The Sharp Experience Documentary Video: Episode 11

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Transcript

911: He fell from a tree, fell on an object….

Zach, Ben's Son: My dad, he has something in his back. It’s metal … it’s something metal. He can’t feel his legs.

Makua: I surf all the big wave tours … chasing the biggest, baddest things you’ve ever seen.

Dr. Brian Weeks: You can see that light moving in his face. We can’t afford to have Makua’s balance affected, because it could really be life or death in his situation.

Colleen Murphy, RN: Every human being has a story. And we intersect with that story at some of the most traumatic times in people’s lives.

Gino: Daniella is here, Anabella is here and Camilla is here.

Dr. Sean Daneshmand: When Gino asked me, "So everything is good, Dr. D, right now? Are we good for at least two weeks?" Well, it’s a day-by-day kind of thing.

Angie: We don’t count the weeks here … we count the days.

Announcer: These are stories of real people. These are stories of The Sharp Experience.

911: Medical emergency.

Zach: My dad he’s laying there — don’t move! — and he thinks he is close to paralyzed. He thinks if he moves, he’ll probably be paralyzed.

911: Copy that CMT 4, you have (overtalking).

Anna Lou, Ben's Mom: Zach called and said, Grandma, we need you immediately. Dad fell on a stake and I called 911.

Dana, Surgical Technician: It’s usually the ghost hour, the 10 to 11, the end of our shift when all the major traumas happen. 

911: He fell from a tree, impaled object.

Zach: He’s stabbed.

911: He’s stabbed?

Zach: He has something in his back. It’s metal, it's something metal. He can’t feel his legs and he’s bleeding.

911: OK, so it’s like a tree?

Manya, RN: It went through his lower back into his pelvis. I am expecting to transfuse a lot of blood on this patient, I’m expecting there to be a large vessel injury. And that he’s going to bleed out. I’m concerned he’s going to bleed out.

911: So do you know what happened?

Zach: We have an avocado tree in our backyard, he was picking them, and there’s a big dip, he didn’t see it. He flipped over and he fell down. He’s laying there.

Dr. Gregory Imler: I can’t get to all of the potential injuries; the best place for us to look is through a front approach. And obviously with 12 inches of metal sticking out of his back, we couldn’t lay him on his back. We had to cut the fence post off at the skin. So I immediately asked one of the nurses to call engineering.

Drew, Engineering: I wasn’t really sure what we were going to be up against. So I tried to grab a little bit of everything. I was thinking I was just going drop this stuff off, but they asked me to meet them in the OR. I had no idea that it would be me in that operating room.

Anna Lou: A thought ran through my mind that possibly he could be paralyzed.

Dana: We had to cut off about a foot of it just to get him onto the bed and the second foot was still inside of him.

Dr. Imler: Once we turned him over I could feel the other end of the metal object in his abdomen. We found a way that we thought that it would be safe to pull the metal object out, put some vice grips on that, literally.

You guys have blood, right?

Operating Room (OR) Team: Yeah. We have blood, yeah.

Dr. Imler: It had gone through part of the pelvis and had lodged in a rather thick area of bone.

Dana: It took three guys to hold him down while I pulled. That’s how hard I was pulling. Launched this thing out, and it went flying across the room and it was just, it was unreal.

Dr. Imler: We’re going to want a reticulator.

Manya: Prepping to do the exploratory laparotomy to see what’s going on inside his belly.

Dr. Imler: Looking first for you know, major vascular injuries which could be, you know, very quickly life threatening. It was very close to a couple of the arteries. 

OR Team: One unit of blood.

Give me some (surgical) please. 

Dr. Imler: A lot of our training is knowing what parts belong where. And when they’re not in the right place to figure out how to get them back.

Zach: It was really really dark so you couldn’t really see good down here. We only had flashlights, the rest was literally pitch black so he was about right here.

He was reaching, reaching, reaching — he fell down right there. The thing that he landed on was the thing like this, except it was way longer. And it was stuck in his back.

