story and photos by Bobby Anderson, Staff Writer

A few years back, Kim Peterson faced the classic mid-life crisis.
Bad marriage, bad health, altogether bad outlook on life.
So she truly had reached a crossroads.
Option one was to continue down the path she knew for what she already had.
Option two was make some radical changes and roll the dice and see what happens down the road.
Peterson quite literally sprinted down that road and hasn’t looked back, finishing the Boston Marathon earlier this year and securing a new lease on life.
“(Running) has improved my health, my mood and every part of my life,” Peterson said. “I have more patience, more tolerance. I feel better and when you feel better you interact with others better. You see the world more optimistically. I can turn any negative into a positive.”
That’s a plus for anyone but particular someone in her line of work.
Peterson is a licensed alcohol drug counselor with a mental health endorsement who has worked for AllianceHealth Midwest more than five years.
She’s the longest-tenured mental health counselor in the building.
Searching and hoping for change she began running.
She started with 5k runs for the first couple years.
Her sister, who worked for 7-11, called to ask if she wanted to run in the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.
The options were 5K, 10K and half marathon.
“Being a smart aleck I said ‘I’ll do the half marathon if you will,’” she said. “She signed us up so I had to start training.”
Peterson had no idea how to train for a distance of 13.1 kilometers, which translates to slightly more than eight miles.
She just ran it. And she’ll be the first to tell you she botched it.
“I hit the wall,” she said. “I didn’t get anything to eat or drink and that is an amazing experience. I think it might be worse than a heart attack. I finished and I remember laying on the asphalt … I was crying and I thought I was going to die.”
She had depleted pretty much every electrolyte in her body.
And she almost depleted her will to ever run again.
It took her a couple months for her mistake to really set in.
She thought maybe she could prepare differently.
So she decided to try another run.
“Then I got addicted to them,” said Peterson, who was an All-State runner at Western Heights growing up. “I started getting pretty decent then I ran a full marathon.”
Coalgate was the site of her first marathon.
The mud-covered course was laid out over a mustang ranch.
She’ll never forget the herds of wild mustangs that ran beside her. For nearly two hours she was as free as they were.
She’s been hooked on the adrenaline ever since.
Earlier this year she tackled the vaunted Boston Marathon.
The trip resulted in a personal record time.
“Probably one of the things that stood out to me was the amount of Olympians that were there … it was just amazing,” she said.
Running hasn’t been the only change she made.
She decided to enter a bikini contest.
“I just get craziness in my head,” Peterson laughed. “I want to practice what I preach to patients. I always tell them not to limit themselves. If you want to set your mind to do something do it. Every day things happen that I don’t believe. I never would have believed I could have run a half marathon.
“You couldn’t have told me I would put on a bikini and get on a stage and I got a fourth-place trophy.”
Now Peterson is a fit, fabulous and fetching woman in charge of her life who inspires others every single day.
She’s become the official health mascot among hospital employees. Everyone wants to know what she’s eating for lunch that day or what she’s going to do after work.
It’s no strange occurrence for Peterson to get up and run eight miles. She averages 30 miles a week. Her next goal is to run first place in her age-group at next April’s Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.
“Anybody in the hospital who wants to get on a health kick, whoever wants to do it I’m more than willing to help them,” said Peterson, who is also a certified equine therapist.
And Peterson is living proof that sometimes a crossroads in life can be the opportunity for something amazing.

Dear Savvy Senior,
What are the eligibility requirements to get Medicaid coverage for nursing home care?
Caregiving Daughter

