KV Healthcare

KVH Stories

Hartwig Vatheuer

· ·

Hartwig Vatheuer

When it comes to improving health care for his community, Hartwig Vatheuer puts his energy where his heart is. But then, he always has.

Now 77 and with a long-established reputation for civic leadership, Vatheuer has served eight years as a member of the board of The Foundation at KVH, an organization that has given $1.5 million to Kittitas Valley Healthcare over the course of its 30-year history. Add to that his role as a member of the Hospital District 2 Board of Commissioners where he’s spent 15 years helping guide healthcare in the Upper County.

Both positions reflect his passion for making things better where and when he can. Consider it a philosophy forged of family tradition and shaped by early challenge.

Born in Germany in 1939 just days before the start of World War II, he was 6 when, as the war was ending, his desperate mother packed up her six children and fled several hundred miles west from their home in Pomerania (then a province of Germany, now part of Poland) in advance of Russian occupation forces. The family found refuge in a forester’s house but Russian troops soon overtook them.

Seven-plus decades later, memories of that time are still vivid for Valtheuer.

His family was among millions of Germans caught in a chapter of post-war history few in America understand. It was a time of hardship, hunger and constant fear. Food supplies were limited. “The Russians took everything,” Vatheuer says, recalling Russian soldiers with stolen wristwatches lining their forearms. When a Russian soldier demanded his mother’s wedding ring and she had trouble twisting it off, her children feared rumors they’d heard of Russians cutting off fingers to get rings might be true. Instead, she got the ring off and handed it to the soldier who examined it, tossed it to the ground and stomped on it.

Resourcefulness was born of necessity. His sisters knitted, unraveling old sweaters for yarn, then using old bicycle spokes for needles. Despite the hardships, the family celebrated Christmas, exchanging gifts they’d made themselves.

His father, who had been working as an agricultural administrator in the Ukraine during the war, wrote to Vatheuer’s mother, advising her to try to get to the British-occupied sector. Determined, she followed his advice though it took multiple attempts – and in the end required forging one word of his letter – to get the family out of the Russian sector.

In the British zone, the family was among a thousand people “re-settled” to a town of the same population. “We had a room in a castle,” Vatheuer says. “It was so cold there were two inches of ice on the window.”

In 1947, the family reunited. “Dad came,” Vatheuer recalls. “He’d been in a POW camp. He was all skin and bones.”

Vatheuer’s parents were intent on leaving Germany and, in 1953, the family came to the United States sponsored by a family in Idaho through the World Lutheran Federation. “To come you had to be in excellent health and able to work,” Vatheuer says, recalling how a sister with health issues had to remain behind.

The family eventually ended up in Wapato where they ran a truck farm and Vatheuer graduated from high school. Intent on attending college, he delayed that dream to help his family, went on to serve three years in the U.S. Army, then enrolled at Portland State University.

It was in a German class there that he met a pretty coed named Mary. She was shy. So was he – but not so shy that he didn’t walk her to her bus stop and ask to see her again.

Flash forward a few years. After a year at Portland State, Vatheuer transferred to Oregon State University where he earned a degree in forest management and went on to a 32 year career.

Married in 1969, he and Mary bought eight acres in the Cle Elum area in 1984 and built a home where their two sons grew up and where he and Mary still live. A doer by nature, Vatheuer soon became involved in the community.

South Cle Elum Way, the road that connects Cle Elum to South Cle Elum, doesn’t bear his name but maybe it should. The 70 or so Norwegian maples that line the sides of that roadway – green in spring and summer, an eruption of brilliant yellow each fall – are a Kiwanis Club project that testify in part to his trademark role: a steady, determined man, sleeves rolled up figuratively and literally, leading by example.

Armed with a grant from the Plum Creek Foundation that he helped obtain, the club planted half the trees one year, the rest a decade or so later. “I hounded them so much they made me a member of their board,” says Vatheuer who spent five or six years on the board. He figures he helped procure $140,000 for various projects in the county over the years.

At one point, when Cle Elum’s old swimming pool needed cleaning and painting, it was Vatheuer and his family who did it. And when the chamber of commerce decided to transform an old phone company building downtown into public restrooms, Vatheuer helped coordinate the project, even enlisting Mary and his boys to help hand dig the sewer line.

He’s also been involved since inception with the Kiwanis Club’s annual Christmas tree sale, a project he estimates has raised $60,000 plus over 24 years. Vatheuer has cut many of those trees. His contributions have not gone unnoticed. In 2006, he received Puget Sound Energy’s Pioneer Award, presented annually to an individual in Kittitas County who has demonstrated leadership and vision to benefit the community. Two years later, a brass plaque honoring him was placed at Flag Pole Park.