Ben: I landed and I didn’t want to panic my kids at first so I started trying to move. And I couldn’t move my torso, I couldn’t move anything. So, God, and then I tried to move my, my feet, my toes. And I couldn’t feel my toes and I thought wow this is really, really, really bad.

Zach: If he was an inch to the left he could have been dead. It was really, really scary. Yeah. 

Ben: Legs work fine. Everything works fine.

Dana: Lucky guy! Incredibly lucky guy.

Dr. Imler: Impalements are not exactly routine for, I don’t think, any trauma surgeon.

Dana: To think about having a foot-sized piece of steel inside of you, yeah. And survive and live to tell about it.

Ben: When I came home after two weeks and saw my boys I just, you know, go up and give them hugs because I, you know, I’m just very, you know just very glad.

It really strengthened that gratitude that I have for having these wonderful kids in my life.

Drew: Here’s the work order. And it says assisted in surgery to remove fence post from patient.

Makua: I surf all the big wave tours, chasing the biggest, baddest things you ever seen Mother Nature throw at you.

Robert, Strength Coach: There’s probably only 25 people on the planet that are capable of riding waves of this magnitude.

His claim to fame for the outside world is that he caught one of the world’s biggest waves.

Makua: It looked like the whole ocean had stood up all at one time.

Robert: He was 17, and it really just changed his life.

Dr. Brian Weeks: Makua surfs the largest waves in the world, the difference between life and death is often falling or not falling on a wave. How were the waves when you were back home?

Makua: Oh we had pipeline like as good as it gets.

Dr. Weeks: Are you serious? 

Makua: Yeah. I was supposed to have nasal surgery since I was a kid, I was telling you, you’ll probably find some stuff in there that you probably never seen, you know?

Dr. Weeks: One of Makua’s symptoms has been some instability or just imbalance. This poor guy’s nose needs so much help. Makua, it's amazing to see kind of what your poor nose has been through, my friend. The procedure Makua is going to have is balloon sinuplasty. I’m excited to take care of you…. Basically open up the nasal and breathing passages and get him back to functioning normal again. Otherwise I’ll see you at Sharp at 7.

Makua: Right on. Thank you doctor.

Dr. Weeks: You’re welcome. Have a great day.

Makua: OK.

Dr. Weeks: Bye … see you, man.

Robert: He has been, as a young kid, rushed to the hospital several times having episodes of sinus attacks. There you go, that’s opening up.

Makua: I was in the hospital nine months out of the year, basically breathing out of a straw my whole life.

Dr. Weeks: Most people that have had trouble as long as Makua, their baseline has shifted. I mean they really don’t remember what it feels like to breathe normally.

Makua: This you know little kid not being able to breathe like I’m going to make it.

Robert: One, two.… I’m making sure that he stays in the best shape of his life. Because his life will be in danger any time he’s out there.

Makua: You know you hit, ohhh, and all your air is out, and you still have to stay out there, you don’t have a referee, you don’t have a medic. Every other sport in the world, something goes wrong, someone is there. Oh pause, time-out. Surfing there is no time-out.

Dr. Weeks: This morning what we’re going to do is we’re going to utilize balloon sinuplasty™ technology with minimally invasive techniques. Basic for the patient it means that we don’t have to cut that soft, very sensitive tissue. And because of that we have less bleeding, less pain, faster recoveries … all the good stuff.

Julie, RN: Dr. Weeks is doing the septoplasty bilateral resection, maxillary ostiotoma bilateral submucosal resection and bilateral nasal endoscopy with sinus lavage. He’s going to fix your nose.

Dr. Weeks: This is a purely outpatient procedure. He comes in in the morning and before lunch he’ll be home and in his own bed. He’s not going to be debilitated in any way.

Makua: Aha….

Dr. Weeks: Ready to fix you up. All right buddy, well listen we’re going to take good care of you, I treat everyone like family and….

You know, surgical treatment can cure a problem in a matter of an hour. And really completely turn somebody’s life around so this is really at the end of the day why I’m a surgeon and why I do what I do.