Dear Caregiving,
The rules and requirements for Medicaid eligibility for nursing home care are complicated and will vary according to the state where your parent lives. With that said, here’s a general, simplified rundown of what it takes to qualify.
Medicaid Eligibility
Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that covers health care for the poor, is also the largest single payer of America’s nursing home bills for seniors who don’t have the resources to pay for their own care.
Most people who enter nursing homes don’t qualify for Medicaid at first, but pay for care either through long-term care insurance or out-of-pocket until they deplete their savings and become eligible for Medicaid.
To qualify for Medicaid, your parent’s income and assets will need to be under a certain level that’s determined by their state. Most states require that a person have no more than about $2,000 in countable assets that includes cash, savings, investments or other financial resources that can be turned into cash.
Assets that aren’t counted for eligibility include their home if it’s valued under $560,000 (this limit is higher – up to $840,000 – in some states), their personal possessions and household goods, one vehicle, prepaid funeral plans and a small amount of life insurance.
But be aware that while your parent’s home is not considered a countable asset to determine their eligibility, if he or she can’t return home, Medicaid can go after the proceeds of their house to help reimburse their nursing home costs, unless a spouse or other dependent relative lives there. (There are some other exceptions to this rule.)
After qualifying, all sources of your parent’s income such as Social Security and pension checks must be turned over to Medicaid to pay for their care, except for a small personal needs allowance – usually between $30 and $90.
You also need to be aware that your parent can’t give away their assets to qualify for Medicaid faster. Medicaid officials will look at their financial records going back five years to root out suspicious asset transfers. If they find one, their Medicaid coverage will be delayed a certain length of time, according to a formula that divides the transfer amount by the average monthly cost of nursing home care in their state.
So if, for example, your parent lives in a state where the average monthly nursing home cost is $5,000 and they gave away cash or other assets worth $50,000, they would be ineligible for benefits for 10 months ($50,000 divided by $5,000 = 10).
Spousal Protection
Medicaid also has special rules for married couples when one spouse enters a nursing home and the other spouse remains at home. In these cases, the healthy spouse can keep one half of the couple’s assets up to $120,900 (this amount varies by state), the family home, all the furniture and household goods and one automobile. The healthy spouse is also entitled to keep a portion of the couple’s monthly income – between $2,030 and $3,022. Any income above that goes toward the cost of the nursing home recipient’s care.
What about Medicare?
Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors 65 and older, and some younger people with disabilities, does not pay for long-term care. It only helps pay up to 100 days of rehabilitative nursing home care, which must occur after a hospital stay.
Find Help
For more detailed information, contact your state Medicaid office (see Medicaid.gov for contact information). You can also get help from your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (see ShiptaCenter.org), which provides free counseling on all Medicare and Medicaid issues.
Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.

The Grand Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star presented the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation with a check totaling $10,175 at its annual conference on Sunday.
The donation will fund OMRF research on cancer and other diseases, such as lupus, heart disease and multiple sclerosis. With this donation, the Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star has now donated a total of $331,058 to OMRF research since 2002, when it selected OMRF as its charitable beneficiary.
The donation was presented at the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in Guthrie.
Eastern Star members support OMRF through individual donations made at chapter meetings statewide, including marches and various donations made in memory of loved ones. Overall, 47 additional chapters have also made individual gifts to the foundation.
OMRF Vice President of Development Penny Voss described the Oklahoma Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star as the definition of philanthropy.
“The long-time support from the members of the Oklahoma Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star has a huge impact on OMRF,” she said. “Each year their gifts go directly to our scientists to help in their quest for new treatments and cures for diseases that affect all of us. We are truly grateful to every member for their belief in our mission to help people live longer and healthier lives.”
The Order of the Eastern Star is the largest fraternal organization in the world to which both men and women may belong. It counts approximately one million members across the globe and is dedicated to furthering charity, education, fraternity and science.
It has approximately 8,000 members and more than 90 chapters in Oklahoma, including groups in Bartlesville, Blanchard, Broken Arrow, Clinton, Enid, Guthrie, Hennessey, Lawton, McAlester, Muskogee and Woodward.

