Patient story

If you visit the Onaga Rehabilitation and Fitness Center on weekdays during the lunch hour, you’re likely to see Bob Avery hard at work on the weight machines. He travels to the Fitness Center several times a week from his home near Olsburg to do strengthening exercises, and he sees a physical therapist once a week. He’s come a long way since a harrowing accident nearly five years ago left him with a partial spinal cord injury.

Avery, a lifelong rancher who...

Betty Fairchild is back in the saddle at age 97, and Community HealthCare System’s Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Program helped her get there.

After an aortic valve replacement, fatigue and shortness of breath kept Fairchild, who lives four miles outside of Frankfort, from the active lifestyle she had always enjoyed.  She was referred to CHCS Cardiopulmonary Rehab by her cardiac surgeon, Dr. Muehlebach, from the University of Kansas Health System. Fairchild...

CHCS received the following email from a patient's daughter who shared her experience. What a wonderful tale she tells of the care her mother has received from our caring staff! We thank her for taking time to write and for giving us permission to share her comments. 

Hello,

My name is Laurie Moody, and I am the daughter of Oleta Curtis, a patient at your clinic who is treated by both Dr. Allen and Dr. Heredia. I recently moved back to the area...

Annie Crumbaker’s daughter Emmy is five months old. Crumbaker smiles when she talks about her, and you can hear the pride in her voice when she describes her: “She’s such a happy baby,” said the proud mom. (Baby Emmy is pictured above in the arms of her dad, Kyle.) 

Crumbaker was not all smiles the day Emmy was born. Although she anticipated an uncomplicated birth like those of her other three children, Crumbaker’s labor did not progress as expected,...

When you’re a parent, you know what it feels like to worry. You wonder if your child is eating or sleeping enough, or if you are making the right decisions. You worry about teaching them the right things. You also might wonder about developmental milestones: Is your baby rolling over or crawling on time? Interacting with you enough? Saying enough words?

If you have worries, talk to your healthcare provider. Pediatric speech therapy is available for children who...

No matter what kind of person you picture when you think “heart attack,” Bob Garcia probably doesn’t fit the mold.

A retired postmaster and longtime referee for high school football and basketball, Garcia was in the habit of running 25-30 miles a week and lifting weights regularly. He was preparing to run a St. Patrick’s Day 10K when he felt a slight pain in the middle of his chest for about three minutes. He dismissed it as acid reflux and did...

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among men and women in the United States, and 25 to 30% of colorectal cancer patients have a family history of the disease according to FightCRC.

That was enough to convince Gary Sorensen, a patient of Dr. David Allen at Community HealthCare System, to start getting regular colonoscopies when he was in his late 40s.

“My dad had colon cancer, and it was detected in his 50s. My dad’s brother and his father...

As he was recovering from COVID-19 last fall, Keith Figge heard some strange news at a follow-up checkup at CHCS: He had a heart murmur. An appointment with a cardiologist revealed that he had a prolapsed mitral valve.

Figge, who was born and raised in Onaga and has served as Onaga High School’s agricultural education teacher and FFA advisor for 27 years, smiles easily and enjoys a good laugh. But that day, he was scared. He was referred to a surgeon, who convinced him that surgery...

Karen Elliott is an infection control nurse. She knows how to prevent disease. She was an advocate for hand hygiene before COVID-19 was in the news. She helps others learn how to take precautions. So she’ll never catch COVID-19, right?

Wrong.

Elliott still doesn’t know how she contracted the virus, but she started have symptoms on October 1. After experiencing gradually worsening symptoms at home (cough, headache, body aches, fever, diarrhea, nausea, loss of taste,...

If you have chest pain, shortness of breath, or heart rhythm problems, your doctor may order a cardiac stress test to find out how well your heart pumps.

The test takes several hours and involves injecting a tracer and collecting images of the heart at rest, then collecting another image of the heart while it’s pumping vigorously. The images help a doctor determine whether blockages are causing problems and what treatments patients need.

Patients must fast for 12 hours...