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It's a call that's telling me I'm here to serve. It's a need to make a difference in
the world. 24 hours day or night these healing hands will make it right. Looking in their
eyes I know that I'm changing lives, changing lives, changing lives for the better, for
the better, changing lives. Hi again everyone, I'm Kandace Krueger along with Jim Knox and
we're back again with another edition of the Best Docs Network featuring some of the best
physicians in the Nashville area that are helping to change people's lives. Especially
our first physician, it's Dr. David Dyer, who Kandace helped one individual lose a lot
of weight. Well the ideal candidate for bariatric surgery is a patient that has many times struggled
with obesity maybe for their entire life. They have gradually gained weight to where
they get to be about 100 pounds over their ideal weight, body mass index 40 plus and
starts to develop medical conditions directly related to morbid obesity. Things like diabetes,
high blood pressure, joint problems, sleep apnea. When I got out of the music business
I started putting on a little bit of weight. There wasn't as much emphasis on how I looked
I guess and then I had a baby, gained 70 pounds and I really never got that off, I had trouble
getting that off. And through the years I just inched up a little bit each year, just
put a little on every year and one day I looked up and I was seriously overweight. Joy is
somebody that I have known for probably 25 years and Joy talked about doing bariatric
surgery for some time. We talked one time and she never did follow through. But it was
really when sleeve gastrectomy started coming into mainstream and we were offering that
here at Centennial that Joy really got interested in bariatric surgery again. And so I talked
with Joy and her husband J.R. We talked about the different operations and she just felt
sleeve gastrectomy was the perfect operation for her. It took about a year for me to work
up my nerve to book my surgery and decided that the sleeve would be the best surgery
for me. I'm very happy with Joy's results. I think she has you know reached the goals
we set out for her in the beginning. Her medical conditions you know are almost totally gone.
She's off most of her medications and so she has had excellent results. Once you get past
that point and you throw out all your clothes that are too big for you now and the reality
settles in on you that you're not an overweight, obese person anymore then this whole other
world opens up to you that you had almost forgotten and that is the most thrilling thing.
We are one million strong. We are united behind a cure. There are over one million colorectal
cancer survivors in the United States. My name is Charles Kelley from Lady Antebellum
and I'm in this fight against colorectal cancer because it actually hits pretty close to my
family. My father-in-law was diagnosed with it and the thing about this disease is it
is preventable. And so I encourage everybody to go get screened, let's beat this thing.
For addition health information, be sure to check out our Healthy Living blog for the
best tips, latest medical procedures and up to date news for modern medicine at our website
at bestdocsnetwork.com. Kim had trouble sleeping until she met Dr. Timothy Arney. To find out
more about Kim's story and other life changing stories, log on to bestdocsnetwork.com. I
was very active. I played racquetball, I walked. When the pain in my hip got to be problematic
I decided that maybe I should then in fact. We had gone to visit a friend in the neighborhood.
We had walked down there, had a seat on the couch and then when it was time to leave I
couldn't get off the couch. Susan came to see me because her hip was bothering her pretty
severely. It started not quite so bad but as she walked and she moved around it began
bothering her more and more. When we evaluated her we got x-rays and the x-rays demonstrated
something called avascular necrosis which is a process in which the blood supply to
a part of the hip gets interrupted and so the bone in that part of the hip dies and
it leads fairly quickly to a severe arthritic process in the hip and once that takes place
it acts just like a badly arthritic hip. The solution to this as you know, we would do
a hip replacement. Well at that point in my life I was just stunned. I didn't think myself
to be of an age that would require hip replacement but the x-rays and MRI's didn't lie. Avascular
necrosis is not something that we can put back or change and so once the pain becomes
bad enough, the option is to replace that hip and that's what we did for Susan. The
recovery time from the surgery itself was a six week period. Premier Orthopaedics Rehab
center was convenient to me so I just came right over here and finished out my rehab
strategy and then got back to life as I'd known it. We're able to return people to near
normal if not normal lifestyles by getting rid of the pain associated with a badly arthritic
hip and that in fact is what happened with Susan. His staff, his nurses here at Premier
have just been, you couldn't ask for anybody any nicer than they have been or more helpful.