Unfortunately Makua has broken his nose probably five times. Been hit in the face with surfboards. Just a really disrupted airway on both sides. On a scale of 1 to 10, his would be a 9.9. Instead of using instruments that cut and remove bone, we’re using an instrument that we place inside of a blocked passage and dilate. It's very similar you know to cardiac angioplasty. Everything that’s there has a purpose. And if you don’t have to remove things that are made to be there, that’s better for the patient.

House lights off, please.

And the reason the technology works is we’re dealing with very, very thin, paper-thin bone and the balloon is a very high-pressure device. OK, I’ll take the maxillary balloon. That balloon when it's inflated it will micro fracture that bone and then it will heal in that open position. So what I’m going to do now is look down on his cheek, you can see that light moving in his face, so there’s no doubt that I’m in the right position within his sinus. OK, so now we’re going to gently inflate the balloon. Beautiful, that’s great. To me that picture right there is the essence of balloon dilation. There’s absolutely zero bleeding, so we’ve done one side and we’ll go ahead and get ready to treat his other side. He will be good to go.

To me the art of medicine is connecting with the patient on a personal level. I mean there’s no question that outcomes are better when patients trust and when patients feel an emotional connection.

I just want to tell you everything went perfect buddy, OK? Could not have been better.

You got one day and you’ll be like a new person tomorrow. OK? All right, my brother.

Physician Assistant: Take a deep breath. Exactly. All right, I’ll see you next week, right?

Makua: Right.

Dr. Weeks: Air is hitting places that it's never hit before.

Makua: It feels like all tingly.

Dr. Weeks: Like you can’t believe. You’re healing beautifully, my friend, absolutely beautifully.

Makua: Thank you.

Dr. Weeks: No limitations, back in the water, everything, surf today if he wants.

Robert: Perfect.

Dr. Weeks: This is the standard of care now in sinus surgery.

Makua: (Deep breath) Amazing, life changing, doctor … life changing. Thank you so much. It’s a whole new world now.

Bob: There’s a lot of bicyclists. And I get to know a lot of them because I try to come over here quite, quite a bit. We can go a little bit slower, right? And then we….

Dr. Raghava Gollapudi: He’s got severe aortic stenosis which is a narrowing of the heart valve, so blood can’t get out of the heart. Blood backs up into the lungs and patients become short of breath with exertion.

Anita, Bob's Wife: There’s quite a difference in this man, from what he was before.

Dr. Robert Adamson: We can restore his life, not only lengthen it, but we can restore it back to health. He’s an avid cyclist, who actually cycled clear across the United States.

Bob: We had to average 85 miles a day. And I was 68 at the time. They’re going to replace my aortic valve. I’ll be able to bike with Manny.

Manny: Actually that’s not going to be too hard. 

Bob: You know what? When you ride that bike you’re a kid again. And what better, what better thing to have when you’re 84 years old.

Anita: Thirty years, and not one fight.

Bob: Maybe we better start one. We’ve traveled the world together. We just, we’re just one, we’re just simpatico. What more can I say? God gives you what you ask sometimes, and if you grab it, you’ll win.

Anita: Without him, won’t be my life.

Dr. Gollapudi: We’re going to be replacing his old aortic valve with a new aortic valve without having to open up the chest. Now, for Bob this is great because he’s already had open-heart surgery once, and this just makes it so much easier for him.

You have any questions for me?

Bob: No, I think we’ve talked a lot.

Dr. Gollapudi: (Laughs)

Bob: I didn’t want my chest opened again.

Anita: We thought he had no options to make his life better.

Bob: I didn’t even know this was available until recently. And it hasn’t been available….

Anita: Brand, brand-new.

Tina Orsag, Cardiovascular Technician: You all right? You ready?

Every patient that walks through our doors, you know, we really take that patient into our arms and just help them feel comfortable. Them and their family.

