KSHB 41 reporter Elyse Schoenig covers the cities of Shawnee and Mission. She also focuses on issues surrounding the cost of health care, saving for retirement and personal debt. Share your story idea with Elyse.
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When Teresa Janvrin retired in May 2023 from a long, successful teaching career at Warrensburg Middle School, life threw her its biggest challenge yet.
Janvrin quickly started feeling lower back pain, which spread to her legs. She tried physical therapy and pain clinics, but it only worsened.
Then, she stopped being able to walk.
“My brain was telling my legs to do this, but they absolutely were not getting the message,” she said.
A trip to the emergency room resulted in an MRI, which showed she had a noncancerous spinal cord tumor. Spinal cord tumors make up less than 1% of all newly diagnosed tumors.
Dr. Carlos Bagley is a neurosurgeon and the medical director of the St. Luke’s Marion Bloch Neuroscience Institute. Bagley's team removed Janvrin's tumor on Sept. 5, 2023.
But from there, she had to learn to walk all over again — which wasn’t easy.
“The longer that went on, the more likely she was to never walk again or never be normal again,” Bagley said.
After weeks of rehab and therapy, Janvrin learned to walk again. She was lucky in more ways than one because her husband’s insurance was able to cover everything since she had retired.
“Getting some of those bills, thinking, oh my goodness, what would you do if you had no insurance? What would I do?” she said.
According to KFF, more than one in five U.S. adults 65 and up have some sort of medical debt. So do nearly half of adults ages 50 to 64.
“I don't know what I would have done," Janvrin said. "I mean, I would go back to teaching, I guess, and start work again and pay those off."
Sometimes, Janvrin can’t believe where she started, which is why she’s grateful today for each step she takes.
“It's one of those things where you say your life could change in an instant, but it literally did," Janvrin said.
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