I was experiencing chronic migraines 24/7, 24 hours 7 days a week. The only relief I
was getting was sleep so I would be willing to try anything. I would go to a neurologist,
he tried every medicine in the book, couldn't figure it out. He says, I met a doctor with
a new procedure for stimulation for chronic migraines. Okay, let's go and let's see what
happens. The specific treatment we do here is an implanted neurostimulator for severe
headaches. It's a unit that goes completely under the skin. It's somewhat akin to a pacemaker
for the heart. There's a very small battery that's implanted under the skin and from the
battery typically four very thin little plastic covered wires are passed up under the skin,
two in the back of the head and two of them end up right above the eyebrows. It's all
under the skin. In fact you can't see any scars or lumps. Once it's in, when it's turned
on they'll feel just a very mild tingling sensation in the front of the head and the
back of the head. And by certain mechanisms when they feel that, it very commonly either
stops or dramatically improves their headaches. After the stimulator was put in I could see
a dramatic change. I didn't have to take any medication except for a cold coming in I would
just take a daily Advil sinus or a Tylenol sinus just to kick start it and then once
I get my headache under control the stimulator can take over. That's when I knew this was
going to work. Michael had a severe basically daily devastating headaches. Michael kept
on with life. He refereed the sporting events around here with the kids so he was fighting
through it but it was still greatly limiting him. So it's been a couple or three years
now since we put it in and Michael has done great. Whoever has migraines out there, take
a look into this because this can change your life because it has changed mine. I would
drop dead to save that man because he saved my life. My name is Katy Epley and I'm with
Musicians On Call and our mission is to bring live and recorded music to the bedsides of
patients and healthcare facilities. We're here tonight taking Ashley Gearing room to
room to play music for patients. I'm volunteering tonight here with Musicians On Call. I sometimes
may feel a little goofy walking into a room with a guitar by myself but then you see the
reaction and you see their expression completely changes. High cholesterol is a major problem
in this country as well as in many countries around the world. High cholesterol leads to
atherosclerosis, blockage of arteries that affect many organs throughout our bodies.
So how can we effectively treat high cholesterol? There are medications, but sometimes medications
can cause multiple problems for patients, multiple side effects, muscle pain, weakness,
breakdown of muscles, liver disfunction to name just a few. So, we know that natural
has always been the best and we look for natural therapy with regard to cholesterol reduction.
There is something that we use called Bios Life Slim which is a fiber product created
at Stanford University about twenty years ago to treat high cholesterol in those patients
who are intolerant to medications. It's been there for twenty years but not many people
know about it. We use it in our practice and we've taught many doctors how to use this
effectively to lower cholesterol. LDL is lowered by 30 percent, triglycerides lowered by about
50, so ask your doctor about Bios Life Slim. Look for it, it's an amazing therapy. It will
help you to change your life. When I was younger I was in a really bad car accident and I broke
my back. I had fusions put in my back and rods and two and a half years after that they
removed them. After 5 years the fusion broke off so I had to go under another surgery.
The third surgery is when they removed part of the disc and they cleaned out scar tissue
of the nerve ends. Now I've got bulging discs and it's constant pain. Surgery will only
take part of the pain away and I really don't want to go through surgery again because it
can paralyze me. Unfortunately patients who undergo surgical spine procedures often after
surgery still suffer from pain in their back or what we call radicular pain into their
arms or their legs. These patients through treatment and evaluations of the surgeons
often find that there are no additional surgical answers for their conditions. When I came
to see Dr. Kroll and he started talking about the stimulator. He wants to wait until it's
absolutely necessary so we're trying to deal with my pain through medication only. Tamara
now has been seen in our office I think for about two years now and we've treated her
mostly with medication regimens. Over time, sometimes medications, their effectiveness
may become less effective and patients medication regimens need to be changed. We've done that
occasionally with her and are currently working with her to increase the effectiveness that
we can with medications. Since I've been here I've been walking more, I've been getting
out of the house more. Before I wasn't able to travel and now recently I was able to go
and see my sister in Virginia and we went on a tour with segways through Washington,
DC. I'm able to do more things with my kids and my husband. Dr. Kroll is awesome. I was
21 years old when I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and when you confront your
own mortality you realize what am I going to leave behind? I'm never going to have children,
I might not see my husband grow old, what have I done? I'm sitting here today with tumors
in my liver, my lungs and my bones. But I'm sitting here with hope. My name is Bridget
Spence. I am Susan G. Komen For The Cure. Help cure breast cancer and save women's lives.