Among his admirers: Michelle Wurl, executive director of The Foundation at KVH. “He embodies the true spirit of giving back to the community,” she says. “His tireless devotion to our county and his willingness to help wherever needed is an example we all should follow.”

But Vatheuer shies away from the term “giving back.” “To me, I think what I do means being part of the community. You should be doing not just talking about it,” he says.

Once, he recalls, one of his sons asked why he does what he does. “I never really thought about it,” he says. “Basically I probably would have to say that I grew up in a Christian environment and I had many good examples in my life – especially my mother. You don’t just live for yourself but also for others.”

He’s proud of his roles on the Hospital District 2 board and as a member of the board of the Foundation at KVH. “The hospital doesn’t take in much in taxes but is financially stable,” he says. “It’s a public entity that stands on its own two feet. The foundation is a well-run operation. Without it the hospital might have to raise taxes.”

As for KVH Hospital, “I’ve been a patient several times,” he says. “It always seems efficient and the people are friendly. But the quality healthcare is the most important thing. The hospital wins all these awards. That must mean something.”

Tom Penoyar, MD

· ·

Tom Penoyar, MD

He loves tools, working with his hands and problem solving. He was headed toward a career in mechanical engineering. Then a stint in a tissue engineering lab as a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University working with equipment that tested cadaver bone put Dr. Tom Penoyar of KVH General Surgery on a different path.

Penoyar enrolled in biology and chemistry courses, finishing the prerequisites for medical school and his master’s in mechanical engineering at almost the same time. He went on to the University of Washington School of Medicine followed by an internship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Finally, he completed a surgical residency at Lahey Medical Center in Burlington, Mass., a teaching hospital affiliated with Tufts University.

When it came time to launch his practice, Penoyar and his wife Lauren, now parents of three children aged 6 months to four years, wanted a place where recreation was close at hand and family wasn’t far away. “My whole family is in Washington State. We knew we would come back here,” says Penoyar who grew up in the small town of South Bend, Washington, the third of five siblings whose parents are lawyers.

As a teenager he was into hot rods, his “lifted” truck and mud-bogging. As an adult, he’s an active outdoor enthusiast whose interests range from mountaineering and back country skiing to ice climbing, rock climbing and snowmobiling.

Convinced the eastern slopes of the Cascades offer the best opportunities for recreation, “my approach was that if we could find an appealing opportunity in the region we’d take it,” he says. And they did.

Penoyar says Ellensburg offered “lots of well-educated people who are a joy to be around,” groups of active recreationists who share their interests and a house he and Lauren love.

In September 2015, he opened his practice at KVH General Surgery. At 35, he’s the youngest member of the staff and relishes the chance to work alongside seasoned veterans. “I much prefer talking with someone like that than someone with the same age and experience as me,” he says, adding that he also enjoys sharing some of the newer techniques in minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery that he’s learned along the way.

In contrast to conventional surgery, laparoscopy uses small incisions and specialized instruments to manipulate tools at the end of a rod. While not appropriate in every situation, when it is it can reduce recovery times for patients.

Penoyar says surgery suits him not just because of the technical challenge involved but also because of the unknown. “There have been many occasions when you dive into the surgery and find something that is not what you were expecting,” he says.

Sometimes those experiences are unforgettable. Case in point: an emergency surgery during his residency.

A middle-aged woman who had undergone gastric bypass surgery years earlier arrived at the emergency room with acute abdominal pain, her abdomen so swollen she screamed when it was touched. “We went straight to the operating room,” he recalls. “It looked bad. Her small intestine was dusky gray. There was no blood flowing to it.

“It was life-threatening so it was stressful. It was dramatic for everyone in the room.”

Ten minutes into the surgery Penoyar and the surgeon working with him discovered that the woman’s small intestine had worked its way through a small hole that had formed as a result of her previous surgery, cutting off oxygen to the intestine. “We found the hole and, inch by inch began pulling her small intestine back through the hole,” Penoyar recalls. “As it came back, it went from ash gray to pink. We finished and put three or four stitches in to close the hole.”

Then Penoyar and the other surgeon sank down onto chairs. “We were physically and emotionally spent,” he says, recalling that moment.

Two days later their patient walked out of the hospital.

“I like the technical aspect of the surgical field, the problem solving, the definitive therapy of it when the last stitch is placed,” says Penoyar. “I like having something real and tangible to offer patients.”

Want to know more? See Dr. Penoyar’s medical education and clinic information here.

