Beauty from Brokeness Dr. Adam van Wart’s Journey Through Cancer
W
ith a calm presence and a warm, humorous demeanor, Dr. Adam van Wart is a popular member of the faculty at AMU. Though his tenure at the University has been brief—this fall marks the beginning of his third
a v e m a r i a m a g a z i n e | f a l l 2019
year—it has been anything but uneventful.
20
Van Wart came to AMU in 2017 with his family—wife Megan, of nearly 20 years; son Kale now 14; daughter Macey, 10; and son Anson, 6—after obtaining his PhD at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. For him, landing the job at AMU was fantastic, because getting a job in academia is “almost impossible.” He said: “To get [a job] where you can teach the faith without fear and even in your own specialty with graduate students, that’s winning the lottery.” The beginning of his first academic year at AMU was interrupted by the landfall of Hurricane Irma. The two-week storm struck on August 30, only two days after classes started at the University. After weathering Hurricane Irma in the fall, it seemed as though the rest of the year would be simple and easy by comparison. But the real storm was only
on the horizon for Van Wart and his family. In late February, Adam went on a 16-mile canoe trip with the Boy Scouts. Following the trip, he started feeling some back pain, which he simply attributed to “getting older”, and so at first he figured it would go away. Instead of abating, the pain only grew, and he became concerned. Eventually, when the pain became “excruciating” he sought medical attention and was referred for a CT scan. In the meantime, he was still teaching his full load every day and by late April, he was taking a lot of painkillers to cope. The CT scan was scheduled for mid-May, just before the University let out for the summer. Because of the timing of his appointment, he had to drink the contrast chemicals for the scan during a lecture, which he describes as