by Traci Chapman, staff writer
It takes great strength to deal with the finality that is hospice – to provide treatment not likely to provide recovery, to see the pain and suffering of patients and their family. It’s also rewarding work, a chance to help make that patient’s final journey one of peace, warmth and comfort.
“Hospice care can be difficult, of course, it takes something special to do this,” Russell Murray Hospice Clinical Supervisor Missy Ellard said. “I believe hospice work is a calling.”
That calling is something Ellard knows well. While she has worked in other nursing specialties, the Yukon RN has always come back, both to the type of work she loves and the company she said epitomizes the best of care and value that hospice brings to its patients and the people who love them.
Ellard did not start out as a nurse. For 10 years, she worked at the old Western Electric, later AT&T, facility. But, times changed for the industry and despite a strong and active labor union, she and many others were laid off.
“I always wanted to go into nursing,” Ellard said. “I’ve always seen getting laid off as a God thing, just what was meant to be.”
That outlook meant what many people would see as a step backward Ellard saw as an opportunity – and she jumped at it. It was in her early 30s that Ellard attended Redlands Community College and Southern Nazarene University, obtaining Associates of Applied Science and Bachelor of Science Nursing degrees.
In 1994, with school behind her, Ellard was ready to follow her new path and find her first nursing job. She learned about Russell Murray Hospice, then an El Reno hospice provider, and found a home – in the process becoming the first nurse RMH hired straight out of school.
“I worked as a staff nurse, as a case manager, I loved the work and the people I worked with, but after a time I wanted to try something new – I just really wanted to get other experience, so I branched out,” Ellard said.
That decision led her to a variety of experiences – working in home health and in a doctor’s office. She worked as a nurse for Canadian County Department of Human Services, making home visits to conduct patient assessments and evaluations, determining their qualification for Medicaid programs, including hospice referrals.
Ellard also used her skills for Oklahoma DHS Developmental Disabilities Services, responsible for health assessments at four Oklahoma City metropolitan area group homes. There, she recommended therapy, dietary consultations, wound care and other necessary services – but, as much as she enjoyed the work, something was missing, she said.

“I missed hospice care, I love hospice care,” Ellard said. “I had family members who were being served by Russell Murray, and I realized just how much I missed working here.”
So, she was back – Ellard said she realized she was home, exactly where she belonged. She was named clinical supervisor in Russell Murray’s now home office – while El Reno remained its base, the not for profit now had offices in Kingfisher, Weatherford and Oklahoma City.
Patients are not always what one might imagine someone needing hospice care might look like, Ellard said. The five nurses she directly supervises also provide physical assessments to at-risk children, like those taken to Canadian County Youth and Family Shelter – children who have had their lives completely disrupted, with parents or guardians who could be incarcerated or are facing severe addiction or other problems.
For those patients who are facing an imminent end to their life, Ellard and her nurses are committed to using every resource at their disposal to make any time that individual may have left the best it can be – and that is something different for each patient, she said.
“The thing about hospice care, about palliative care, is it’s truly holistic, something that provides not only relief from physical conditions, but encompasses everything to improve the quality of life for the patient,” Ellard said. “It’s the one area of nursing you can truly practice holistic care.” That might mean incorporating spiritual guidance or comfort, or it might involve finding a way to bridge an estranged family relationship; it could be making it possible for the patient to do something they’ve always dreamt of or simply ensuring they’re comfortable as they live their final days.
“Some of our patients want to fight their disease every single minute, as long as they possibly can, and we help and encouragement them with that,” Ellard said. “Others just want to be comfortable, to spend their time with their families or their friends, and we follow their lead on that, as well.”
No matter a RMH patient’s beliefs, needs or approach to their condition, they do have one thing in common – they are never turned away due to financial considerations, Ellard said.
“If a patient qualifies and desires hospice care, we do not turn patients away based on their reimbursement status,” she said. “Many hospices, even not for profit hospices, have a ‘quota’ of non-reimbursable patients and will decline patients if they don’t have a payer source – RMH has never done that.”
That approach has helped spur the company’s growth, which includes not only Ellard and her five-member nursing staff in El Reno, but a total of 25 full-time RNs and LPNs, as well as several per diem PRN nurses, across RMH’s four offices. That staff serves about 100 patients throughout the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and an approximately 75-mile radius surrounding each of its offices at any given time.
“Everybody deserves to die with dignity – to me, if we can bring peace, if we can bring comfort, we help them to do that,” Ellard said. “It’s that mission, it’s that ability to be a part of that – well, that’s the reason this was my first job, and I want it to be my last.”

On Tuesday, November 7, 2017, Oklahoma City’s Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble will present its second concert of the 2017-18 season, “Masterworks for Three,” featuring chamber works by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century composers, all of whom wrote extensively in the genre. The Ensemble will present trios by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms. The Mendelssohn trio is one of his most popular chamber works and is recognized as one of his greatest. The sweetly-melancholic Brahms trio commemorates the death of his mother earlier that year and was the last chamber work he would write for the next eight years. All three compositions on the program of this Jeannette Sias Memorial Concert are masterworks by three of classical music’s greatest masters. The works on the program are: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Trio in G Major, K. 564 (for violin, cello and piano) Felix Mendelssohn, Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, op. 49 (for violin cello and piano) Johannes Brahms, Horn Trio in E-flat Major, op. 40 (for horn, violin and piano).
Brightmusic musicians performing are: Gregory Lee (violin), Meredith Blecha-Wells (cello), Kate Pritchett (horn) and Amy I-Lin Cheng (piano)
The performance will take place at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, November 7 at St. Paul’s Cathedral, 127 NW 7th Street (at Robinson). Individual concert admission is $20 per ticket. Children, students and active-duty military personnel are admitted free with ID. More information about this concert is available on Brightmusic’s website at http://www.brightmusic.org.

