Several months ago, I went  to the City of Hope, a hospital specializing in cancer treatments, to visit a family member. Whenever the nurse came into the room , my cousin hung on every word she said. Her  actions, and her questions meant more to him than anything else in the world. That caregiver was his lifeline.

Most of us have had that moment in healthcare somewhere, when things just clicked, and we realized that we were able to have a significant impact on someone else’s life, I think that moment, no matter how cynical we may have become,  is something that turns our job into a career, or for many of us, a cause.

I bring this up as we go into 2010, because I think it is important to reflect on why we are all in healthcare in the first place. Watching my cousin go through what he did, reminded me why I got involved with Wound Care over 15 years ago.

Danny Lopez once said; ” People will tell you to find something you like and do it for a living, I say, find something you hate, and do something about it. That way, you will always have a reason to get up in the morning.”

As for my cousin, he has been in remission, and has chosen to become a RN. I am looking forward to watching how this 6′4″ former tow-truck driver evolves into the exceptional nurse I know he will become.

Over this past weekend, a true hero, a priest from the 1800’s was canonized, or identified as a saint, for his work with the victims of leporsy, now known as Hansen’s disease. The treatment of this disease was, in many ways, a precursor to the work we do in chronic wound care today.

In the late 1800’s Leporsy had begun to take a devestating toll on the Hawaiin people and afraid that it would continue to spread, King Kamehameha V, quarantined the lepers from all of the Hawaiin islands to a settlement colony known as Kalaupapa on the north side of the island of Moloka‘i.

This settlement was at the bottom of massive cliffs, on a remote part of the island. It was thought that the diseased would not have the strength to make it back to civilization.

The sufferers of this horrible disease were left with little support from the government besides food shipments. Many were too sick to fend for themselves. Anticipating that anyone living among the sick would contract the disease and die as well, few were willing to assist the residents of this “Leper Colony”. In 1873, Father Damien entered Kalaupapa. He spent his first night sleeping under a Panduus tree. He immediatly began to tend to the over 800 residents of this small remote village. He built a church and established the Parish of Saint Philomena. He helped build homes, dug graves, and tended to the wounds, ulcers and infections of the afflicted. Imagine a village where every member was suffering from intense, life threatning wounds, with no biologic products, silver dressings, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or physicians available to debride the dead tissue. Father Damien served the members of the community until he contracted the disease himself, and died sixteen years after his arrival. He was buried under the same tree that he spent his first night at the settlement. Father Damien was 49.

Father Damien treated his patients the same way the professionals of our industry tend to the chronic wound patients we treat every day.

My wife and I had the honor of hiking down to Kalaupapa last December. About 25 residents still live there with permission from the government, even though the disease was “cured” decades ago.  You must have special permission to visit Kalaupapa, and children are not allowed. My wife and I were amazed at the sheer beauty of the cliffs and how diffcult the hike was to enter Kalaupapa. Though it has an incredibly sad story to tell, this was one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited.

I feel that our industry may now have a patron saint, and regardless of your religious views or beliefs, I feel every member of our industry can find a hero and kindred spirit in Father Damien.

As many of you know, over the last several days, we have been contending with intensive out of control fires in the foothills here.

The fires have been very close to our Verdugo Hills Hospital facility. From our Wound Care Program and the Hyperbaric room, we have watched the efforts to stop this fire play out right in front of us.

I want to take a moment and express the incredible pride I have  for the sense of duty many of our team members have displayed during this time.

Karen, our Program Director for Verdugo has been evacuated from her home, however, there she was yesterday along with her team making sure the patients were treated. Several of our centers and our corporate offices are in the middle of the areas effected by these fires, yet every member of our teams have been there to take care of business. I just want to say thank you. I heard yesterday that Brent Bartlett, president of Hyperbaric Supply, has been deployed on a strike team to fight the fire towards Lancaster. We have him in our thoughts as well.

Here we go again! Hyperbaric Oxygen is one of the most effective therapies I have seen for preventing amputations, reducing healing times, and helping patients drastically improve their quality of life.  And as often happens, it gets stuffed into three familiar headings: Diving, Autisim, and Sports! This brief mention on Hyperbaric Chambers from WIRED Magazine, (by the way, great picture) highlights the ongoing lack of education regarding the proven benefits of Hyperbaric Medicine. Is it not “smart”, that people can actually keep their limbs? I have seen similiar stories over my time in this industry, most notably the myth of  Michael Jackson sleeping in a chamber.

