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State 'cares' for cancer victims
EDMOND — Felicitas Poe felt a strange lump in her breast when laying in bed.
The 34-year-old is among the 182,800 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year, according to the American Cancer Society. More than 41,000 women will die from the disease this year, making breast cancer the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in American women.
State lawmakers enacted breast and cervical cancer legislation in 2004 by passing SB 1609. The bill expanded the composition of the Oklahoma Breast Cancer Prevention and Treatment Advisory Committee to identify populations at highest risk for breast or cervical cancer and to recommend actions to reduce the costs of this disease, said Cathy McKinney of Edmond, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.
“I think it’s saved my life,” said Felicitas Poe, a single mother of two young daughters in Edmond. “If it wasn’t for this program there’s no other way I would be able to afford the costs.”
Poe was without insurance as a self-employed architectural designer. Her breast cancer treatments, including chemotherapy and four surgeries, have totaled more than $250,000 in two years, she said. She was helped by Oklahoma Cares, a program of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.
The state appropriated the sum of $2.5 million to OHCA to provide breast and cervical cancer treatment services. It also created the Belle Maxine Hilliard Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Revolving Fund “to consist of all moneys received by OHCA from appropriations, gifts or donations and may be expended by OHCA for the above treatment for women eligible for Medicaid,” McKinney said.
Oklahoma Cares has served nearly 10,000 Oklahoma women since January 2005, said Jackie Keyser, case manager with the Oklahoma Health Care Authority. To make the program a success, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority is joined in partnership with the Oklahoma State Department of Health, the Cherokee Nation, the Kaw Nation and the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.
Oklahoma Cares also provides care management services and transportation to meet the needs of women to receive treatment.
Full SoonerCare benefits are provided to women during the duration of their cancer treatments. Eligibility requirements include being diagnosed with a need for cancer treatment, being between ages 19 and 65, and being without insurance coverage for breast or cervical cancer, Keyser said.
Women need not be impoverished to meet the criteria of the program. A registered nurse, Keyser also manages Poe’s case with the breast and cervical cancer program.
She’s also grateful that being placed on the program is quick and convenient. “There’s definitely help out there. This program is a lifesaver,” Poe said.
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Report says girl teen drivers ‘more distracted’ than boys
Differences between the sexes are becoming less noticeable when it comes to teenage driving.
In what seems like a role reversal, girls are expressing a new need for speed, while aggressive driving and speeding by boys is down. -
4-year-old jealous of attention given to newborn
Q: Shortly after our second child was born a year ago, my 4-year-old son began asking me to stop what I’m doing — usually something with the baby — and see something he’s done or “watch” him do something. Over the past year, this seems to have become a compulsion. He makes these (usually trivial) requests of me at least once an hour. Is he insecure because of the attention I’m giving his younger sister? Is this his way of being reassured I still love him? In any case, I can’t keep this up. Help!
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A breakdown of the word break
Break, broke, broken, breaking. Those words are apt to paint a dreary picture, but not always; i.e., a break in the weather would be nice.
Other than that, we’ve got broken hearts, vows, treaties and bones; jail breaks; teen break-ups and the occasional zits breakout; 7-11 break-ins, and “But, Mom, you said I could!” when Junior misinterprets your “We’ll see” as a promise you’ve broken. -
3-12 Faith: religion news
Ministry name change reflects vision
Jimmy Hodges Ministries International, an Oklahoma based-missions ministry, has been reaching the people of Africa and India since 1986.
Supporting national missionaries is the pivotal difference between the way traditional missionary work is done and the way the ministry has approached the same work. -
Can a racist go to heaven?
I’m old enough to remember when theaters forced African-Americans to sit in the balconies, public transportation authorities required them to sit in the back of the busses or train cars, and restaurants served them only if they came to the back door. The motto of most businesses in the ’50s and ’60s in my neck of the woods could very well have been, “If you’re black, go to the back.”
The belief in white supremacy was seldom questioned in my home town. -
Group drives to fight abortion
LOS ANGELES — Last year Dave Wilkinson asked God for guidance. He wanted to know what he could do to better fight abortion.
Wilkinson, an evangelical pastor, runs three Ventura County, Calif., pregnancy clinics that encourage women to choose alternatives to the procedure. He believes the prevalence of abortion is the biggest test Christians face. “It’s probably one of the things that American Christians are going to have to stand before God and answer for,” Wilkinson said. “He will say, ‘You, as Americans, what did you do to fight abortion?’” -
Young dog saves toddler’s life in bitter cold
PIERCE CITY, Mo. — The first night that Kalina and Jeremy Fortin decided to wean their 2-year-old son of a habit of sleeping with them, the toddler proved way too footloose.
Sometime shortly thereafter on Sunday morning, Jan. 10, Brody apparently got up on his own and wandered out of the rural Pierce City home. The temperature outdoors was just below zero, and Brody wasn’t wearing much more than the long-sleeved pajama top, sweatpants and socks he had gone to sleep in.
If not for the family’s young German shepherd, Lobo, the consequences may well have been fatal. -
Time, effort will alleviate dog’s separation anxiety
Q: We have a 5-year-old Australian Shepherd named Kati that we have had since she was 12 weeks old. She gets along with all our cats and likes to go outside and run like the wind. When she was a puppy we got her in the late fall and because of the weather, trained her to puppy pads, especially if we were going to be gone more than five or six hours. She has never really stopped urinating on the floor when we leave the house. She will urinate on the floor beside a puppy pad, which I regularly place on the floor when I have to leave. I had our veterinarian check her over and do all the appropriate testing and she does not have a urinary tract infection or anything else wrong that we can find. Is she just doing this to spite me when I leave her alone at home?
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Whispering Pines stands atop state scene
The story of Whispering Pines Bed and Breakfast Inn and Restaurant is like an onion. On the surface, it looks simple — large, Victorian-style house, three suites in the house plus four cottages, located on State Highway 9 southeast of Norman.
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Writing, baking dual challenges
The Challenged Pens are my writing group. They’re coming to my house this afternoon, and there’s not so much as a cookie in the place.
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Report says girl teen drivers ‘more distracted’ than boys