INTEGRIS broke ground on the health care system’s first micro-hospital. The ceremony was take November 1st at 10 a.m. at 3391 S. I-35 Service Road in Moore. While the event was held at one location, it signified and celebrated all four of the micro-hospitals INTEGRIS plans to build in Central Oklahoma.
Last October, INTEGRIS officials announced they would be working with Emerus to open small-scale, fully licensed inpatient hospital facilities in different quadrants of Oklahoma City, to bring high-quality care closer to home. “We want to provide local neighborhoods with more choice and convenience when it comes to health care,” said INTEGRIS President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Lawrence. “Our micro-hospitals will offer 90 percent of the medical services many patients and families will ever need.”
Emerus is the nation’s first and largest operator of such hospitals and is a nationally recognized, innovative leader in the delivery of emergency, inpatient, and diagnostic health care. Each joint venture facility will be open 24-hours a day, seven days a week and will be equipped to respond to almost any medical issue a patient may present with; including those that may be life threatening or require complex, critical care.
“The benefit of these facilities is two-fold,” stated Emerus Chief Executive Officer Craig Goguen. “While they help relieve emergency rooms at large comprehensive hospitals by treating the non-emergent needs that can overcrowd such institutions; they are also quickly accessible to stabilize and in many cases even treat truly emergent patients in their own neighborhood when time is of the essence. We’ve seen it in every community we’re a part of, these hospitals make a huge difference in people’s lives.”
Emerus operates similar facilities across the country in places like Dallas, Denver and Houston. The INTEGRIS micro-hospital in Moore will total about 50,000 square feet and will include an emergency department, inpatient unit, laboratory, and imaging services as well as medical offices for physicians and other health care providers.
The new facility will offer expanded health care to the community with compassion, efficiency and excellence, while maintaining the highest standards for quality, safety and service.
All four INTEGRIS micro-hospitals will house between eight and 10 inpatient beds for observation and short-stay use, and include a similar number of emergency treatment and triage rooms, along with primary and specialty care physicians, diagnostic and other outpatient clinic services.
The three other planned locations are in Northwest Oklahoma City, Far West Oklahoma City and Del City. The Moore facility is scheduled to open in early 2019 and the remaining locations should be up and running by the end of that year. Additional INTEGRIS micro-hospitals could be on the horizon in the future.

