Sideline Support - Info

The story of Olinda Olson's battle with Lou Gehrig's disease (also known as ALS), is a battle that goes far beyond her husband's job coaching the girl's basketball team at Millard South high school. ALS is a crippling disease that quickly goes to work paralyzing every muscle, nerve, and organ of the body except for the eyes, heart, and brain. As Olinda's husband Rich says, "It's like being trapped in your body." However, even through the tragedy of Olinda's disease, there have come learning opportunities for the Olson's and the other people in their lives. Such has been the case for the girls of Millard South's basketball team.

In Next Exit's Sideline Support, the story of competition unfolds in an unexpected way. Not only does Olinda's disease give the girls a wider perspective on life, but Olinda herself finds many of life's rewards through her relationship with the players on the team.

Another difficult fight for the Olson's has been battling the financial costs associated with treatment of the disease. Statistics say it can cost over a quarter of a million dollars a year to pay for one ALS patient's care. A great portion of those costs for Olinda and Rich Olson come from health insurance. But early on, it was a battle to get proper coverage. Here Rich Olson describes some of the problems in getting the coverage that Olinda needed.

"It came to a point she was going to need nursing care whenever I wasn't here. I've got to work. Our insurance company at that time Blue Cross/Blue Shield would only pay three hours a day of nursing care. Well, I work more than three hours a day, so how are we going to do this? Well, this is the Olinda, this is tough, this is how she's driven. She says, 'You get on the phone. You tell Blue Cross/Blue Shield that we're gonna come down and talk to 'em.' And of course they really didn't want us to come down. They wanted to talk on the phone. I said, 'No, I'll come down.' And so we did. We arrived at Blue Cross/Blue Shield. We knew they were going to be nice to us. Olinda said to me as we were walking in, she said, 'Here's what we need, and if they won't help us, and if they won't negotiate or anything, you leave!' Because she had to be cared for. At that time she was on a ventilator. She needed suction. She needed care. She said, 'If they won't help us a little bit, I will tell you to leave, and you leave.' She's a poker player without cards, I thought. But Blue Cross/Blue Shield, they were great for us. They saw we actually had a problem here that we just couldn't solve ourselves and we couldn't solve within the parameters of our insurance policy. So they did what was necessary. They made flexibility within our particular policy, enough to provide for us. That meant some work on our part; it meant some flexibility from them. Our school district has switched from Blue Cross/Blue Shield to United Healthcare, and they have done the very same thing."