Yes, she has a medical degree.
No, she doesn’t plan to practice medicine. Or at least in the conventional sense.
Christine Tholen continues to diagnose and treat diseases. Just not on people.
For instance, Tholen diagnosed the blossom-end rot on her Heirloom tomatoes as a result of too much calcium in the soil.
Planting radishes has helped combat the white mildew spots on her cucumbers.
Marigolds scattered around the garden help repel hungry bugs.
And a mix of pine needles around the base of her blueberry bushes creates a more acidic soil.
It’s the scientist in her that makes her a good gardener.
“I love how everything works together,” she says of her expansive garden at the dead end of east Buchanan Street.
Tholen, a 1991 graduate of Iola High School, is married to Dr. Chuck Wanker, a family practice physician at the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas.
In the first years of their marriage the couple tried balancing their work as physicians with the Air Force stationed in Misawa, Japan, while starting a family.
“It was just too hectic,” she said of their unreliable schedules.
In 2011, Chuck stopped practicing medicine to be a stay-at-home dad when the couple and their three children were stationed in the Azores, a group of nine islands clustered 800 miles off the coast of Portugal. There, Christine practiced full-time.
“But I wanted to be the one home with the kids. I wanted to manage the house and raise the kids,” she said.
The Tholens now have four children, Travis, 12, Madeleine, 10, Joshua, 8, and Lee, 5.
