Margaret VanAntwerp: AF's Beloved Nurse Practitioner Embarks on a New Path... Retirement

Astronomers are fond of saying there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth. When it comes to ratings, five stars are all one can get and Angel Fire’s Margaret VanAntwerp consistently receives fivestar ratings for her care as a family nurse practitioner at Moreno Valley Healthcare Clinic.

Patients love how she explains conditions and treatments, takes time to answer questions, follow-ups…. She cares. Even on a snowy afternoon as VanAntwerp strolls briskly alongside her dog Ringo, her favorite walking buddy, she’s worrying about patients — two days after her last day.

VanAntwerp, a tall, willowy brunette with a dazzling smile, has been with the clinic since November 2007; but on Feb. 1, she stepped away from the job to focus on selfcare. As evidenced by her continual worry about her patients — her family — it was not a decision she made without consternation. Cancer’s return last May — after three years in remission — made the decision easier. When new rounds of chemotherapy failed to, as VanAntwerp noted on her CaringBridge site — “kick this cancers BUTT” by fall 2023, she realized it was time to give up a job she seemed destined for her whole life.

Though VanAntwerp had followed her mother’s chosen path by becoming a nurse. She was determined not to follow a second, much darker route. “The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college my mom got sick and died. That was a shocking death. She had never been sick.”

Her mother’s death from ovarian cancer made VanAntwerp swerve. Although she says, “I always wanted to be a nurse, playing with my plastic stethoscope and putting Band-Aids on the dog,” she was attending college on a violin scholarship at Texas Christian University (TCU) near her hometown outside Dallas. That year “I changed my major to nursing.”

After graduation, VanAntwerp says, “the first thing I did was run away to Colorado. I lived in Gunnison for a year, took up bartending, and I was a server. My dad said I never went anywhere unless I was driving into a blizzard!”

The middle of five children, VanAntwerp says she is close to all her siblings and her father, but she loved living in the mountains. Loved learning to ski. Still, “I got very tired of bartending, so I came back and took my nursing boards. Through one of my professors at TCU I got a job in the ICU in Fort Worth and I just loved it! In the ICU I was 100-percent responsible for one or two patients. Every detail of their care was mine.… It kind of fed into my autonomy.”

VanAntwerp enjoyed using the latest technology in the ICU, but she mostly valued the experience for the one-on-one care. “I learned so much. It honed my assessment skills. That kind of education, you can’t get that any other way.”

In 1987, she met Dave “at my ex- fiancé’s brother’s wedding.” Here VanAntwerp admits she was engaged to be married more than once. “I discovered that a good way to find out the boyfriend's true colors is to agree to marry them!”

Dave and Margaret married in 1990 and proceeded to co-parent his two children ages 8 and 10 with Dave’s ex-wife. “It was a pleasant way to raise kids because we were all on the same page.”

The demands of parenthood meant work at the ICU was no longer practical, so VanAntwerp stepped into home healthcare, which was much more flexible. Here, too, VanAntwerp says, “It was still one-on-one care.” Home hospice was not yet part of our cultural vernacular, but VanAntwerp says that’s exactly how the care often progressed. “They were my patients and when they needed hospice, I adjusted my role. I found that very satisfying.”

During that time, many of her patients were suffering from the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, so, VanAntwerp says, “For a variety of reasons they were very alone, but they had me. I was very grateful for those patients.”

At the same time, she notes, “My best friend at the home healthcare agency went back to school for nurse partitioner and at some point, in home health care, I realized I really wanted to be the person who was diagnosing and treating those patients. That’s a step or two past what a nurse does.”

Though she has her own beliefs on how nurse practitioners differ from medical doctors, the bottom line for VanAntwerp is this: “We focus on more preventative medicine, more customized plans.”

She began this new path working for a primary care doctor outside Austin where, she found, “I could be as autonomous as I wanted.

Still, as VanAntwerp’s father predicted, the mountains beckoned. When he died in 2005, Margaret and Dave began, they thought at the time, looking for investment property in Angel Fire. “As soon as we signed on the dotted line, I was thinking about how to move up here.”

On impulse she looked up the number to the local clinic and asked if there were any openings. The answer was… occasionally. “I just covered for Dr. Dennis Cohen when he would take his vacation and whenever he needed to be off.”

She also oversaw the completion of the new clinic building, thanks to (the late) Bill Norris, director of the South Central Colfax County Special Hospital District. This second (hard) hat enabled Margaret and Dave to stay in their new home, as Dave had, by then, retired. “We were out of money, and we couldn’t afford to move back!” Margaret says with a laugh.

Once the new building was completed, the clinic had room to grow, and grow it did. Margaret recalls with fondness practitioners who have since come and gone, like Louise Lewis, another family nurse practitioner. “I need to call her at some point and say, ‘What’s your advice for retiring?’

“I guess I’ve always entertained myself with other things but the more hours you work, the less time you have for other things.”

VanAntwerp says she’ll spend time with her mother’s elderly sister in Connecticut, she’ll figure out what kind of domicile (tiny house? RV?) to put on her property in Guadalupita… she’s taking up the violin again… she still loves walking with Ringo and friends… loves skiing… loves reading… and, she adds, “I would love to take a course on woodworking.”

As time passes, she will ease away from worrying about her patients, and worrying about the little clinic that has struggled in recent years to keep practitioners. “It takes a special kind of person to live here.”

Indeed, it does, Margaret. Your patients agree.