ST. LOUIS — Distance runners have a sense of discipline. They have goals, they reach them and move on to the next one.
There's a cross-country runner in St. Louis who has loftier goals than anything she could ever do as an athlete. There is a preciseness to everything she does.
Jordan Kantola is a 21-year-old cross-country runner for Saint Louis University.
"It's just a bunch of us working as a team for this goal, but I love the things that you learn from it, like teamwork and working hard and like working for each other," Kantola said.
And in order to work for the team, you must put in the self-imposed hours of running—50 to 55 miles per week for Jordan where she does get that runner's high.
"One of like the most rewarding feelings is working very hard and accomplishing something you never thought you could do," she said.
Unfortunately, one of the worst feelings in the world is losing your mother.
Jordan lost her mom, Marsha, when she was 12. A pulmonary embolism took her life at age 41.
"You see people talking about their parents and you just wonder, like, could my mom have helped me out in so many different ways or, I wonder things of what she would have said or like what she would have thought about where I'm at now," she said.
Six years later, Jordan's dad, Matthew, died at age 47.
"I catch myself thinking like, 'I wonder what daddy would have said,' but I can imagine his response more than I could in my mom's response. It's difficult because you never get to go back home either," she said.
Matthew was diagnosed with rectal cancer. The prognosis was good because it was caught early.
In a letter from Jordan to Missouri State Sen. Justin Brown, she wrote: "It should have been taken care of quickly and simply."
It was not. In fact, in the oncology case file cover, the quote was, "We would have already started treatment had this patient not been covered by BCBS, his insurance."
Jordan is trying to change a popular concept in the medical field called "White Bagging."
"White Bagging is where insurance companies deny patients treatment whether that be because it's cheaper to have a different medication," she said.
In addition to writing letters, Jordan has gone to Jefferson City twice now to try and get lawmakers to lessen the role of insurance companies in dealing with patients.
"I can't ever say that he would have been great because you never know. That's, it's a what-if, question, but I wonder if this hadn't have happened, would he have still been alive? And it's one of those questions that, why do I have to wonder if that was the best that could have been done," she said.
The student, the runner and now the advocate pushing for change.
"What would it mean to you if you had a role in ending white bagging, as we know it?" Frank Cusumano asked.
"It would just be relief, relief that something actually changed for the better," she said.
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