i
Page 8AThe Battalion/Wednesday, April 8, 1987
Concepts of Care nurse aids Medicare patients
Woman journeys to small country towns
to minister to home-bound patients' needs
■ i ■
By April Coventry
Reporter
Margo Tadlock, her bag slung
over her shoulder, grabs a coffee
cup in one hand and her golden re
triever’s leash in the other. She
drops the bag on the floor of her
white pickup and puts her dog.
Windy, in the back.
First, it’s off to the veterinarian,
and then down Highway 21 to Mi
lano, Rockdale and Bartlett.
Her truck travels down dusty,
country roads, winding through
open spaces and small towns until
she reaches her first stop — a small
house in Milano. She jumps out of
the truck with her blue-jean bag and
a clipboard. An elderly black man
greets her, taking her inside to his
wife.
Tadlock, 27, grasps the woman’s
hand and smiles. She pulls out a
stethoscope and begins her work —
checking the woman’s heartbeat and
heartrate, taking her blood pressure,
weighing her and asking her ques
tions about her health. This is the
first thing she does with all her pa
tients. She then attends to their spe
cial needs.
lead music at the Young Life club
and has a team meeting with other
leaders each week.
cause there’s not as much of a set
routine.
But she enjoys her busy schedule
because it allows her to spend time
with people.
She worked at several camps in
the summer before her freshman
year of college and spent time with
the camp nurse, who became her
role model. Tadlock thought it
would be the ideal job because she
could work when she wanted and
also enjoy the young people. She
didn’t think about the long hours,
late shifts or physical labor that go
into a nursing career — she just
wanted to work with people.
But nursing didn’t come easy for
her.
“I’m not scientifically oriented, so
I had to work to get through, ” she
says.
Tadlock is a registered nurse for
Concepts of Care, a home health
agency. Nurses employed at the
agency carelfor patients at St. Joseph
Hospital who are covered by Medi
care. Three times a week, Tadlock
travels to towns where the hospital
has home-bound patients.
The nurse also is a Young Life
leader at A&M Consolidated High
School. Young Life is a high-school
campus ministry that allows leaders
to reach out to teen-agers and tell
them about Christ.
Tadlock spends much of her time
with senior girls at the school, helps
Tadlock attended Texas Tech
University for two years and then
went to Texas Women’s University’s
nursing school at Parkland Hospital
in Dallas.
The two-and-a-half years of train
ing at the hospital were challenging,
she says. Because there was so much
competition among the nursing stu
dents, she learned to be a fighter.
“I hated it my first year,” she says.
“The Lord used it to really stretch
me.”
After working at a hospital in Dal
las for two years, she decided to
move to College Station because her
sister lived there and because she
wanted to grow and be challenged
spiritually. She says her friends
thought she was crazy for going to
College Station.
She began working for Concepts
of Care about two years ago and pre
fers it to working in a hospital be-
Sometimes, Tadlock says, she
spends several hours at a patient’s
home just talking.
And she doesn’t mind driving to
small towns because she loves going
to the antique stores.
Her cozy home is decorated with
pieces of old furniture from garage
sales, bazaars and antique stores.
“I only bought one piece of furni
ture new,” she says.
About a year ago, the Reagan ad
ministration’s cutbacks on Medicare
began to affect Tadlock’s job. She
now has more detailed forms to fill
out on each patient so the govern
ment can ensure that each one really
needs a home nurse.
“1 love my job, but the paper
work’s a bear,” she says, laughing.
Before the restrictions were
added to home-bound patients who
receive Medicare, Tadlock worked a
longer week, bur she enjoys the
shorter hours because she can spend
more time with high-school stu
dents.
During her visits, Tadlock prac
tices a gentle-yet-firm attitude with
her patients. She holds patients’
hands as she comes and goes from
their homes. Her friendly smile and
bubbly personality seem to make
them feel comfortable.
One of her patients, an elderly, di
abetic man, had sores on his feet.
The wounds, she says, take longer to
heal because he has poor circulation,
which can be attributed to his age
and diabetes. He also was putting
Vaseline on his feet to soothe them,
but this sealed the wounds so they
wouldn’t heal. Tadlock gently
washed his feet, explaining to him
that he shouldn’t put anything on
them.
,
• ^ :
Be
Kyle V
for his
Traveling nurse Margo Tadlock continues to make house calls.
Photo by Sank BctiGwl
She laughs at the authority she
has from being an R.N. because of
her young age. She tells a story
about going to visit one of her pa
tients:
As she drove up to the man’s
house, she noticed a fire engine
parked in the front. She got out and
ran inside and saw that her patient
was being attended by two paramed
ics. Her patient thought he was hav
ing a cardiac arrest because he was
suffering from chest pains, so he
had called for an emergency vehicle.
When the paramedics saw her in
her nurse’s nametag they both took a
step back because she was a regis
tered nurse. She says they didn’t re
alize that it had been two years since
she had been around a cardiac ar
rest. She managed to remain calm as
she checked the man’s pulse rate and
other vital signs and then helped get
him into the ambulance.
She says she was really nervous,
though, and called the hospital later
to see if the man was all right.
