www.thehawkeye.com THE HAWK EYE !" BURLINGTON, IOWA Sunday • September 22, 2013 3A CITY & REGION Nurses gather after 50 years to remember They’ve since retired or left the profession, but they look back on time in Burlington program with fondness. By WILLIAM SMITH [email protected] John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye Allison Sturgill, captain of team Beads for Boobies!, writes notes for her “Stick it to Cancer” voodoo dolls at the annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life of Des Moines County Saturday at Great River Medical Center in West Burlington. Allison grew up in Burlington and moved to New Orleans after high school and embraced the lifestyle there. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, Sturgill moved back to Burlington to be with family. Walking for life Annual Relay for Life looks to raise $87,000 for cancer research. By WILLIAM SMITH [email protected] A ngela Hunstad’s T-shirt summed up her struggle against cancer in two simple sentences. “Yes, they’re fake. My real ones tried to kill me.” Hunstad of Burlington was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011 and underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Though it was quite a shock to lose her breasts and her hair, Hunstad took the disease head-on. After she went into remission, her breasts were restored through reconstructive surgery in Iowa City. “I was 38, and I found a lump and wasn’t old enough yet for mammograms, ” she said. “They took out 20 lymph nodes. I embraced it. My hardest struggle was losing my hair. I had long, beautiful blond hair.” Hunstad spoke about her struggles during the survivor ceremony at the annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life of Des Moines County, which kicked off Saturday afternoon at Great River Medical Center and lasted through until midnight. More than 300 people from 24 relay teams continually walked the paved track around the GRMC Lake, raising money for ongoing cancer research. Though Hunstad was new to the event, she embraced it as heartily as her cancer struggle and decided to join the Relay committee. She figured it was the least she could do after the American Cancer Society provided her with a wig. “Without Relay, I wouldn’t have been able to have that, because my insurance wouldn’t pay for it. They would pay for fake boobs, but they wouldn’t pay for the hair,” she said with a laugh. Hunstad was walking with the Think Pink team, which had set up a large pink tent and a boxing ring with pink John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye Elizabeth Talley wears Marvin Linder’s firefighter gear in the annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life of Des Moines County Saturday at Great River Medical Center in West Burlington. Linder, with the Stronghurst, Ill., Fire Department, lost his wife, Leslie, to metastatic breast cancer and walked as a member of team The CASE Crusaders and planned to wear his firefighting gear later in the day for three laps around GRMC Lake. ropes. Inside the boxing ring was a 5-foot-tall demon that looked like it came straight from a Halloween display. A sign that simply read “Cancer” hung around its neck. The display made its debut during the Mediapolis Town and Country Days parade last month, and the demon was helpless against its opponents inside the ring. “The girls were boxing cancer. They were beating cancer,” said Think Pink team member Denise Rice. Rice also sits on the Relay committee and was excited about the changes this year. For the last few years, the Relay for Life was a nighttime event that started at 6 p.m. and lasted until 6 a.m. the following day. This year, the event started at noon and went until midnight. “A lot of people didn’t like (the change), but they were finding out that a lot of teams weren’t spending the night. Basically six out of the 25 or so teams were spending the night. So we’re trying this to get some families out in the afternoon,” Rice said. A cupcake party celebrated the 100th anniversary of the American Cancer Society later that afternoon, and then the teams were busy selling gift baskets, exotic trips and just about everything imaginable during a silent auction. Many of the teams started setting up their tents at 9 a.m., basking in the morning chill that replaced the miserable heat that plagued last year’s walk. The Relay was moved from August to September this year, and that was a change nearly everyone enjoyed. “It’s not too hot. It’s great. It’s a perfect day,” said Patty Walz, who was walking with the Walgreens team. New to the event this year was the team Beads for Boobies!, which walked in support of Allison Sturgill. Though she grew up in Burlington, Sturgill moved to New Orleans after high school and embraced the lifestyle there. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, Sturgill moved back to Burlington to be with family. The cancer since has spread into her hips and her spine, and many of her friends and family flocked to the Relay to show their support. That included her mother’s boyfriend, Burlington resident Fred Jaeger. “They didn’t give her this much time, but she’s doing really well. She’s fighting it the best she can. I’m showing support for her and everyone else who has this dreaded disease,” Jaeger said. Sturgill’s team sported a Mardi Gras theme and even sold hand-made voodoo dolls that came straight from New Orleans. Sturgill’s longtime friend, Ryan Miller, couldn’t wait to get on the track. “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” he said. Kierstan Peck, spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, also was excited about the time change, but she won’t know how well it went until its over. If participants prefer the overnight schedule, it easily could return next year. “We’ll have to wait and see,” Peck said. “Some teams really loved the overnight. We’ll make that decision next year.” The target goal for this year’s walk was $87,000, and $67,000 of that was raised before the event started. Their 50th anniversary reunion just happened to be their first. More than a dozen nurses who were a part of the longdefunct Mercy Hospital nursing program in Burlington reunited Saturday, sharing stories of where their lives have taken them. Since the nursing program shut down before they were set to graduate in 1963, the women were separated a year early and had to find different places to finish their schooling. Mercy Hospital was a fixture in Burlington long before Great River Medical Center, once occupying the River Park Place building on North Hill. Reta Saylor of Cedar Rapids still remembered the first day she set foot on the nursing floor. “It was a whole new ball game for me. I’m sure most of you felt the same way,” she said. “The first day you walked up to that new floor and didn’t know anybody, and you’re like, ‘What am I doing here?’ But it all worked out.” The women spent the morning at the Phelps House Museum, perusing a new medical display that listed every hospital in Burlington’s history. That includes the Burlington Protestant Hospital, which shut down in 1898; the Burlington Hospital, which ran from 1898 to 1975; and Mercy Hospital, which existed from 1893 to 1969. There’s also the Burlington Medical Center, which existed in the River Park Place building from 1973 to 2000, the old Klein Hospital, which was established in 1963, and Great River Medical Center, which is still going strong. After the history lesson, the old classmates grabbed dinner at Peaches Cafe & Steakhouse so they could catch up. “It’s just amazing what a difference 50 years makes, and yet, it doesn’t,” Saylor said. Mary Carroll of Cedar Rapids has worked a number of nursing jobs over the years and has fond memories of her time in Pueblo, Colo. “We had a fabulous experience, because we worked with the county health nurse who took care of the migrant (American) Indian workers,” she said. During her final years before retirement, Carroll worked as a nurse at Keokuk Steel Castings. “They had big cauldrons full of hot metal. I took care of a lot of people with bad burns and took steel out of guys’ eyes,” she said. Mary Jean Kasher of Omaha, Neb., eventually went home and got married, working as a parttime nurse for 29 years before a conglomerate took over the hospital she was working at and fired her. She went on to find other employment, never forgetting her fellow nurses. “I just appreciate seeing everybody here. I’m so happy,” she said. Katherine Brush of Urbandale went on to marry her boyfriend, and they’re coming up on their 50th wedding anniversary next month. Ironically enough, one of her earliest assignments was to work on her husband, who needed his appendix taken out. She respectfully bowed out of that operation. “I couldn’t do that as a good Mercy nurse,” she said, eliciting laughter from the room. Brush worked for Mercy Hospital in Davenport for six months, but life soon got in the way. “We had our babies right away. Three in three years,” she said. Though many of the ladies are retired or out of nursing now, they know their legacy will carry on. Carroll has a grandson and a granddaughter who want to become nurses. “You know, it just keeps on moving,” she said. John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye From left, Kathryn Brush of Urbandale; Barb Mueller of West Point; and Mary Jean Kasher of Omaha, Neb., look through an old Mercy Hospital scrapbook during a visit to the Medical Memories display on the third floor of the