Liahna Armstrong

· ·

Liahna Armstrong

She’s semi-retired from a distinguished career in academia, passionate about animal rescue, loves sports and for 11 years has been the only woman in a fantasy football league where she readily holds her own. She’s also no slouch when it comes to poker.

But Liahna Armstrong, who earned her doctorate in English at UCLA and went on to a career that includes 22 years at Central Washington University, doesn’t play games when it comes to healthcare. She wants quality care in a caring environment.

After two decades on the board of commissioners of Kittitas Valley Healthcare, Armstrong is no stranger to the role KVH plays in her community.

When an attempt to play peacemaker between her dog and a neighbor’s cat left her with scratches, a deep cat bite and a dangerous infection, Armstrong experienced firsthand just how important that role can be.

Flash back to May 19, 2017. “My dog had the cat’s head in its mouth. The cat was terrified,” recalls Armstrong who rushed to intervene, saving the cat but not without suffering scratches and a cat bite above her left ankle in the process.

Early the next morning, she woke screaming in pain, her ankle totally swollen. Her husband Jim carried her to the car and drove her to the KVH Emergency Department where she was treated and released.

But Armstrong’s ankle remained swollen and painful. On May 24, Armstrong went back to the Emergency Department where Dr. Frank Cruz immediately had her admitted to the hospital. “I was there ten days,” she says. “They finally found an antibiotic I could tolerate and sent me home thinking I was getting better. But I wasn’t.”

Liahna Armstrong

Jim Repsher, a physician assistant at KVH Orthopedics, ordered an MRI. “After he got the results he told me, ‘You have a huge infected mass that’s going to require surgery,'” Armstrong says.

The next day, KVH Orthopedics surgeon Dr. Gary Bos removed the infected tissue. Armstrong says she was still in recovery when Bos approached her husband after the surgery. “I think I just saved her leg,” Bos reportedly said.

Those words aren’t lost on Armstrong. She praises Cruz’s fast action in admitting her to the hospital and the KVH Orthopedics providers, especially Repsher and Bos, for saving her leg.

Armstrong sported a lime green soccer guard to protect the wound area for a time and received IV antibiotics as an outpatient for several weeks. By mid-August of last year she was “pretty much back to normal” and enjoying hikes near the cabin she and her husband own at Chinook Pass.

Two decades after she first took office at KVH, she says her own experience affirms what she believes about the quality of care at KVH in general and KVH Orthopedics in particular.

“I was the sandwich generation,” she says of her decision to get involved in KVH. “I had a young child and aging parents. I became very cognizant of healthcare. I saw it from both ends.

“Doing the job of commissioner well involves a huge amount of knowledge,” she says, flashing a smile. “I’m still learning.”

But Armstrong says the time and effort have been worth it. “I’m proud of KVH’s commitment to the well-being of patients and employees,” she says. “I see it all the time.”

It’s what the community she fell in love with deserves, she says.

“Ellensburg is a wonderful place to live. Most people are very warm. I love being surrounded and embraced by good people in a good community.”

A history of GNP care

· ·

GNP Care

Familiar ground: GNP Jean Yoder, in the main conference room at KVH’s Radio Hill Facility. The room was once a dining area for assisted living residents at Royal Vista, where Yoder made weekly rounds. (Thumbnail photo: Radio Hill exterior.)

Jean Yoder has been a local fixture in senior patient care for the past 23 years.

“I’ve always liked working with elderly people,” says Yoder, who first ventured into the world of healthcare as a young candy striper, bringing meals and other items to patients in their hospital rooms. Years later, Yoder found her calling as a Geriatric Nurse Provider (GNP), bringing medical care to patients in their homes.

Yoder’s was the first class of GNPs at the University of Washington. “We learned from them and they learned on us,” she laughs. Then, after working with geriatricians in the Seattle area, Yoder learned about a program in Ellensburg led by then-director of Home Care and Hospice Carol Detweiler.

A fellow UW GNP graduate, Detweiler’s vision was to bring medical care delivery out of the traditional patient care setting and into the community, particularly for the frail elderly. It was a vision Yoder shared. “We wanted to make care available for those who couldn’t access it,” she recalls, “whether they were physically frail, struggled with dementia, or had other issues that made it difficult to get in and out of the home for medical visits.”

Soon, the program was underway with Yoder as the sole practitioner.

Yoder’s territory included Royal Vista (a skilled nursing facility) and Kittitas Valley Health and Rehabilitation. Every week, she spent two days at each location, and was on daytime call for both. Nights and weekends were covered by patients’ primary care physicians.

