In September 2022, Wade Moricle, a marketing and communications specialist for the Office of Information Technology at Emory University, rolled a sticker ball into Avondale Estate’s City Hall to formally weigh the creation before submitting it to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The scale read 624.6 pounds, more than 300 pounds heavier than the 2020 record holder.

Started four years earlier, the ball helped carry the Moricle family through tumultuous times, including a global pandemic coupled with stage 3 colon cancer and subsequent treatments.

It all started when Moricle’s daughter Sofie (who was 10 at the time but is now in ninth grade) approached her parents after attending a school book fair.

“When your daughter first engages in something like this, it’s just a fun and silly thing that a kid is doing,” Moricle says. “You don’t expect her to have the wherewithal to complete it. Even when it weighed 50 pounds I figured it would stop at any moment.”

Then March 2020 rolled around and Moricle, like many others, was suddenly sequestered in his house. The project gained momentum.

“You’re in the pandemic and looking for things to do together within your home. It was valuable in that it let us spend time sitting and talking, something that’s lost in this age of constant information,” he says.

In January 2021, as the pandemic continued, Moricle was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.  “During that time, it was therapeutic, an opportunity for me to do something that I could accomplish,” he says. “When you’re used to being someone who can put things on the top shelf and work in the yard and enjoy your job, then your strength is taken away and your brain is working more slowly, it can be difficult to keep a good attitude to recover.”

To keep track of the stickers, each paper backing was thrown into a large bowl and counted at the end of the week. That bowl gave Moricle concrete evidence of his daily accomplishments, helping keep his spirits high.

“I was experiencing my first depression when I was going through the pandemic and cancer, and the ball definitely helped scare away the demons in the back recesses of my brain.”

Moricle also tracked the ball’s weight as it grew. By his calculations, they broke the world record on Dec. 15, 2021.

“What I told myself at this point was we’d just add about 50 more pounds of stickers and let Guinness know, then we’d be done,” he recalls.

But on Dec. 23, Moricle was told his tumor had returned and he needed major resection surgery in January 2022. He couldn’t move the ball to weigh it during the subsequent recovery period — but he could add more stickers to it.

“It’s funny, you know about Winship Cancer Institute from working here at Emory, but you never think cancer is going to come to you,” Moricle says. “You get that first colonoscopy and it’s a party, there’s music and the providers are telling all these jokes. Then they find out you have cancer and it’s not a party anymore.”

Moricle has nothing but praise for the health care providers on the Winship staff, which he described as a well-oiled machine that also never felt impersonal. “Every nurse made me feel like I was in the arms of a system that was going to take care of me,” he says.

While many people who receive a cancer diagnosis will seek out multiple doctors for several opinions, that process is baked into Winship’s approach.

“Winship providers have a weekly collaboration meeting among oncologists and they talk about each case,” Moricle says. “Then, the board talks about the treatment approach and determines if they’re all in agreement or if there are other options available. You’re getting the benefit of multiple opinions, every time, and it helps garner additional trust with your providers.”

Moricle was also able to tap into the Emory Proton Therapy Center, which uses lasers to pinpoint radiation on a specific tumor spot. This therapy requires an application and Moricle chose to participate in a multi-institutional registry study. The registry study allows providers to maintain periodic, long-term contact after treatment ends to better understand the benefits of proton therapy, develop additional evidence supporting proton therapy in various conditions and inform better decisions about types of future treatments.

Moricle possesses a rare skill set: While he has a computer science degree and has worked in IT for years, he’s also a natural-born storyteller and writer. “I have the ability to translate nerd speak into people speak, and I love doing that for Emory — telling the story of IT and marketing our services to faculty and staff,” he says.

That combination emboldened him to be upfront about his diagnosis with coworkers, family, friends and neighbors.

After diagnosis, treatment and surgery, Moricle advises Emory employees to tap into their benefits. “I’ve been a walking PSA for colonoscopies ever since this experience,” he laughs.

“Take advantage of the fact that we work for a world-changing university and a system that is so good and so forward-thinking with the way it handles its medical practices. When you’re relatively healthy you tend not to go to the doctor. Ultimately, if I had that mentality, I wouldn’t have been fine,” he says.

Thanks to the pandemic, Guinness currently isn’t sending representatives to adjudicate record attempts. In order to certify the sticker ball, Moricle had to fill out a 32-page application (including affidavits) and weigh it in a public space.

After taking his back door off its hinges to roll the ball through, Moricle transported it to City Hall, where he and Sofie added roughly 40 more pounds of stickers — including those carefully selected for the outermost layer — during the three days before the Avondale Estates City Commission meeting on Sept. 28, 2022.

It weighed in at 624.6 pounds with a count of 202,510 stickers and a circumference of more than 8 feet.

“It’s way too big to get back into my house, so it’s in my garage next to the lawnmower,” Moricle laughs.

Now, the proverbial ball is in Guinness’ court.

“If someone else breaks the record, we’re not going to do another push,” Moricle says.

He adds with a wink, “I must admit we still enjoy adding stickers now and then. The ball is probably closer to 650 pounds today.”

“It was something to get us through a dark time in our lives, which included a pandemic and stage 3 cancer. In the end, the family stuck together and we came through it on the other side. This is a symbol of all of that.”