Dr. Adamson: If he chose not to have this procedure, the only thing he could look forward to was progressive shortness of breath. Eventually being bedridden and dying of heart failure.

Anita: Love you. OK, all right, it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK.

Dr. Gollapudi: Today’s procedure in terms of complexity is a 10 out of 10. It’s the most complex procedure that I do. It’s extremely high risk. We have 16 people in the room, 6 doctors, 4 different specialties, all working together as a team to make sure we have a great outcome for Bob.

Dr. Adamson: An 80-year-old enjoys waking up tomorrow just as much as a 10-year-old. Tomorrow is all we all have.

Dr. Gollapudi: We take this new valve, and we place it on a balloon, we crimp down so we can get to the patient’s arteries in his groin.

Dr. Adamson: Make a little incision right here.

OR Team: Pigtail going in.

Dr. Gollapudi: What I do, as an interventional cardiologist, is I implant the valve itself.

OR Team: Balloon’s going in. And inject please. Going up.

Dr. Gollapudi: That is the patient’s new aortic valve.

Tina: Every patient is important. Just knowing what their lifestyle was like before, what they hope to achieve by getting this procedure, it really hits home for me. So when we deployed that stent I was internally cheering.

OR Team: We’ll just take a quick pressure measurement….

Dr. Gollapudi: Patients are able to go home in two to three days and they do as well as they would have with traditional open-heart surgery. That’s the best thing. Let’s go talk to the family.

Hello! How are you doing?

Anita: Smiling … you’re smiling.

Dr. Gollapudi: Everything went great.

Anita: It’s OK?

Dr. Gollapudi: He did really, really well.

Patients are able to go back to biking or go back to walking normally. They can try to live for that next birthday or that next anniversary.

Tina: I was thinking about you the whole time I was in there. 

Anita: Oh, thank you.

Tina: No problem. He did well.

Anita: Now I can cry. I’m just so happy.

Tina: Just the worry she must have felt every morning. That you know, you want your husband there when you wake up, your best friend, and so now she got him back. So I’m happy for Anita.

Bob and Anita: (Inaudible)

Ellie Matthews, RN: If he would have had open-heart surgery he would have been in the surgical intensive care unit for days on end. Lots of rehabilitation afterward so this is remarkable.

Eleven times around is a mile.

Bob: I might take off here.

Anita: It will be wonderful to see him coming around the corner.

Bob: All I had to do was step on the pedal. (Laugh) Back in the saddle again. How lucky can you get? This new procedure comes along just when I, I need it. I don’t think I would have finished the year.

Anita: You look so good. You’re just so fast, you look so good.

Bob: Baby, I dropped them off.

My hope is that we’ll soon be able to hit the road and get a few little trips in.

Anita: I don’t think it's going to be too long the way he’s going. He’s ready to go.

Bob: I’m back!

Anita: Love you, honey.

Bob: Great life.

Anita: Great life. And now we have more of it.

Bob: Now we have more of it.

Claudia: Mommy has breast cancer. You think about a lot of things. I think, mostly for me, I mean, at least give me a few more years to finish raising my son.

Pat Nemeth, Architect: We asked every subcontractor, "How many of you had had a family member have cancer?" And up the hands go. "Did you feel hopeless about that?" And up the hands go. "Would you like to be part of healing cancer patients?" And up every hand in the room goes.

Claudia: Everyone has cancer. Like everyone. I’m going through it physically, but my mom, my aunts, my cousins, my brothers, they all feel my pain.

Pat: This project was thought of through the eye of a cancer patient.

Claudia: You don’t know if you’re going to go through another holiday with your families. You don’t know if you’re going to be there for your son’s graduation, when he gets married….

Pat: I want the spaces we build to take the fear out of healing. Wow, wow, unbelievable.

Jonathan Clowes, Artist: We would like folks that are suffering to have some hope, to raise their spirits. Even medically they have found that taking care of the aesthetic or spiritual side of a person is every bit as important as the physical side of a person.

Pat: I’m absolutely part of the process of healing. This is where my heart belongs.

