye laser to remove a polyp from her vocal cords.

The Lesbian Health Task Force will offer “Delicious Lesbian Kisses” to gay women over 40 on New Year’s Eve to inspire them to stop smoking. The kissing booth at the Outreach Pink Party will offer cut-rate kisses to non-smokers and to smokers who turn in a pack of cigarettes.

The advertising campaign, which will be kicked off that night, is in partnership with the UW Center for Women’s Health Research.

Quoted: Dr. Hans Sollinger, the chairman of transplantation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW-Madison researchers are asking what a prestigious report claimed to have answered last summer: Does echinacea curb the common cold?

Fifteen-year-old Kristof Didrickson remembers some of “the bad stuff, the needles,” from being treated for cancer a decade ago.

Madelyn Waloway, 8, doesn’t remember a thing about being diagnosed with cancer – she was 2 months old.

MADISON, Wis. The nurses in the University of Wisconsin Nursing Department are doing their part to spread Christmas cheer for the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

U.W. Hospital offers a unique and festive way to honor and remember loved ones.

Sunday was the Friends of U.W. Hospitals and Clinics Love Lights event. People were able to buy lights for a tree display, white for a loved one you want to remember and red for someone you want to honor.

A turkey hunter falls off a cliff.
A bus full of retirees is hit head-on by a van.

A teenager injures himself making a homemade cannon.

And people suffer heart attacks, strokes and are involved in car crashes by the thousands.

After 20 years of transporting these and other patients, the doctors, nurses, dispatchers and pilots of the UW Med Flight program can safely say they never know what a day on the job will bring.

Starting today, University of Wisconsin-Madison employees will have to vouch for the accuracy of their leaves of absence and could face discipline for misrepresentation.

Chancellor John Wiley informed employees and academic staff in a memo Wednesday that monthly leave statements will now include the following message above the employee’s signature:

“I certify that the leave time I have reported is accurate. I understand that misrepresentation can lead to disciplinary action.”

It was a special day, with a very special gift being delivered at the UW Children’s Hospital.

Santa was on hand Tuesday afternoon to help light the Christmas tree at the Children’s Hospital. And representatives from Kohl’s were on hand to hand over a check for nearly $165,000.

BellBrook Labs of Madison has received a $250,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a tissue model for studying breast cancer drugs.
The lab model, designed to mimic the tumor process that occurs in the body, could enable better drug testing, the company said in a news release. It incorporates technology from the lab of Dr. David Beebe in the UW-Madison department of biomedical engineering.