Growing up in the Holland province Fryslan, Anita Van der Laan never imagined she would one day have an 8,000 head dairy in Oklahoma.
Van der Laan’s love for dairy began at a very young age on her family’s 90-head Holstein dairy back in Holland. She is a 5th generation dairy farmer, with farmers on both sides of her family.
A defining moment in Van der Laan’s life occurred when she was graduating high school. Because she was a woman, the family dairy went to her brother, and her father told her it was time for her to find somewhere else to work.
“It really hurt,” Van der Laan recalled. “It still hurts 30 years later. But it made me want to encourage other women to go into the dairy industry.”
Van der Laan made the decision to move to the United States and start dairying here. Her life took another twist when she attended a Thanksgiving dinner in Texas with neighboring dairy farmers. A young man named Pieter Van der Laan had a birthday on Black Friday, so the friends decided to decorate his house for his birthday while he was out milking.
Little did Van der Laan know, Pieter grew up about 30 miles down the road from her in Holland, also on a dairy farm, though the two had never met before coming to Texas.
“I met him that day and the rest is history,” said Van der Laan. “We’ve been married 27 years, 7 months and 8 weeks. I’m still counting the days because we are still in love. Can’t help it.”
After the two were married on January 26, 1990, they combined their small herds, got a loan from the bank and started their dairy with 40 cows. Both kept their other jobs to pay off the loans so they could buy more cows. Their herd slowly and steadily began to grow. Today, they have grown to 8,000 head of dairy cattle.
“We never imagined in our wildest dreams we would milk this many cows,” laughs Van der Laan. “Our kids call us cow hoarders.”
They have two dairies in Frederick, Okla., Van der Laan Dairy, milking 2,900 cows and Sunshine Dairy LLC, milking 1,500 cows. Van der Laan is proud to say they are 100 percent owned by her and Pieter. Sunshine Dairy LLC sells their milk to Lonestar Milk Producers, and Van der Laan Dairy sells their milk to Select, which sells milk to Hiland Dairy, a popular brand seen in grocery stores across Oklahoma and surrounding states.
But no success story is without its trials. Sometimes many.
One morning when Van der Laan was out feeding calves, one particular Brown Swiss calf named Gemma butted during feeding, causing the bottle to painfully bump Van der Laan in the chest.
A very tender lump appeared within days, and after several weeks of no improvement, she finally went to see a doctor. Her fears were confirmed when the doctor diagnosed her with breast cancer.
Van der Laan says if it had not been for Gemma, the cancer would not have been found.
“I had never even held a bottle that way,” Van der Laan said, “It was just meant to be.
“I really believe that God doesn’t send angels in the way that we think of them,” Van der Laan said, “He sends them in the way we need them. I really believe she was my angel.”
Though Gemma sadly passed away during Van der Laan’s chemotherapy treatments, Gemma’s bloodline lives on at the dairy. She has three siblings on the farm—Gloria, which means glory to God, Gertrud, which means glory to God in Dutch, and Grietje, which means pearl of God in Dutch.
“Her mama is still around too,” Said Van der Laan. “Every time I talk to her I tell her she’s the mama of an angel.”
Van der Laan will forever hold a special place for Gemma in her heart.
“She saved my life,” Van der Laan said. “In all the dairy farming, you would never imagine God would send you an angel like that—but He did.” Difficult times did not stop with Van der Laan’s fight with Breast Cancer. 2011 proved to be a very challenging year, bringing severe weather such as extreme heat, drought, and tornadoes.
In June 2011, their dairy was hit by a small tornado. The contractor had just completed the remodeling and repair work in October when an EF-4 tornado devastated their dairy on November 7, 2011. They lost over half of their baby calves, 450, and many more cattle were injured.
“People we didn’t even know came to help,” Van der Laan recalled. “They took our injured calves that I couldn’t care for and took care of them, we got them all back in December.”
A farm they frequently did business with came with a large trailer and took the remaining healthy cattle back to their farm to allow the Van der Laans to rebuild and recover.
“We still to this day have cows that limp or have scars,” Van der Laan said. “They are our tornado victims, but they are still here.”
Van der Laan says despite the hard times, Oklahoma has been good to them, and she can’t imagine dairying anywhere else, especially because of the way their neighbors came to their aide in the time of need.
“Oklahoma is home to us now,” Van der Laan said.
Today dairies across the country are selling out and going out of business, so one can’t help but wonder what makes the Van der Laans continue to dairy. It is certainly not an easy life. Dairying is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year— it never stops. But Van der Laan simply laughs and says she understands it is not for everyone.
“I love the industry, I love the people, I love promoting our wonderful product,” she said. “That’s just what I love to do. It doesn’t matter where you are—in the grocery store, talking to a stranger, we have to promote our product. When someone finds out I’m a dairy farmer and they tell me they drink the other types of milk, I love to tell them why they have to drink the real McCoy.”
The Van der Laans have three children, Eric, Wilma and Liza, who have all come back to work and help with the family dairy.
Most recently, Wilma and her new husband have joined the family’s operation. Wilma’s husband is an engineer and now heavily involved in their 6,000 acre crop farming, and Wilma continues to help out with the dairy.
“I wanted to raise my daughters to know there is no difference between them and brother—they can dairy too,” Van der Laan said, “Especially because of what happened to me. I’m so proud of her [Wilma] for saying she wanted to go back to the family farm and dairy.”
Van der Laan says working with their three children is very special, and describes it as a beautiful life.
“I don’t know what I would do without it,” she said. “I have 25 heifers in the back yard right now, just because I can. I have plenty on the dairy, but I love to bring some home. These are my pets.”