Radiation Technologist: You ready?

Claudia: Yes. Today, I’m starting my radiation for six and a half weeks. I’m not fearful; I know that the treatment I am getting is going to work. I feel confident.

Pat: You lie next to a machine that is behind you, to serve you, not to intimidate you. If you have a cancerous tumor, these are the rooms you want to be in.

Dr. Phillip Zentner: The level of accuracy on this system is extremely accurate, it’s submillimeter accuracy. We can see at a whole different level exactly what we’re doing.

Claudia: You have such a storm inside your mind. When you walk into a place that was built for you in mind, I think that’s reassuring. It’s a healing, from the moment that you walk in, and you feel that. You know that you’re in the right place.

Dr. Marilyn Ortuno Norton: If you feel loved, if you feel comfort, if you feel like there’s an entire team that’s behind you, that’s helping you with your new cancer diagnosis, that in itself, it’s part of healing.

Claudia: I see the future, it’s not so gray anymore. There’s always hope.

Angie: (Starts singing German lullaby) Well I usually sing to all of my kids including my boys, but it's in German. It's like a Christmasy, fall tradition. (Continues singing lullaby)

I would wake up in the middle of night and just kind of shake him and say, Baby, three? I mean really, three? And he would look at me and go, Yeah, Baby, three.

Gino, Angie's Husband: The one that’s by itself is, is it Camilla (Angie laughs) or Daniella?

Angie: Daniella.

Gino: Daniella is by herself.

Angie: So she’s fraternal.

Gino: Yeah, but I have no clue where she is. 

Angie: Baby!

Gino: Like, if I point … I forgot, don’t they move? OK, so Daniella is here. Right?

Angie: Mm-hmm.

Gino: Anabella is here and Camilla is here.

Angie: There you go, good job for you.

Gino: I kinda guessed but I got it.

Angie: I went to a routine checkup with my doctor.

Dr. Sean Daneshmand: Unfortunately at 26 ½ weeks all of a sudden there was a fluid discrepancy.

Angie: We saw that the liquid for Baby B was too low and for C was a little high. 

Dr. Daneshmand: So that was time to say, Angie, we belong in the hospital now.

Angie: And I said, Wait, right now, right now? And he said, Yeah, right now, right now.

Dr. Daneshmand: Angie spends weeks here. It's not easy; she’s got two kids at home. She’s got a husband at home; she’s got a life at home. But she does everything to make sure that these three babies do well. That’s powerful.

Angie: I was admitted when I was 27 weeks. And tomorrow I’ll be 30 weeks.

Gino: The other day one of the nurses called Angie and I heard it through the speakerphone. "Are you home?" It sounded funny, but it is home.

Toni Hicks, RN: They’re taken away from everything that’s normal. So by telling them, You know, I understand that this is really hard for you. That’s huge for our patients.

Angie: This is our date night that we never get at home.

Karen Anderson, Social Work Supervisor: Good morning. Ready for your tour? Our goal is for you to see a little bit what the NICU looks like. Because it's pretty likely that triplets are going to end up there.

Toni: The risk of having a premature baby is that their lungs are not completely developed. They could have brain bleeds.

Angie: You hear a lot of stories, um, you know of triplets who don’t make it or especially the identical twins. The body absorbs one of them.

Karen: Now a baby like this, even though he’s in the isolette, can be taken out and held by the parents. We do what’s called kangaroo care.

Angie: I didn’t see it as a sad place, I saw it as a, a way of empowering me.

Dr. Daneshmand: Right now our goal is, all right, 32 weeks, 34 weeks, after 34 weeks it's icing on the cake.

Denise Frank, RN: I have four children of my own and I try to put myself in that bed and remember, you know, what was most important to me.

Dr. Daneshmand: With Angie’s pregnancy, two of the babies are sharing one placenta. So when that happens there’s a higher chance of why the baby is not growing very well.

Gino: Does it give you a weight?