From the outset, the program included a collaborative practice with physicians in the community, starting with Drs. Wise, Schmitt and Anderson in Cle Elum, later expanding to Ellensburg and physicians such as Dr. Solberg, who was struck by the increased level of care his patients were receiving under the GNP program. “He and I made monthly rounds together in the skilled nursing facilities for years,” says Yoder.

The steady presence of a GNP helped fill the care gap for patients and their physicians, whose schedules didn’t often allow for regular visits to these facilities. “We could be on-site, evaluate an individual, see where their code status was, talk to family, talk to staff, and get a plan in place to set up and provide care.”

“We were very busy,” she recalls. “With up to 65 patients in each facility, there’s a lot that goes on from one day to the next.”

Covering the community.

Soon, a second GNP was hired, and Yoder began spending a day each week seeing assisted living patients at Mountain View Meadows (now Meadows Place), and eventually Hearthstone.

“It’s not quite as intense as a skilled nursing facility,” says Yoder. “We focus on treating patients in their environment, keeping them healthy and hopefully away from the E.R.”

The GNP team worked with staff to prevent or treat conditions like urinary tract infections, pneumonias, skin tears, cellulitis, etc. With so many variables, says Yoder, “you never knew what your day would be like.”

Another major shift occurred when GNP Anna Collins entered the picture, joining forces with Yoder to divide up days and locations, increasing overall coverage. Collins took on Meadows Place, while Yoder continued at Hearthstone. “We added on Dry Creek (now Pacifica). And in the middle of all that, we started doing home visits.”

According to Yoder, GNP home visits serve those “who fall through the cracks, in the sense that they have many medical problems, but don’t qualify for the Medicare A Home Program” which covers services from KVH Home Health.

Thankfully, Medicare does allow nurse practitioners to do home visits. “It used to be called a doctor’s home visit,” explains Yoder. “We go through the physician to get a home visit, evaluate the patient and, with the patient’s permission, set up a care plan.”

Once they’ve established care with a patient in their home, GNPs make monthly visits unless a change in health brings them by sooner. “If there’s a spell of illness, or an issue like a wound needing frequent dressing changes, or someone is really fragile and needs more attention and services, we work with a physician to bring in Home Health.”

Taking on the trends.

One big change Yoder’s seen during her time as a GNP is the amount of medications taken by seniors. “It used to be that five medications was remarkable. Now, we have people on 15 or 20,” she says. “We look at the whole picture to see how it’s all working, and focus on comfort while getting rid of unnecessary medications and testing.”

Another trend Yoder sees is a faster discharge from hospitals. “Even if a patient rehabs in a skilled nursing facility, what happens once they get home?” The GNP program will soon begin making home visits after patients are discharged. “You can see when you walk into the environment, what’s working, or isn’t, and what we need to do. It involves quite a bit of detective work.”

The next chapter.

Last month, the GNP office relocated to KVH’s newly remodeled Radio Hill facility – formerly known as Royal Vista, the place where Jean first began her GNP rounds in Kittitas County.

Now that things have come full circle, Yoder is set to retire. “I’ve let go of a lot of things already,” she says, as the GNP team has grown to include practitioners Nenna Nzeocha, Marquetta Washington, and Mary Nouwens. “It’s great to have them here. They want to do this work, and they’re not frightened by the scope and intensity of it.” And while she’s ready to focus on family and home remodeling, there are things Yoder will deeply miss – especially her working relationship with Anna Collins. “We’ve enjoyed each other and we communicate well together. We worked hard!,” she laughs.

Yoder is confident that the GNP program, under the visionary direction of KVH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kevin Martin, is positioned to continue a pattern of growth in caring for patients throughout the county. Yoder’s optimism rests on a legacy shaped by years of faithful service.

“Nurse practitioners make a difference for patients, family, and staff,” she says. “I really believe that.”

Managed by Kittitas Valley Healthcare, HealthNews does not provide medical advice. For medical advice, please see your healthcare provider.

Andy and Karen Schock

· ·

Devan and John Bartlett

Growing up, Andy and Karen Schock’s musical tastes were as different as they were.

He played the guitar, loved hard rock, and played in a band at Yakima’s Eisenhower High. Raised in New Jersey, she played the piano, sang in school choirs and in musicals in high school, and favored folk music and groups like the Byrds.

Those differences aside, they were destined – literally and figuratively – to make music together.

Flash back to 1979. A vocalist scheduled to perform with Andy at his brother’s wedding backed out at the last minute. Friends suggested Karen, who had come to Yakima as a VISTA volunteer after college, as a replacement. “There was a spark,” Andy says.

They married in 1982, exchanging vows at the same South Carolina church where her parents had wed. They didn’t know then that their road together would lead to Ellensburg.