Nurses always have a small fear that
they have diagnosed soi
wrong, she says.
Although she enjoys niira
Tadlock says her real love is
She says she is devoted to ihelj
and site wants high-school sti
to know her God.
Her dream, she says, istole
Young Life staff and shehasapd
for a staff txrsition in LubbodL—
i li n r ii t try aero;
says site will really miss LollejeV)
tion if she gets the job, but shem ^ §|7>)
to have this opportunity. ■ - -
Center gives mothers
;hance to see babies
S” II ■ i i ■
before their adoption
FORT WORTH (AP) —
Young, unwed mothers visit with
their babies for the first and last
time in a small room with a rock
ing chair at the Edna Gladney
Center, the nation’s largest pri
vate maternity home and adop
tion agency.
“It gives them an opportunity
to say goodbye,” said Eleanor
Tuck, the center’s executive di
rector, adding that limited con
tact makes separation easier for
the mother.
Adoption is the choice for 80
percent of about 300 young
women who stay at the Gladney
center each year and receive pre
natal care, counseling and school
ing, Tuck said.
This year marks the 100th an
niversary for the center, started
in 1887 by the Rev. I.Z.T. Morris
as a home for children from “or
phan trains” that started on the
East Coast.
The orphans would seek new
parents at stops along the way.
Fort Worth, being the railroad’s
last stop, had a steady stream of
homeless children left on their
Edna Gladney, a director with
the home, became superinten
dent in 1925, when Morris re
tired, and unwed, pregnant
young women eventually became
the home’s focus. The agency was
renamed in Gladney’s honor in
1956.
Gladney is credited with suc
cessfully lobbying to stop use of
the word illegitimate on birth cer
tificates. She retired in 1960 and
died one year later at the age of
75.
In 1984, two women sued the
center, claiming they were pres
sured into signing over their ba
bies for adoption, but the center
prevailed both times.
With a staff of more than 100
and a budget of more than $4
million, the center resembles a
college campus that takes up a
block near downtown Fort
Worth. It can house 174 resi
dents.
Cabins progress from fad to business
Log homes making a comeback
By Shannon Boysen
Reporter
says. “You get better control on air
loss and a natural insulation.
If the rising popularity of log
homes is an indicator of housing
fashion, Daniel Boone-style architec
ture may be making a comeback .
Wood specialist Chuck Stayton, of
the Texas Agricultural Extension
Service, says he thought log cabins
were just a fad 10 years ago. How
ever, for some people, they have
turned into a prospering business.
“The homes are not cheaper to
build, although the cost is compara
ble to conventional-type homes. The
people who buy these homes aren’t
tests have shown that when heated to
a temperature that will cause steel
beams to sag, the walls of a log home
will have only the outer half-inch to
three-quarters of an inch charred.”
Stayton says people interested in
log homes should buy one from a lo-
Spruce. Dead-standing means
has been killed by beetles,dises
blight, but has remained sta:
she says.
The Satterwhite Log Home Co. in
Longview builds about 80-100 log
homes per year, but sells enough
logs to build about 200 homes per
year in Texas alone, Stayton says.
“ There is no question about their
popularity,” he says. “In the United
States, there are over 200 log cabin
manufacturers.”
“The homes are not cheaper to build, although the
cost is comparable to conventional-type homes. The
people who buy these homes aren't looking for that,
but for the aesthetic qualities of these types of homes. ”
— Chuck Stayton, wood specialist
“The forest service in
has an annual auction to clem
these trees,” she says. “That’s
we get all our trees, except fora
from Montana. We don’t taM
trees that are alive, just ones
would have been wasted any™
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Stayton says the homes have a
number of advantages — one being
that they can be energy efficient if
built correctly.
“The typical 5.5-inch wall (in a log
home) is comparable or better than
the conventional 2-by-4 wall,” he
looking for that (cost), but the aes
thetic qualities of these types of
homes.”
The homes must be treated every
five years with an EPA-registered
wood preservative to protect them
from weathering, Stayton says,
which helps keep them from rotting
and makes them firesafe.
“Log homes are a lot safer from
fire than conventional homes be
cause of the thickness and the den
sity of the wood walls,” he says. “Lab
cal manufacturer because it’s hard to
get repairs from an out-of-state
dealer, and the local dealer will
know better how to treat wood for
the Texas climate.
Travonda Satterwhite, owner of
Satterwhite Log Homes, says she
and her husband have the ordy log
home manufacturing business in
Texas.
All the wood for their business
comes from the Rockies, Travonda
says. It is dead-standing Engelwood
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“From there, they are
what are called cams (the
into square beams); then ilwl
loaded and shipped toLongvien’I
The dry climate in Coloradi
the fact that the trees have
dead and standing for awhile,
says, helps the sap drain out
preserves them.
“Green logs mill beautiftill),
says, “but they tend towarporntj
the sap has dried out of them
Satterwhite says hercompais
to suppliers throughout a five-
area comprised of Oklal
Texas, Louisiana, Arkansai
New Mexico. They will se
homes at any stage of complex! iiiio a ( } u | (
buyer wants. : -books and
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