Pediatric nurse practitioner Rocky Thomas serves poor uninsured
children
Darryl E. Owens Sentinel Staff Writer
May 4,
2006
If you want to see "Rocky" Thomas stethoscope-tossing mad, get her
talking about medically needy poor children, many of whom pour into the Colonial
High School clinic in Orlando, where she spends her weekday
mornings.
"Most of the patients we see cannot afford to see a physician
because they can't afford to carry the insurance," she says. "It's a question of
'Do I feed my family or pay hundreds of dollars a month for insurance?' I think
there's nothing scarier than to have a sick child and have no
resources."
That is why about eight years ago, Thomas, 64, a pediatric
nurse practitioner, helped salvage from the scrap heap a school-based, community
health program, which provides free health care. It's also why, in the
afternoons, she shuttles to an Apopka clinic to care for another set of
underserved clients, many of whom are Mexican.
"Rocky is one of those
people who simply inspires those around her to be better," says Jon Schneider,
who worked with Thomas at an Eatonville clinic a decade ago and is now chief of
the University of Florida's division of adolescent medicine in Jacksonville.
"The work is never done until everyone has been served, and served as though
they were family."
Becoming a nurse is the life Thomas always craved,
even if she achieved it by a roundabout route, with stints as an English
teacher, marathoner and tennis pro, who on the juniors circuit once matched
serves with Billie Jean King.
Nowadays, guided by a simple credo -- "Do
good, be good, and press on regardless" -- it is the poor she prefers to
serve.
"The poor are going to be with us forever," she says. "We're
supposed to be our brother's keeper, supposed to help."
Families trust
her
At about 7 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, Thomas checks off her 18th and
final patient for this six-hour shift at Apopka Children's Health Center, where
she has worked for 11 years. It's Natalie Carpio, whose nagging cough and runny
nose have dimmed her normally bright disposition.
"Have your eyes been
itching?" Thomas asks.
"A little bit," says the 5-year-old girl, muffling
a cough with her hand.
After an examination, Thomas determines Natalie
has allergies.
For 12 years, Ernesto and Rosio Carpio have relied on
Thomas' care, first with their older child, and now with Natalie. "I trust her
and I always choose her to be my kid's doctor," Rosio says. "I am very happy
with her."
Today, the Carpios are as happy that Natalie's cure won't burn
a hole in their budget: The clinic accepts payments on a sliding scale. Payment
is always an issue, given many of Thomas' Apopka clients are among the 45
million uninsured Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2004
numbers.
"Insurance is not for the insured, it's for the insurance
company," Thomas says. "Why would they deny a med because it costs so much if
that's what the kid needs? That drives me to grind my teeth."
The
daughter of a successful general contractor, Adaline Tierney Sullivan never knew
need growing up in Louisville, Ky. Nevertheless, she was always troubled about
the have-nots.
She played tennis at Rollins College but during summers
taught the game to poor kids. After graduation, she taught English at Winter
Park High. After her second son was born, she attended nursing school, then
joined the pediatric intensive-care unit at Orlando Regional Medical Center.
After an 11-year stint, she decided to pursue a nurse practitioner's
license.
Looking to preserve her nursing skills while in school, Thomas
shadowed a friend who worked at the Apopka Children's Health Center and soon was
offered a job. And she has been there most afternoons ever since.
At
Colonial High, Thomas -- with help from the occasional nomadic nurse
practitioner or nursing student -- sees more than 4,000 children during a
180-day school year. Students at the school zip to the front of the line, but
the clinic also treats kids from the community.
Colonial is one of eight
school-based clinics in Orange County run by Healthcare Providers of Florida,
created by Thomas and two other nurse practitioners after a nonprofit agency
that had been running the program at several schools discontinued it in
1998.
The clinics aren't meant to be continuity-of-care facilities. But
because so many of the kids lack insurance, Thomas routinely finds serious
respiratory and even heart conditions that went undiagnosed because parents
couldn't afford a checkup.
Pressing on, despite politics
When she
was a baby, Thomas' father nicknamed her "Rocky" because she'd rock and often
bang her head.
Too often, she feels as though she's still banging her
noggin over skewed priorities. Never more so than in 2003, when she faced the
shuttering of clinics because legislators yanked funding drawn from the state's
windfall in its Big Tobacco lawsuit.
After Thomas and Pam Flaherty,
Thomas' partners in the clinic business, lobbied, money was restored. But every
year is a struggle, as funds dwindle and the need mushrooms.
Even the
walls of a Colonial clinic exam room papered with childish drawings of kids with
big smiles speak to the need: Thomas and her secretary distribute crayons and
paper so children can pass time while waiting for school physicals.
"In
July they'll start lining up outside the door at 3 a.m.," Thomas says. "I have
to sneak in the back door and I never wear my lab coat. It's just that they
[parents] want me to do the physical in the parking lot. They've taken a day off
from work, they're at risk of losing their job for doing that, and I can't see
them."
Hatchet-wielding politicians, she notes, "merely reflect our
values. That's their job -- we voted them in. I vote every time, but somehow,
what we've got in office doesn't reflect my beliefs, and I don't know how to fix
that."
But Thomas does, largely, know how to fix sick children who, by
word of mouth, wander into her examination room.
"Her whole life has been
spent trying to pay back for the gifts and opportunities she has been given,"
says Haven Sweet, an associate dean at the University of Central Florida, and
Thomas' husband of 14 years. "I think she is driven by a sense of what should
be."
Darryl E. Owens can be reached at dowens@orlandosentinel.com or
407-420-5095.
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