Prior to meeting Karen, Andy had worked a summer job at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle after two years at Washington State University. The center was a small operation back then, so small that even a ward clerk rubbed elbows with leading cancer researchers. “It was the tipping point that changed what I wanted to do,” Andy says.

After their marriage, they settled in Yakima. She landed a job with the Department of Social and Health Services. He worked as an LPN while going to school to become a Registered Nurse. When he finished there were no openings at Fred Hutchinson so he became an operating room nurse at Yakima Memorial Hospital, moving to KVH Hospital as operating room nurse manager in 1987.

But the role took Andy away from his passion – day-to-day contact with patients. He went back to school to become a physician assistant and worked as a PA in the Upper County and with a clinic in Yakima before joining KVH Internal Medicine in 2007.

By then, Karen already was a KVH institution. When the couple’s sons, Henri and Ben, were born she’d stepped away from her career. In 1990, with the boys in school, she took a half-time position as director of volunteer services at KVH Hospital. “I started with three or four volunteers,” she says. “They say the number of volunteers you have should match the number of patient beds. At that time, it was 50-bed hospital.”

The number of volunteers grew. So did Karen’s skill set and responsibilities. She did some marketing and spent eighteen years in social services and discharge planning. Today, she runs the KVH Cancer Outreach program and manages the pre-med and pharmacy students who rotate through KVH Hospital plus the 65 in-service volunteers who volunteer weekly.

Neither she or Andy plan to leave KVH any time soon. “It’s the environment we’re in, the people we work with, that makes it so rewarding,” Andy says. “I’ve been with these employees and volunteers 25 years. They take care of others with such pride,” Karen adds. “It’s inspiring.”

The making of two M.A.s

· ·

“I’d been working at Starbucks for 8 years and 3 months, and it was about 8 years and 3 months too long.”

No disrespect intended to the international coffee giant. Life just had other plans for Alisha Liedtke.

After a stint selling bamboo sheets for Costco across the continental U.S., Liedtke found herself wanting something that kept her closer to home, and to husband Drew, who at the time was getting his Master of Fine Arts from CWU.

“We’d lived in Ellensburg for three years,” Liedtke recalls, “but I’d never been part of the town.”

She was ready for a change.

Photo: Flores and Liedtke take a moment to confer in a clinic exam room.

Liedtke found a local job opening for a scribe in a clinical environment at Kittitas Valley Healthcare. She applied, and was chosen out of more than forty applicants for the position. “I thought it was an established program,” she laughs. “Turns out I was the first one.”

Soon, Liedtke found herself working alongside teammates José Diaz, April Grant, Laurie Rost, and Carrie Barr, laying the groundwork for the program now in place at KVH, where scribes serve in exam rooms alongside patients and providers, handling the computer charting during the visit.

Rightfully proud of what the team accomplished, Liedtke sees the scribe’s role as “helping the provider to focus on patients.” Now, much of the documentation work that added hours to a provider’s already long day rests in the capable hands of scribes.

Six months before Liedtke began her journey at KVH Family Medicine – Ellensburg, Flores became the newest dietary aide in Food and Nutrition Services at KVH Hospital. Unlike Liedtke, the healthcare setting was familiar to Flores. The daughter of an RN, “I’ve always worked in the medical field,” she explains. “I got my CNA (Certified Nurse Assistant) when I was 16.”

She put that degree to good use for the next 16 years, working as a residential trainer for people with disabilities, then at a nursing home.

About a year into her time in the KVH kitchen, Flores underwent surgery. While convalescing, she received a call from Chief Clinic Officer Carrie Barr, asking Flores if she’d be interested in becoming a medical assistant (MA).

It was a tough decision for Flores to make.

“I’ve always wanted to work in a doctor’s office,” she admits, “but I was thinking about my family in the hospital kitchen. I loved working with everyone there. It was comfortable, and I didn’t want to leave them hanging.”

Around the same time, Liedtke got a call of her own. She was summoned to the manager’s office for a private meeting. “I was terrified! What did I do?” she’d wondered. She then learned that KVH was about to launch another program in the clinics, this time an apprenticeship for medical assistants.

They asked me, “Are you interested?”

That one question led to some sleepless nights for Liedtke, who would be facing yet another major transition. Being an MA “is a whole different ballgame,” she says. “And I’d also be leaving a job that really nurtured me into becoming the person I was supposed to be.”

Despite their initial hesitancy, both women ultimately made the courageous decision to move forward into the exciting world of medical assistants.

Things took off quickly once the apprenticeship began. After a one-day orientation, they shadowed with their coaches (certified MAs), who roomed patients, gave immunizations and EKGs, and did documentation and data entry. “By Day 3, we felt comfortable,” recalls Liedtke. “The coaches were still there, but we were ‘driving.’”

