Karen Hoyt, of Tulsa, Okla., lives her life in honor of the stranger who gifted her a second chance at life. Now, an active community volunteer, she encourages those in need of that same gift.
Karen lives every day with a grateful spirit and the heart to be an encouragement and motivation to others. She had always lived a healthy life despite being born with only one kidney. She was active in her community as a volunteer, teacher and Sunday school teacher at her church. In 2010, she learned that her liver was failing, and she was later diagnosed with the Hepatitis C virus.
She was sent home thinking her days were numbered. Despite this news, she clung to her faith and began eating even healthier than she had before the diagnosis. Luckily, antiviral medication came out and she was cured of Hepatitis C by 2011 but end stage liver failure still loomed over her.
Karen went back to her career as a teacher and continued to live as healthy as possible. During one of her screenings, the doctor determined that her damaged liver was not removing toxins from her blood, which diminished her mental capabilities. She also became limited on what she could do as she frequently had muscle fatigue, liver pain and joint pain.
After learning to manage her pain, Karen’s luck began to worsen. When she was at one of her regular check-ups, the doctors found a cancerous tumor on her liver. Her doctors recommended a liver transplant, and in the midst of the listing process, she began to make end-of-life plans with her daughter. To cheer their spirits, they began to look online at stories of hope from others who had received a transplant. Karen was encouraged, and continued to eat healthy and walk when she could.
When Karen was fully listed on the transplant waiting list, she was humbled to think that at someone’s greatest crisis in life they would make a decision which would eventually grant her many more years to live. She was so humbled that she called her transplant coordinator and almost asked them to remove her from the list.
As she waited for a second chance at life, Karen underwent many procedures to shrink the tumor on her liver so that she could remain on the transplant waiting list. Twice, Karen was called in hopes that she would receive her liver, but neither were a good fit.
However, on April 13, 2015, Karen received her liver from a selfless donor and learned that her donor was the same age as many of the students she was teaching in school. Karen had the privilege of advising one more English class full of seniors after her transplant.
Karen continues her work with senior high school students. To this day, Karen volunteers at the school she taught at for many years and at the hospital with people who have just received a transplant.
Karen is a motivation and encouragement to many. She encourages others waiting to receive their life saving transplant, and she spends her time teaching nutrition classes. The classes help those struggling with kidney or liver disease learn to eat better in order to live a healthier life.
Driven to honor her donor, Karen participated in the 2016 Transplant Games of America. She began entering 5K runs to raise awareness for organ donation. She also is more adventurous and does things she wouldn’t have tried before to honor him and his life.
Karen has had the opportunity and privilege to be involved in her grandkids lives and is thankful for the chance to be a sister, mother and wife.
While Karen has never had the opportunity to meet her hero’s family, she truly lives her life in honor of the young man who saved her life.
About LifeShare
LifeShare is a nonprofit, federally designated organ procurement organization (OPO) dedicated to the recovery of organs and tissue for transplant purposes. We work closely with five transplant centers and 145 healthcare organizations in the state of Oklahoma to facilitate donation. Additionally, we strive to raise awareness for organ, eye and tissue donation and transplantation through public education.
For more information about LifeShare, please visit:
www.LifeShareOK.org.

