Good morning everybody and welcome to the Balancing Act.
We're so glad you joined us this morning.
I'm Julie Moran. And I'm Olga Villaverde.
Today we continue our special series on rehabilitation
hospitals as I head back to HealthSouth, a great place,
Julie. They provide important services
to patients who have been in an acute care hospital, recovering
maybe from an injury or illness, but they're not ready to go home
yet. And speaking of injury, we've
got the story of survival from one courageous young man, and
new technology that helped him get back on his feet.
This is a great show. Lots of hope here.
The Balancing Act starts right now.
(music). Advancements in medical
technology continue to help improve all of our lives.
Today we're focusing at the forefront of wound healing,
dramatic new ways to improve long term recovery and joining
me is Dr. Mark Robbins, an emergency care provider, and
specialist in wound and hyperbaric medicine from Salt
Lake City, Utah, and Marty Smithson, a college student with
his amazing survival story. I just want to welcome you both.
Thank you for being here, and Marty, I want to get right to
you. Alright.
This is a pretty amazing story. You and some buddies thought
you'd just take a little hike in January, in the Utah mountains
and just take me from there. What happened?
It was a crazy day, so it was just a warm day, so I wasn't
really dressed for snow hiking at all.
Right. We went up and it just kind of,
we got stuck in a bad situation, and we eventually got to the
sign and it said that it was like three and a half miles to
keep going forward down the snowy trail.
The snow just got so cold I couldn't feel my feet.
It was ridiculous. My shins got so scraped up, just
from trudging through the snow, and I actually like, we found
this fire. Like, this couple was camping
like a mile from the end. They let me go and warm up my
feet and like, she was like where's your left shoe?
and I didn't even realize I lost my shoe two miles before that,
and my feet were so cold. So, you're walking through the
snow, without a shoe, you probably started out down below,
near BYU in 60 degree weather. How cold is it now?
It was like 20 degrees. So, they let you warm up by the
fire. You continued walking though,
right down by the bottom of the mountain.
Yeah, they tried to carry me at first, because my left foot was
really bad. My right foot, for some reason,
they had one extra, like clean sock, so I was able to help my
right foot, but my left foot was still in pretty bad shape, so
they tried to carry me. That just wasn't working, so I'm
just like, okay, I'm going to have to tough through this, and
put my frozen foot back in my frozen shoe.
Just finish the hike and get to the car.
We called a friend because we finally got cell service.
Doctor, I have to turn to you. I mean, when you saw him, and
you made that initial assessment of him, did you think he could
have a full recovery? What were your thoughts when you
saw him? The thing he forgot to tell you
here is he was wearing shorts and tennis shoes in this
weather. Oh my gosh.
So, what we saw were two distinctly different type of
wounds. First one was the frost bite of
his toes, and the bottom of his foot.
But, the more dramatic appearance was the front of his
shins. I mean, each step that he took,
the ice crystals served as sort of an abrasive, like a sand
paper that just chewed up his legs, so by the time he saw me
he really had lost an entire layer of skin on the front of
both of his shins. Now, there's a new product out
here, called Dermapure. Is that how this comes into play
with Marty? I mean, you knew about this
product and you said "he needs this."
Well, the center portion of each shin was so deep it was down to
muscle tissue, so basically we needed to have something to
cover it with, and the options were skin grafts or this new
product that we had heard about, so we gave this a try.
And, you're going to tell me it worked, right?
It worked great. He grew new skin over the area,
and had a remarkable recovery on that.
Doctor, was Dermapure initially created for diabetes patients
who sometimes lose a toe or have problems with skin ulcers?
Let me tell you about diabetics. They are fast becoming probably
the most common disorder in America today and it involves
loss of circulation, and the area affected the most is the
feet, ankles and feet below, so quite often, in fact about 20%
of these are going to lose enough circulation in their feet
that they develop spontaneous ulcers or wounds in the feet
that just don't heal. Eventually, if they're not
treated aggressively or recognized right off the bat,
they may progress to amputations.
They frequently do. So, some of the newest products
in would care today involve what we call skin substitutes, or
developing skin substitutes so that we don't have to use the
traditional skin grafts, so the developments come mostly from
that side of the market. Got it.