Phelps House Museum by a group of the Mercy Hospital’s nursing program students having their 50-year reunion Saturday in Burlington. The nurses went to school at Mercy in 1963, but once it closed down, the class had to split up and finish their studies elsewhere. One last motorcycle ride for hospice patient Avid rider Rick Hopkins given his last wish. By WILLIAM SMITH [email protected] MOUNT PLEASANT — Nobody was happier than Rick Hopkins Saturday afternoon. Dressed head-to-toe in biking leathers, Hopkins, 57, was going on what likely will be the last motorcycle ride of his life. “To me, this is God’s gift to Rick,” his sister, Darcey Hummell, said. Hopkins is confined to a wheelchair and is under HCI Hospice care at Mount Pleasant’s Arbor Court nursing home. He gets weaker every day due to his failing kidneys, but in his heart, he’s still a biker. Hummell, who makes her home in Mount Pleasant, said Hopkins’ condition is related to chemotherapy and radiation treatments he underwent 25 years ago to beat cancer. “This long afterwards, the doctors said the body will shut down,” Hummell said. “He chose John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye Rick Hopkins, who is confined to a wheelchair and is under HCI Hospice care at Mount Pleasant’s Arbor Court nursing home, is secured to a handicapped-accessible sidecar by Larry Meador of Lanark, Ill., who had a sidecar attached for his son, Josh, when he was injured in an accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down, on Saturday in front of the Mount Pleasant nursing home. not to stop anything that’s happening now.” Hopkins’ voice barely rose above a whisper Saturday afternoon, but he had no problem indicating it was time to go. His right arm rolled his wheel- chair right up to the back of the handicapped-accessible sidecar awaiting him, causing his wife, Larinda Hopkins, and daughter, Brandy Hopkins, to erupt in happy tears. “It’s what he wants,” said Lar- inda, who also was fully clad in her bike leathers. The events that led to Rick’s last ride were just too coincidental to be happenstance. About a half-dozen of employees with HCI Hospice Care Services are avid bikers, and when Hopkins noticed nurse Kim Verrips had bandages on her arm, he asked her what happened. She explained it was a case of road rash that resulted from having to lay down her bike. The two instantly clicked. Rick is a lifelong biker himself, and he shared his desire to go on one more motorcycle ride before it was too late. “We do a lot of wishes for our patients. We took an 83-year-old lady on a hot-air balloon ride. We took a World War II veteran on a plane ride. It just depends on what wish they want to do,” Verrips said. Since Hopkins requires the support of his wheelchair, it looked like his wish might be a bit more difficult to fulfill than most. Then Verrips saw exactly what her patient needed at a motorcycle rally in Savannah, Ill. “I was talking with my friend, Vicki, about how we would like to make a hospice patient’s wish come true, and at that very moment, Larry pulled up on his bike,” she said. Larry Meador, who lives three hours away in Lanark, Ill., paid to have a handicapped-accessible sidecar attached to his 1998 Harley Davidson Classic four years ago. His 25-year-old son, Josh, was paralyzed from the chest down in an automobile accident before that, but the accident didn’t deter Josh’s love for biking. It wasn’t long before Larry found someone who could custom build a handicapped-accessible sidecar, which includes a foldable ramp and straps to keep the wheelchair in place. The dimensions for the sidecar — 52 inches long by 30 inches wide — were a perfect fit. “(Josh) still lights up when he gets on it,” his mother, Lori Meador, said. Larry didn’t hesitate to lend his services when Verrips approached him with Hop- kins’ wish, and the ride quickly turned into a media event that attracted family, friends and cyclists from the ABATE District 14 motorcycle club — the same club Hopkins is a part of. Hopkins’ sons, Josh and Jacob, rode their bikes all the way from their home in Sioux City for the event, looking like younger, mirror images of their father. “If it wasn’t for hospice, we would never see this come true,” Brandy Hopkins said with tears in her eyes. Fulfilling final wishes isn’t unusual for hospice services and often means the world to the patients and their families. Amy Burkhart, community liaison for Great River Hospice in Burlington, said the staff is constantly organizing events to meet endof-life goals. Some recently fulfilled wishes included eating at McDonald’s, going to a Cubs and Cardinals game, a trip to Florida and a baptism in the Great River Hospice House sauna. “I keep a list of bucket list items,” Burkhart said.