by Bobby Anderson
Staff Writer

It’s the gamut of reactions that Jerry Deming, TTS-CTS, receives when she counsels patients in the Norman Regional Health System about their tobacco use.
In her tobacco cessation role she’s been screamed at. She’s been stared at, through and around.
She’s been shunned and she’s even been hugged.
But this year she’s been able to help Norman Regional’s nurses develop a new Smoke-Free Families campaign that is gaining traction.
Deming began working with the Women’s and Children’s unit after Norman Regional nurses and managers sought help.
“There was an understanding that there were a lot of women leaving the hospital to smoke,” Deming said. “This is a very common problem. I’m in contact with people worldwide and we all deal with this problem in our hospital and clinic settings.
“We all scratch our heads and think ‘what are we going to do to handle this.’ It’s a big problem. It comes up again and again.”
Staff understood that once a mother and her baby went home then it would be easier for the patient not only to smoke, but smoke around the child.
Deming brought forward the idea that it’s a population issue and not one of monitoring.
“We needed to drill down a little bit deeper and figure out how we can help these people get through a hospital visit staying away from tobacco use and even contemplating the idea of … even quitting to have a smoke-free family.”
When leaders got together to decide a plan of action they realized they were entering uncharted landscape. Nowhere could they find a comprehensive plan dealing with the in-hospital maternity population.
Hospital stays are often so short that no one had really figured a good way to approach the issue.
Planning meetings included physicians and nurses. A craving scale – much like a pain scale – was developed.
Nurse Manager Alyson Heeke, RN, saw an opportunity.
“Part of the reason we started this in the first place is we noticed there was an awful lot of times our babies were traveling back and forth to the nursery so their parents could go outside and smoke,” Heeke said. “That became a big concern for us just in the fact they were only with us 24 to 48 hours and a good portion of the time these folks who were really addicted the babies were in the nursery sometime 20 out of 24 hours.
“We couldn’t provide what we needed for our patients if they were always outside.”
Nursing became involved in the LEAN (Lean Education Academic Network) team project helping develop educational material including posters for the room and signage for outside.
“The nurses really did want it to be a successful process for the patient as much as possible and not to be the police officer,” Heeke said. “They wanted to help them understand this also impacts how well they bond with their baby, how they do with their breastfeeding issues and all those other things which are complicated by smoking.”
Director of Patient Care Services, Susie Graves, RN, said many women who are able to quit smoking for their pregnancy often will allow themselves to resume after they deliver.
“Part of what we wanted to do was help them through. Don’t have a start date. Let that continue,” Graves said. “They all know they shouldn’t smoke … but we’re just there not as judges but as support and giving them the resources they need.”
If the patient agrees, nurses are assessing each patient every shift regarding their tobacco usage and craving level.
“(Before) nurses felt pretty helpless,” Heeke said. “Their patients would come from a C-section and be begging for a wheelchair the second the baby was born to go outside and have a cigarette.
“At this stage, with all the things we’ve created it’s given our nurses an opportunity to have something to say to the patient beyond ‘don’t you think it would be a good idea to quit.’”
Deming travels through the halls of both Norman Regional hospital complexes visiting with patients who have indicated a history of tobacco use.
For nine years now she has worked with smokers. Some are just thinking about quitting. Others are desperately looking for a way out.
And some won’t even acknowledge she’s standing in front of them.
She terms her approach as “motivational interviewing.” She stresses to her patients that she’s not there to judge.
Nearly every person Deming visits understands that they need to quit tobacco. Many have tried multiple times on their own without success.
“When we look at this population it’s the most difficult population to approach,” Deming said. “Most people smoking during their pregnancy feel ashamed of it. They don’t like to talk about it. Of course, they are very addicted to tobacco at this point because they haven’t stopped smoking. Most people know there’s going to be a health issue related to that.”
And now Norman Regional nurses have even more to offer to help these patients quit.

Photography and Text by Terry “Travels with Terry” Zinn  t4z@aol.com

Some Florida resorts are located amid a massive amount of traffic and tourist activity. The Marriott Pompano Beach Resort and Spa is somewhat off the beaten track, and is boon for motorists, with their own transportation.
While a stroll within a mile of the property can be charming, there are not many cafes, restaurants or shops within the immediate area. If your desire is to get away from it all, and just ensconce yourself in a comfortable setting with pristine and maintained beaches, 2 pools, 2 towers of accommodations and delicious eating experiences, Marriott Pompano Beach Resort and Spa may be your ideal.
When you consider a visit to Florida at any time of year, it is important to keep in mind the annual hurricane season from mid-summer through September. Of course these days, predictable weather patterns of past years seem to be unpredictable. It’s a boon to Pompano that they are far North of Miami Beach with its recent health headlines. It also is North of Fort Lauderdale, and a comfortable distance from its neighbor Lauderdale-By-the-Sea, which is a more active community with its many eateries and entertainment options. Again motorists will find it near enough to quench a typical Florida tourist’s appetite.
Near Pompano is the Hillsboro Lighthouse, privately owned and only open for tours at certain times, being a coast guard operated property. Upcoming tour dates for 2016 are: September 10, October 8, November 6, and December 3.
Happily, sequestered in your ninth floor ocean front room with balcony, you might find the sporadic afternoon thunderstorm a real 3-D entertainment, more impactful than the best free action disaster movie, shown on your large in room TV screen. Be sure and inquire about a corner suite room, for added luxury. As with many upscale hotels, housekeeping may be sporadic, even when alerting them to your out of room schedule.
Check in time is listed at 4 pm, but as someone I know had to do, you might have to wait until 6 pm, which will give you time to explore the property, Atlantic Ocean beach, Spa, and exercise room or grab a bite to eat.
McCoy’s restaurant both comfortably inside or out by the active pools, offers a variety of delectable meal options and beverages with congenial wait staff. If you’re a fan of specially cocktails, with the proper and courtesy instruction, they follow through with your requests most satisfactorily.
Florida still offers what many sun worshipers require and the family welcoming Marriott’s Pompano Beach Resort, might be your new favorite Florida oasis for you and your extended family.