Now that the one-year apprenticeship is drawing to a close, Flores and Liedtke both agree they made the right decision.

“I can’t believe how much I love it,” beams Liedtke. “I’m doing things now that in the past I’d only hoped for. I’m living this life I never could have imagined for myself. I get to wake up and put on PJs (scrubs) and go to work and help patients all day. It’s like the greatest job in the world!”

Flores agrees. “It’s never boring.” As a mother of two, Flores is a hit with the clinic’s pediatric patients. Other than her son Colton and daughter Dakotah, “I’ve never worked with children before,” says Flores. She quickly got past that barrier, finding ways to encourage youngsters who often aren’t thrilled about being at the clinic. “No matter how they do, with their parents’ permission, I give them a popsicle and tell them ‘Thanks for being a good kid. You’re a super hero!’”

The two women’s families are also thrilled, with both mothers aspiring even more for their girls. “My mom thinks I should become an RN,” says Flores, who loves her work as an MA and is content to continue in that role. Young Dakotah feels the same way: “‘It’s more of a mom job you’re doing now,’” she recently told Flores. “’I can say I’m proud of you.’” That, along with the clinic’s family-friendly schedule, is as much of a reward as Flores could ever want.

In the same selfless way that they care for their patients, Flores and Liedtke encourage others to join them in considering an apprenticeship. “If you love the idea of patient care, it’s absolutely the way to go,” says Liedtke. And while program graduates agree to stay with KVH for at least one year, both women find the idea of working elsewhere amusing.

Says Liedtke, “I’m never leaving this place.” Flores nods and smiles gently, “I’d say we’re spoiled.”

Surely, these remarkable ladies’ shared passion for patient care somehow makes us all a little better.

Wendy Hinckle

· ·

Wendy Hinckle

She’s got a spring in her step and a gleam in her eye. While that’s nearly always been true of Wendy Hinckle, there’s now an unmistakable air of gratitude behind her smile.

It’s the kind of expression that tells a story all on its own.

“I feel so lucky,” beams the retired elementary school teacher.

“I’ve had mammograms regularly since I was probably 40.” As the years passed, Hinckle’s friends began their private battles with breast cancer. “Statistically, I became a bit fearful of what the results of my own tests might be.”

Last year, at age 68, she received the news she’d been dreading.

“I got a call from KVH that something was spotted and they needed an ultrasound,” recalls Hinckle. “So I had my ultrasound the day before I went to Arizona for the winter.”

In November 2017, a little over a year after The Foundation at KVH began its focused campaign to bring digital mammography to Kittitas County, KVH Hospital went online with the service.

In January, Hinckle underwent a biopsy in Tucson. On February 6, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Grade 1, stage 1, level 1. Thank God.” The cancer had been caught in its early stages.

What she learned next was shocking.

According to the radiation oncologist, “I’d probably had the cancer for 5-8 years,” said Hinckle. What she heard from other Arizona providers supported that claim. “One doctor said it wouldn’t have been picked up on a traditional mammography unit because it was so small,” she remembers. “Another said because of where it was located, it might not have been picked up earlier.”

Two weeks after the diagnosis, Hinckle had a lumpectomy, followed by 20 days of radiation. Upon returning to Ellensburg, her oncology care resumed at Yakima’s North Star Lodge, with checkups every three months, and a mammogram just before the one-year mark.

“I’m not a super dynamo, I don’t have a huge amount of energy. I just have to manage my time,” says Hinckle, who stays active as a rule and even found a way to keep busy during her cancer treatments, focusing on training her shih tzu, Yumi, for novice and intermediate tricks certification. “The day after I was diagnosed, I went to the tricks class and we started training. It was great because it kept my mind off of what I was going through.”

Today, Hinckle stays active in the local SAIL program, and enjoys tai chi. “I also love to play games,” she admits, meeting each week for pinochle with a group that includes other retired teachers. And while she and her husband Kirk flee to warmer climes each winter, Hinckle maintains her deep roots in Kittitas County, where she’s served as a Gallery One board member for nearly two decades. A lifelong lover of the arts, her pride in the gallery’s current direction is evident: “We’re really getting involved with schools now and reaching out to the community.”

That’s the passion of a teacher with plans to give and grow, for many years to come. It’s also why she’s happy to share her cancer story – so that others can learn. “I strongly encourage women to get mammograms,” she says, recalling a friend who recently had her first mammogram after learning of Hinckle’s experience.