But we can use it on just about any situation where we would
need to use a skin graft. So, doctor, tell me how
Dermapure works. It's actually a donated skin
tissue from the makers of Dermapure, Tissue Regenix
developed a technique to remove the parts of the cells that will
create an allergic reaction to the host, and it leaves us with
just the matrix, or the substances of the cell that are
most important for wound healing, such as the collagen,
and it creates basically a scaffold that allows the new
tissue, the regenerating tissue, to cross over and regenerate
within that substance. And when we come back we will
hear more about Marty's story and how modern medicine and
great doctors are truly working miracles.
Stay with us. (music).
We're back and we're speaking with Dr. Mark Robbins,
specialist in wound and hyperbaric medicine from Salt
Lake City, Utah and Marty Smithson, a frostbite survivor.
Marty, after this whole incident, did you ever think
knowing how badly damaged your feet and shins were, that a
product like Dermapure and meeting this doctor could help
you to a full recovery? It was pretty crazy.
There was like a big a hole in my shins.
They were all red. I couldn't feel my left foot at
all. And you told me during the break
that the people following you could only find you by your
bloody trail in the snow. That's pretty intense.
Yeah, I had to keep pushing down that mountain because if I
wouldn't have, something worse could have happened.
Absolutely. And doctor, when you saw him,
did you really think that you could, using a product like
Dermapure, actually bring him to a full recovery?
Well, it is a tissue product. It is skin tissue.
I had several experiences with it that were very positive at
the time, so yeah we thought this would be a very good trial.
Well doctor, any closing thoughts, just about, I mean
this product is for patients with diabetes, it's for
adventurers, just closing thoughts on this.
Well, adventurers I would recommend being well prepared
for the elements at all time, even if it's a n ice warm day.
Yeah. But that kind of goes without
being said, and I think Marty could attest to that too.
Yeah, for sure. For diabetics, I think the most
important thing we can recommend here is daily foot care.
Daily foot checks. Even a small callus that looks
like it's developing, go see your physician, because the
earlier we can treat these, the better successes we have.
Well, thank you both for being in the studio today.
Amazing story, I mean, and a happy ending.
Thankfully. Yeah.
And if you would like additional information on this segment, or
other issues related to diabetes and wound care, visit us at
TheBalancingAct.com or go hyper social.
Log on to Facebook.com/TheBalancingActFans
(music).
Our Health Matters series on inpatient rehabilitation
continues this morning with part 3.
In fact, once again, I am on location at HealthSouth, one of
the premier inpatient rehabilitation hospitals in the
country, with over 100 hospitals nationwide.
I'm joined once again by Dr. Dexan Clohen, Healthsouth's
chief medical officer, and Dr. Cheryl Miller, national director
of therapy operations. Ladies, we've talked so much
about HealthSouth in the last two segments, and today I kind
of want to touch upon what someone can expect if maybe they
or a loved one has to come here. Dr. Clohan, let me start with
you. How does the process of being
admitted start in the hospital? Typically, a patient before
coming to us, is already in an acute care hospital in the
community. Perhaps they've had a stroke,
been in a serious accident and had a brain injury, amputation,
any kind of serious thing that leaves them unable to do their
daily functions. The physician at their hospital
might refer them and say "you're going to need post acute care,
more care after the acute care hospital rehabilitation."
Remember, I mentioned to you and your viewers, it's important to
distinguish between a rehab hospital and a rehab center.
Right. So people who have complex
needs, that want intensive therapy, who really need help to
get back to their daily living, we believe a rehab hospital is
the right place to come. So, Dr. Miller, when they get
here, this might seem like a little silly here, but what
personal items can they bring? Well, I think the important
thing is that they bring, first of all, the things that are
going to make them feel comfortable, like from home.
It's different for each person. Sometimes it's the clothes they
wear, but what's really important is that they bring
things that they can use to participate in our therapies.
We want them to bring regular clothes to get dressed into.
We want them to wear safe shoes, because we're going to get them
up and walking, hopefully. We want them to bring anything
that they're going to need to participate in therapy and
receive their care. It's very hard work when you
find yourself with such a disability that you need
rehabilitation care. The patients themselves are
going to have to work hard, as well as the therapy team helping
them. Sometimes when people come,
they're really at a very low point in their lives.
Sure. It takes a lot of encouragement
to get them going. And when they get here and
they've arrived with their bags and their personal items and
they're ready to go, how do you decide what that treatment will
be for that person? A physician oversees the care
here. It's a hospital, and they are
going to be seen regularly by a physician, and then the
physician will also make determinations about the types
of therapy and would call in therapists and work
collaboratively with therapists to design a program that would
be specific to that patient. What are some of the specific
therapies that a patient can expect, when they get here?