For more information and reservations: www.marriott.com/fllpm

Mr. Terry Zinn – Travel Editor
Past President: International Food Wine and Travel Writers Association
http://realtraveladventures.com/author/zinn/
http://www.examiner.com/travel-in-oklahoma-city/terry-zinn
www.new.okveterannews.com – www.martinitravels.com

What is your favorite thing about living at Grand Tapestry at Quail Springs?

“I love the pool.  I also like relaxing on the patio with my friends.  It is beautiful here.” Sue Cooper
Resident

“The people here are fabulous!  Everyone goes out of their way to make things great.” Patti Vienup
Resident

“My favorite part is the friendship. There are two women that I do everything with. We call ourselves, The Three Musketeers.” Mary Hendrickson
Resident

“The people here are wonderful.  I love the many activities and I feel like I am living in a 5-star hotel.” Gwyn Walters
Resident

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has awarded Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientist Xiao-Hong Sun, Ph.D., a five-year, $2.76 million grant to investigate a recently discovered immune cell involved in asthma.
The role of the new cell, called an innate lymphoid cell, is to protect the body from parasitic infection. However, when too much of this cell type is present, it seems to result in asthma.
“These cells were previously thought to be made only in bone marrow,” said Sun, who holds the Lew and Myra Ward Chair in Biomedical Research at OMRF. “We discovered that they are also made in the thymus, which brings up some interesting connections to asthma.”
The thymus, which sits on top of the heart, is a major site for the creation of T cells, a type of specialized white blood cell that plays a central role in immunity. During childhood and through puberty, the thymus generates a lifetime supply of T cells—enough to carry through adulthood. When the supply of T cells is adequate, the thymus has done its job and begins to shrink.
Sun postulates that innate lymphoid cells are also present in the thymus and might explain why children have higher rates of asthma than adults.
“Since kids have a very active thymus when they’re born and up to puberty, they’re more likely to have a large number of innate lymphoid cells coming from the thymus along with the T cells,” said Sun. “This is also the stage of life where many kids tend to develop asthma. People often say they ‘grow out” of asthma as they get older, so maybe it’s linked to this later decrease in thymus function. That’s what we hope to find out with this grant.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 7.7 percent of people in the United States suffer from asthma. The highest rates of asthma occur in the 5-14 age group at 10.3 percent and decline over time, reaching a low point of 6.9 percent in Americans over the age of 65.
“We don’t yet know the significance of this finding, but if we determine this hypothesis to be true, it would have great clinical relevance,” she said. “Perhaps the thymus is where we need to look for ways to control asthma in children. That’s what we hope to learn.”
The grant will also allow Sun and her lab to further investigate whether the innate lymphoid cells produced in the thymus differ from the ones made in the bone marrow.
Sun said their discovery of innate lymphoid cells in the thymus came about by accident through study of a particular mouse model in their lab—a model they’ve used for more than two decades to study T cell development.
“This research builds on our experience and what we have been working on the past 25 years, so it puts us in a unique position to do this work,” she said. “I am very excited to see how this cell is controlled and hope we can learn what happens in the thymus and how it might be linked to asthma. It really fits really well with the overall research of this lab and comes back to what started this lab in the first place.”