13 Apr
by Derrick Vander Waal
SIOUX CENTER – Kari Johnson reached her breaking point on Saturday, Oct. 25.
SIOUX CENTER – Kari Johnson reached her breaking point on Saturday, Oct. 25.
The 38-year-old Le Mars woman started drinking at about noon that day. After having several drinks throughout the day, Kari called a church friend who came to pick her up from the bar and had her stay overnight at her house.
“I just released everything that had been going on to her,” she said.
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| Kari Johnson has experienced a major turnaround in her life. She credits the help of caring people from various organizations, such as Promise Community Health Center, for the roles they played in her success story. |
Kari’s friend and her pastor’s wife put her in touch with ATLAS of Sioux Center, and she had an appointment there on Thursday, Oct. 30. The ATLAS representative arranged for her meet with an alcohol counselor about 20 minutes later.
The counselor told her she also needed to see a medical provider, and she walked into Promise Community Health Center in Sioux Center at about noon that day and had an appointment a little over an hour later.
She saw family nurse practitioner Beth Strub.
“She was wonderful,” Kari said. “She cares. She really does. She really cares.”
Promise’s outreach office also helped to arrange for insurance coverage for her while she was there that day.
She returned to Promise a week later because she needed to have a physical before she left on Nov. 11 for alcohol treatment at New Life Treatment Center in Woodstock, MN. Despite dealing with an illness for much of her monthlong stay there, the treatment was successful in initiating change in her lifestyle, and she returned home on Dec. 12 as a new person.
She hasn’t had a drink since. She started a new job that she loves with Bethany Christian Services in Orange City on Jan. 20. The single mother of four children and one grandchild also is more attentive to her two children who still live at home.
“It’s been really overwhelming. That’s the only way that I can describe it,” Kari said. “I don’t know how I used to make it. It’s overwhelming how God has really blessed me. Yet, I’ve made sacrifices. I had to change my playgrounds and playmates, but I like a challenge, and that’s how I have to look at every day – as a challenge.”
Kari said she’s incredibly grateful for the role that Sioux Center organizations such as ATLAS and Promise played in her life change, along with caring friends and her church.
“Without the collective support of everyone, I wouldn’t be where I am today, but different people loved on me,” she said. “They just all loved on me and encouraged me. In a time where I couldn’t see – I felt like I was drowning – they were there to tell me it was going to be OK, and they were absolutely right.”
At her next appointment with Strub at Promise in May, Kari hopes to tackle her next addiction: smoking.
“Beth Strub is really adamant that I stop smoking, but if you quit too early, you can relapse, so we don’t want that to happen,” she said. “So, I guess that’s my next challenge.”
Promise Community Health Center, headquartered in Sioux Center, is the only Federally Qualified Health Center in the far northwest corner of Iowa. To learn more, visit www.promisechc.org.