Don't forget for more information on any of the outstanding physicians you see on today's
show, head to the website, bestdocsnetwork.com. And now we're going to head to our next best
doctor, it's Dr. Brett Babat who helped one individual with severe back pain. I had had
four previous back surgeries before coming to Dr. Babat. I walked around fourteen months
bent over at the waist. I couldn't look up at the ground, I couldn't see myself in the
mirror, I couldn't stand straight. Failed back syndrome is a term that we can use to
apply to anybody who's had an operation on their back or in more general terms anywhere
in their spine that hasn't worked out very well. For some people they've never had any
relief from the operation. For others they had several months of significant relief and
then the results deteriorate and often they're left worse off than they were before they
started the whole process. My previous back surgeon did not want me to have another surgery
right away but Dr. Babat when I came here said that there was some hardware that was
the wrong size in my body, it was protruding, causing an issue so it needed to come out
immediately and then he would have to rebuild my back so we did that within two weeks of
my first visit here. Caroline had three or four operations on her spine before she got
here. In her case it was a combination of a couple of fusions that hadn't taken, one
or two fusions that had taken but were not in an ideal position and then some additional
problems that had developed as a result of that. So to solve this problem, we actually
needed to extend her fusion considerably higher but dramatically realign her spine. Dr. Babat
I can't say enough about. He absolutely has done what he said he would do. He told me
upfront, this is what you can expect. This is the quality of life you can expect. You're
going to have a problem the rest of your life but it's going to be a much better situation
than what you've had. The first time I was up out of the bed here at the hospital I was
able to stand up straight. I was able to see myself in the mirror for the first time in
fourteen months, I could stand up straight. In Caroline's case I'm delighted. She seems
to be very happy. Certainly her level of function and pain have changed significantly. This
is just in my opinion a wild success for a wonderful woman. These are complex problems
to diagnose, to really figure out how to fix and then difficult operations to do. But frankly
it's why I get up in the morning and why I went to med school. The opportunity to help
people like this is just again makes everything worthwhile. Dr. Babat does do what he says
he will do. If I need him for anything, all I do is make a phone call. Dr. Babat and his
staff here, they have been immensely great to me. How do you know if you have carpal
tunnel syndrome? The carpal tunnel is a little tunnel that a nerve goes through in your wrist.
And people who have carpal tunnel syndrome will generally awake in the middle of the
night with their hands being numb, their fingers will tingle. Sometimes that tingling will
go up their arms. Now generally it goes away when they wake up and they shake their arms,
mainly because they're changing the position. When we're asleep our hands tend to go like
this and that cuts off that carpal tunnel and pinches the little nerve that's in there,
it's called the median nerve. That gives you the tingling in your fingers and sometimes
up the median nerve into your arm. So one way to prevent it is to sleep with splints
or ace bandages that keep your wrists at a neutral or up position instead of letting
them collapse like this. Also we see a lot of carpal tunnel syndrome in people who have
gained a lot of weight because that puts pressure on the inside of that tunnel. Also there's
something about diabetes that affects that nerve. But in general if you wake up with
your fingers tingling at night, it's not your circulation, it's probably your carpal tunnel.
Lots of easy ways to fix that, so don't panic, just get it checked. If you've had a doctor
help change your life we'd love to hear about it. Send us an email at info@bestdocsnetwork.com.
Bariatric surgery is not new to Centennial. It's been performed at Centennial for probably
more than 30 years. But when I started the program in 2000, I realized the importance
of integrating all aspects of care to have a comprehensive program to treat all aspects
of the bariatric patient. Recognizing that the surgery is only one part of the puzzle
and you need to have all of the pieces to complete the picture and maximize success.