“I really want to express my gratitude to KVH – the hospital and the foundation – for raising the money for digital mammography,” says Hinckle. “For seeing that Ellensburg needed to catch up with the technology that’s out there, because it’s possible if I would have had another traditional scan, it would have been missed again.”

Related: Life after 50: the happy years (interview with local SAIL program director Carol Findley)

Jim Repsher, PA-C

· ·

Jim Repsher, PA-C

His father was a pulmonologist; his mother a nurse. But growing up in a small town in Colorado, Jim Repsher, a certificated physician assistant at KVH Orthopedics, never planned a career in healthcare.

He was in love with outdoor adventure.  Ski racing and river rafting consumed him. By 18, he was a professional river rafting guide.

But his high school years were undistinguished academically. “I graduated by the skin on my teeth,” says Repsher, who went on to earn a degree in history at the University of Wyoming where his academic career was equally undistinguished.

After college, he considered a job as a river guide in South Africa but passed on the opportunity. “The ski areas were hiring ski patrollers so rather than go to South Africa I joined the ski patrol. So I was river guiding in the summer, skiing all winter – and starving in between,” Repsher says.

In retrospect, his first job as a river guide started him on a path to a medical career. “I found out you got a bonus if you took EMT (emergency medical technician) training. So I became an EMT,” he says.

Work with the ski patrol led to volunteering year-round with the ambulance service. In 1993, the county paid for him to become a paramedic.

In the years that followed Repsher was accepted into the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), taught white water rafting and canoeing during the summer and did ski patrol in the winter, then did a two-year stint teaching in a outdoor paramedic training program before moving on to work for an air ambulance service.

By then, he was a man with responsibilities.

He’d met his wife, a fellow ski patrol member, in 1990. Married in 1998, they have two children.

Repsher and his family eventually moved to Ashland, Ore., where he worked for an air ambulance service. Then came his decision to try to become a physician assistant.

“I figured there was no way I was going to get in a program because my grades were so atrocious,” he says. Despite his reservations, in 2004 he applied to the program offered through the University of Washington Medical School and was accepted. “It was based on my life experience,” he says.

While he’d been accepted into the program, he hadn’t been accepted into the university because of his grades. “So they (program officials) had to get a special rider in order for me to get in,” says Repsher, who moved his family to Ellensburg and enrolled at the UW’s campus in Yakima.

He grins at what happened next: “I made them proud. I made the Presidents List every semester.” His grade point average: 4.0.

In Yakima he met Dena Mahre, now also a physician assistant at KVH Orthopedics. She recruited him to his first job in Yakima and then to a second one in Yakima. Along the way he also met Dr. Gary Bos, a highly regarded orthopedic surgeon. When Bos came to KVH Orthopedics in 2012, Repsher came with him. Mahre joined them a short time later.

Repsher, who has worked in emergency departments in addition to his work at KVH Orthopedics, still relishes outdoor adventure and skis, rafts and rides his mountain bike “all over the place.”

Working in orthopedics is “a great job” with moments of absolute joy, he says.

“We had a lady,” he offers by way of example. “She was 88. She had a horrible hip, horrible pain. She’d been living with it for years.”

He recalls the day she first came into the clinic, minutes passing like hours as she slowly made her way down the sidewalk.

The woman had a hip replacement.

“Two weeks later she comes walking down the sidewalk in no pain, carrying the walker and wanting to know if she still needed it,” he says beaming. “The thing about this job is, people get better. With my dad, people died.”

Stephanie Brown

· ·

Stephanie Brown

She’s an active retiree who loves to travel, spend time with family, go RV camping and spend a month each year at Mariners spring training in Arizona. But when Stephanie Brown’s left knee kept going out and pain threatened to disrupt her step and her lifestyle, she knew she had to do something.

Brown, a Yakima resident, turned to Dr. Gary Bos of KVH Orthopedics in Ellensburg.

Bos may not have an organized fan club like the Mariners do, but if he did the 69-year-old Brown just might be at the helm. In 2015, Bos replaced her left knee. Duly impressed, two years later she had him do the other one.

That Brown turned to Bos was hardly accidental. After all, when her husband Ron needed knee replacement surgery in 2012, their oldest daughter – then a surgical tech in Yakima – insisted he have Bos do it. “She knew Dr. Bos. She’d watched him do surgery and she knew his reputation,” Brown says.

The rest is history.

With Ron readily sharing his experience, word spread. Ron’s best friend soon followed suit and had a knee replacement. Then came the best friend’s wife, who also happens to be Stephanie Brown’s best friend. Stephanie’s first surgery followed a week or so later.