I am glad that WIRED put in a mention of Hyperbaric Chambers, I hope more stories emerge of how beneficial and cost-effective this therapy is for medically accepted, Medicare approved indications.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is carried out in a Hyperbaric Chamber, not a glorified sleeping bag with a zipper.

The latter was initially developed for mountain climbers to recover from altitude sickness, however now it seems to be standard equipment for every baseball and football player you hear about.

The former must be a A PVHO (Pressure Vessel Human Occupancy) approved chamber, and  has several regulations it must meet. It is a drug-delivery device, since it does deliver Oxygen under pressure to the patient. UHMS (Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society) and the American College of Hyperbaric Medicine are great resources to learn more about this medical therapy. There are several manufactures that make these clinical chambers here in the US. One of the biggest, and our choice for chambers, is  Sechrist, located in CA.

I cringe each time I hear about a “bag” being referred to as a Hyperbaric Chamber.

I could scream from my soap box about this for hours, however bottom line, the true effects of Hyperbaric Therapy  change lives, and should be under the supervision of trained Physicians, using regulated and safe equipment.

Now you can climb back into your bag.

I was asked the other day to blog about my background and how I got involved in wound care. This is my attempt at describing the fantastic ride I have been on for the last eighteen years.
When I founded Wound Care Advantage in 2002, I had come from several unique experiences in our industry. I had worked as a commercial diver medic in the gulf of Mexico and off the West Coast. It was an amazing experience that gave me some great stories, (and a few less teeth) It didn’t take long to find out that I was a much better medic than I was a diver.

I jumped at the chance in 1994 to build a clinical hyperbaric center in Culver City California. My father was suffering from cancer at the time and I had become enraged at the lack of respect that he often encountered as he went from surgery to surgery. I looked forward to treating patients differently.

The day we opened that center and treated our first wound patient (all I can tell you is that maggots were involved, and not the purchased kind) I knew that this was what I would be doing in one form or another for the rest of my life. We could treat each patient with dignity and compassion, and they got dramatically better.

In 1996 three partners and myself opened Beverly Hills Hyperbarics. This was my first ownership experience, and it too, changed my life. After several years and a great deal of success, I felt the urge to get back into Wound Care. Going from Beverly Hills treating celebrities and post-surgical patients to the San Fernando Valley treating the worst of the worst wounds, was quite a change of pace, and it made feel as though I had found my purpose again.

In the middle of all of this I found an amazing woman to put up with me ( I am still learning Macedonian) we got married and settled down in a small town close to Pasadena called Sierra Madre, which is where Wound Care Advantage is based so I can walk to the office. We have two fantastic boys and I enjoy being a dad more than anything I have ever done.

In my spare Time I joined the Sierra Madre Volunteer Fire Department, and the funny thing is that I think fighting fires prepared me better for running my own company than anything else I could have done!

In 2002, I started what was then “Healing Services Consulting” (Now you know why we changed it to Wound Care Advantage) to focus on what I saw as a void in our industry; A management company intent on being considered the best partner possible, affordable, and focused on small community hospitals that had largely been ignored by many of the bigger companies. I avoided investors so that the company would remain dedicated to the mission.

We opened Lancaster Community Hospital Wound Care Advantage in 2002,  and had a great time building the program. The team became a family, and that is exactly the environment we have diligently tried to recreate in each new center we start. If there is a mistake to make in our industry, I have made it, possibly twice. However, over the next few years I was fortunate to have a team work with me that also saw my vision and were a lot smarter than me.

We developed e-wound and incorporated the coolest tool ever; HIPPA Compliant video-telemedicine program, into our operations.

We kept tweaking our models with the help of Hospital CEO’s and CFO’s that we were already working with allowing hospitals to choose the package that best meets their needs.

Through all of this we have grown into a national company with centers in eight states, and more on the way. We continue to value our status as a “best partner” above all else.

I am looking forward to what comes next, however to date, it’s been one heck of a ride!

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