So, the typical therapy that patients would receive here at
HealthSouth include the first of course as physical therapy.
Physical therapy is working on the patient's mobility again.
So, their ability to walk, and get into the car, and get into
the bathroom, just be able to move around again.
In many environments, they work on strength, coordination, range
of motion, endurance, but in this environment, we're really
concerned with mobility at home again.
The second one is occupational therapy.
That is a therapy that is really aimed at using meaningful
occupations in their therapy, so we try to interject in the
therapy sessions, things that were important to the patient.
So, if prior to coming to us, they enjoyed knitting or cooking
or cleaning, not many of us enjoy that, but if they enjoy
those types of activities, we want to use those activities in
the therapies. The third common therapy that
they're going to get would be speech therapy, and this is very
much based on their individual impairment, so if they have
difficult communicating or they have impaired thinking or
cognition, we call it, then they might get some speech therapy as
well. And I've come to know this place
very well, and I was actually able to see another kind of
therapy, which was so sweet to see, it's a pet therapy.
Tell me about that, Dr. Miller. Well, there's many adjuncts we
want to provide to our patient's experience, and pets are such a
big part of our lives, that engaging with a pet is a very
warm and fun experience for patients, and sometimes it makes
them perform, they'll do things with the pet they wouldn't
normally do. Thank you so much for sharing
Molly with us. Doctor, how does technology also
play a role here? We use very sophisticated
equipment and we use very basic equipment, so sometimes it could
be as basic as using ball or weights.
Sometimes it could be as sophisticated as using robotic
gait training, where you actually have a machine that can
assist a patient, support their body weight, help them walk on a
treadmill, with robotic arms attached to their legs to help
them walk. But I think it's also important
to understand that technology is an adjunct to the services that
we provide, so having a competent therapist that can use
the technologies is an important part of adding technology into
our setting. Great staff.
Great technology, and Molly, Molly is great.
Thank you so much for your time. We'll see you again for part 4.
Perfect. And the website again for our
viewers? HealthSouth.com
HealthSouth.com Thank you ladies.
And if you'd like to learn more about HealthSouth or anything
related to this segment, go to our website TheBalancingAct.com.
TheBalancingAct.com. (music).
It's Everyday Gourmet time, and today on the menu, quick and
easy dinner solutions with no mess, and it all starts with
Maruchan Ramen Noodle Bowls. Today, we're adding a
southwestern flair to this oriental classic American
Family's love. I'm in the mood for a fun and
easy dinner tonight. How do Maruchan bowls sound to
everybody? Perfect.
How about spicy chicken for me? And what flavor do you kids
want? Beef.
Beef for me too. Awesome.
Perfect. With several flavors to choose
from, it's easy to make a dinner everyone will love with no mess,
and talk about an easy cleanup. Tonight, we're eating right out
of the noodle bowls. I'm going to add some avocado,
cilantro, and chopped tomatoes for a southwestern theme.
Does that sound good? Yeah, it sure does.
Great. To prepare, unwrap each bowl and
peel the lid back half way. Remove both flavor packets.
Jessica, could you please add water to the bowls?
Add flavor packet #1 first, and then add water to the fill line.
While the bowls are cooking, thinly slice some avocado.
Finely chop some cilantro. You don't need much.
A little goes a long way. Then, dice a tomato.
When the bowls are done, add flavor packet #2 and stir.
Top with your tomatoes, avocado and cilantro.
Serve with your favorite bread and enjoy.
That was delicious. It was Mom, thanks.
And the best part is, no fighting about whose turn it is
to clean up. Awesome.
Okay, let's see, I was counting and it looks like all they had
to clean up was a little bit of silverware and a cutting board.
Wow, that is my kind of cleanup. Head to Maruchan.com for more
great ideas and you can find Maruchan Ramen Noodles in the
soup aisle of your local supermarket.
Don't forget to check out our website, as well,
TheBalancingAct.com. (music).
Thanks so much for waking up with us today.
Absolutely. And be sure to check out our
website, TheBalancingAct.com with lots more info there for
you. And don't forget about Facebook
and Twitter. Look us up there.
Alright. We'll see you again next time.
Remember, though, find your balance.
So long, everybody. (music).