“Another friend who’d had surgery done by someone else came up to see Dr. Bos and had some repairs done,” Brown says. “I have another girl friend who had her knee done six or eight weeks ago.”

But Brown is nothing but serious when she talks about Bos and her experience at KVH. Besides his professionalism, Bos was warm, personable and a good communicator who not only listened to her concerns – but heard them. “One of the nice things was that he did a local anesthesia so I didn’t have to recover from general anesthesia,” she says. “That was one of my big fears.”

And it isn’t just Bos who makes the KVH experience memorable, she says. It’s the atmosphere of warmth and caring she says permeates the KVH environment. “I don’t know who is responsible,” she says. “My husband raved about it when he had his surgery done. You see it everywhere in the hospital. The girls at the front desk are very friendly and helpful as are all the other people you meet in pre-op, radiology, everywhere. I absolutely cannot complain about anyone. Everyone takes great care of you.”

They also go above and beyond when they see a need, she says. Case in point: When her best friend’s husband began to feel badly while waiting for his wife during a pre-op appointment in Bos’s office. “He was not feeling good, not looking good,” Brown says. “One of Dr. Bos’s receptionists saw that and said, ‘I’m taking him over to the hospital’ and put him in a wheelchair and took him over to the Emergency Department,” Brown says. “They immediately got him in. Because it was a heart problem he was transferred to a hospital in Yakima.”

On the day the man’s wife had her knee surgery, he stopped by Bos’s office to personally deliver a bouquet of flowers and an appreciative “thank you” to the staff member who helped him. “He says she saved his life,” Brown says.

“If I could come here for everything I needed to go to a hospital for I would be here in a flash,” she adds with a smile. “ It’s that good.”

Connie Dunnington

· ·

Connie Dunnington

When her husband Bob died in a motorcycle accident sixteen years ago, Connie Dunnington understood that life as she knew it had changed.

The couple, married 13 years, were parents of two daughters, then 12 and 10.

Connie knew she needed to redefine her family’s life, creating some new traditions while preserving others. So she resumed an old love – horseback riding, sold the building that had housed Bob’s orthodontic practice and built an arena, and introduced her children to the Stirrups and Irons 4-H group, the same club she’d belonged to as a child. She went on to become the club leader, a position she still holds.

She also embraced one of Bob’s traditions – and made it her own. A dedicated community volunteer, he’d signed on early as a member of the board of The Foundation at KVH, a non-profit that works to improve community health care.

Two years after Bob’s death, Connie got a call. Bob’s seat on the board was still vacant, the caller said. Would she be interested in filling it? The answer was yes.

It was a way of continuing his legacy and adding to her own. The board was trying to raise $1 million for an endowment fund but some were questioning whether the effort should continue. She knew Bob had been determined to reach the goal.

“Being on the board maintained some continuation, some kind of a sense of tradition,” she says, noting that she and Bob both served terms as president. And after all, she was no stranger to the nuts and bolts of board service. She’d been there helping Bob from the beginning.

“Back in the early days there was no hired director. The board basically worked out of the trunks of their cars,” says Connie, who recalls putting together the organization’s annual mailing on her kitchen table while her children napped.

Eventually the hospital helped the foundation hire a director. “At that point everything changed,” she says. “Everything got easier. We reached the goal. We came up with a plan for how to use the income off the million dollars.”

Since 2005, The Foundation has donated over $1.5 million to KVH, including income from the endowment along with other fundraising, to support a variety of projects. Currently, the foundation is running a campaign to help fund the purchase of the first digital mammography machine at KVH.

Foundation director Michele Wurl calls Connie an enthusiastic volunteer who helps with “virtually every foundation activity.” That includes helping organize the annual Magical Evening, the foundation’s primary fundraising activity as well as leading the annual Tough Enough to Wear Pink campaign during the rodeo. Last year, proceeds funded a free mammogram day.

“We sell beads, t-shirt, bandannas, anything that isn’t tied down. One year we sold a pink bucket because someone wanted it,” Connie says, laughing.

Her laughter – warm and engaging  – is also energizing. That’s classic Connie, Wurl says. “She’s always willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. She’s smart, funny and truly dedicated to improving health care in this community.”

That the foundation has been as effective as it has been is no accident, says Connie who lauds the relationship between the foundation and KVH administration. “You have to have a good relationship and work together,” she says. “In the past, it wasn’t always that close.”

What makes her proudest she says is “just to hear the positive attitudes of people working here. Every time this hospital gets named in the Top 100 you know people are doing things right.”

How long will she remain on the board? Connie, now 60, flashes a smile. “It’s the same thing I say about 4-H,” she says. “I will do it until I don’t enjoy it – and right now, I enjoy it.”