Our cutie pie’s weight is 3 pounds 2 ounces. The only one that’s, you know, measuring probably just a little bit tinier is actually B.

Angie: B.

Dr. Daneshmand: How cute is that?

Angie: Who does she look like?

Dr. Daneshmand: She looks like Gino.

Angie: Gino? Come on.

Dr. Daneshmand: When Gino asked me, "So everything is good Dr. D., right now? Are we good for at least two weeks?" Well it's a day-by-day kind of a thing.

Angie: Anything can happen between now and my due date. We could have contractions that we can’t control. We may do a emergency C-section. For us, we don’t count the weeks here, we count the days.

I’m four centimeters dilated already. So it's time….

Nurse: We ended up checking her cervix tonight and she was pretty dilated so there’s kind of no time but now.

Congratulations.

Gino: Three little stars will be born tonight.

Angie: I have some hard work ahead of me now.

Dr. Daneshmand: Angie’s babies are going to be born via Cesarean section because of safety concerns for the babies. Angie, cutie pie....

Angie: Hi.

Dr. Daneshmand: How are you, my darling?

Angie: I feel good.

Dr. Daneshmand: You’re amazing.

Angie: As soon as they’re born, you know I almost feel like it's a dream. So I just want to touch them or give them a kiss and make sure that they’re OK.

Dr. Daneshmand: Each of the babies is going to have their own advanced life support team. OK, Gino.

(Baby cries, delivery room sounds)

Dr. Daneshmand: Hi, angel, my God. So cute, you guys.

As soon as Angie’s babies are delivered, they’re passed through a window. There’s a room adjacent to the operating room where the babies are assessed, helped with breathing, stabilized and then transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit.

This is our angel. (Laugh) Oh my goodness, hi booboo, hi pumpkin.

(Delivery room activity)

Nurses: Stats of 92. Heart rate 137 … 79 … heart rate 150 … heart rate is 146 … my temp is 37….

Angie: But I didn’t see them.

Gino: But you will soon.

(Delivery room sounds, overtalking)

Nurse: Yeah, we’re at about 55 percent.

Neonatologist: They’re on C-Pap right now. They are needing some pressure to open up their lungs. Tonight is a big night for us.

Angie: They look big, how did they fit in there? Are you sure there’s three?

Alina Harper, RN: You know, I really empathize with the parents that have to have their babies and then be separated from them.

Dr. Daneshmand: We have to remember these babies are still small. And they still are predisposed to having other complications. Then again, long-term morbidities, but so far we’re excited that everything turned out very well.

Alina: I love to see the initial contact between mommy and baby. I always look for that, that moment that’s just theirs that I get to be a part of.

Angie: It feels so right. I was only a few hours apart from them and I already missed them. So it feels good to be reunited.

Nurse: There’s Daddy now.

Gino: This is Anabella. Hi, Anabella. Look at that, she’s opening her eyes, listening to me. Beautiful, beautiful feeling.

Angie: It's truly a dream come true to have them come into my life.

Shhh … shhh.

Bob: Let’s go, guys! Move ’em out.

Colleen: With all of us, there’s an overwhelming spirit of kindness and caring. And what we’re really all about is love. We love what we’re doing, we love who we’re doing it for, and we all love why we’re doing it.

Angie: We’re going home. It’s official. We’re a family of seven.

Gino: This is your new house.

Dr. Weeks: The day you live for, man. Every day is a blessing.

Dr. Gollapudi: Life is living. We want our patients to be happy, we want them to live better today.

Bob: It’s better to wear out than to rust out.

(Anita laughs)

Manya: Life is memories, and experiences and joy. And that’s what we’re trying to save.

Ben: Officially day one of our road trip.

Claudia: Life is people who love you and the people that you love back. That’s life. That’s living.

Colleen: It gives me such pride to know that I’m part of this team that’s doing this, that’s making our world a better place, making our community a better place … and really helping people have hope and dreams and life.

Announcer: The Sharp Experience begins when you choose an affiliated physician at 1-800-82-SHARP or www.sharp.com.