I was almost 300 pounds, I was miserable. I'd just gotten a really bad report from my
primary care physician. The decision to have the surgery was just like okay this is the
only thing I think will ever work for me. This is my last ditch hope to ever regain
my health. But if somebody has the disease that we refer to as morbid obesity or severe
obesity, the ability to use normal measures to gain control of their weight are beyond
their grasp and so they need more help. There's 4 primary procedures that make up the mainstay
of all the operations that we perform. And you can kind of think of these procedures
in a hierarchy with the adjustable gastric band being at the low end with the sleeve
gastrectomy being the next procedure up on the ladder, followed by the gastric bypass
and then the ultimate of the operations would be the duodenal switch. Much of it is about
controlling the appetite. It's been the most wonderful tool. I've been able to lose the
weight and you know maintain the weight for what, 9 years now. We take a very strong interest
in making certain that during post op phase that they are properly educated on how to
utilize this new tool that we've given them. Because that what the surgeries are, nothing
more than tools. I was very good about attending support groups. It's so important to have
that kind of support. And it's this new lifestyle change that ultimately allows them to lose
weight and keep that weight off. I was in the military. I was in aviation the
majority of my time that I was in the military. I went through you know normal training exercises
that I went through, crash landed a few times and the third one was the charm that really
messed me up. I had fusion done because of that in my neck and then later on down the
years arthritis and everything started setting in. I was you know really in a lot of pain,
mood swings were bad. Mr. Costello was an amazing case. He had a myriad of really significant
symptoms of pain throughout his neck and lower back. And upon his initial presentation to
CPS we evaluated him which included a really thorough history and physical review of systems
and we felt that at that time that he could receive excessive reduction in his pain from
the elective epidural steroid injections. The ESI's were explained to me by Dr. Arney
that basically what they're going to do is they're going to inject medicine into my spinal
cord and that should hopefully alleviate a lot of the pain that I was having which it
did do that. Since that point in time we have since performed three separate epidural steroid
injections in the lumbar region all of which he has received quite adequate to significantly
superior relief of his pain. Prior to me going in there I was having a hard time sleeping
at night, I've had fits to where I couldn't sit for a while, I couldn't stand. It basically
was dragging me down. Since then since I've had the treatments and that, I'm not as edgy
any more, able to walk farther. Basically it's been a turnaround for me. I'm going up
instead of down now. We're just the tool that really helps these folks that are inflicted
with back pain and I have been fortunate enough to meet individuals such as Mr. Costello and
I'm really happy to report that he has seemingly really had a lot of success in relief of his
pain. And the important part of that is that Mr. Costello now is in our opinion able to
enjoy his life more which is really the ultimate objective. Pain relief is fantastic. Dr. Arney
has a great bedside manner, he talks to you like a human being. He's not happy unless
you're happy. Wouldn't it be great if we had a blood test that could tell you if you had
cancer or you don't have cancer? Well, we don't quite have that yet at least for most
cancers and in the future we probably will. I would say within 5 years there will be tests
that we can do on your blood that will tell us if you have a tendency towards certain
cancers or if you even have cancer cells in your body. There's a lot of genetic testing
and a lot of research going on so great things are going to happen. Now as it is now there
are certain tests for example for ovarian cancer. There's a test called CA-125. You
don't need that test unless you have a strong family history of things like cancer of the
uterus or ovary cancer in your family. However, it is a good test to tell us if that cancer
is brewing. There are certain tests that help us with pancreas cancer. But in general the
blood test that you have when you do your physical give the doctor a clue as if you
are at risk for cancer. For example, you might be anemic or your platelets which are part
of your red blood cell count may be high. There's also other things like liver tests
that may be elevated and that indicates your cancer risk is high. So get your blood test
done, check it out and hopefully in the next 5 or 10 years there will even be better blood
tests. For additional Medical Minutes from Dr. Honaker, logon to bestdocsnetwork.com,
click on Education and the Medical Minute tab. On a day to day basis I was experiencing
chronic pain, chronic migraine all day, 24 7. I'd wake up with one, I'd go to bed with
one and it would never go away. I tried everything from acupuncture, a chiropractor, nerve blocks,
spinal tap and there was no relief with anything. When Jennifer first came in she was 17 years
old, had been totally debilitated by her headaches. Had been basically housebound, was homeschooled,
hadn't been able to do all the normal stuff teenage girls do during high school just because
of her chronic, daily pain. And so we talked, decided she was a good candidate for the trial
and then when we did the trial when she came back several days later, she'd been almost
essentially pain free from the time we put the trial in to when she came in to take the
trial out. The five years I experienced chronic migraines I you know was completely limited,
I couldn't do anything. Stuck at home, dark bedroom , cold room, the typical I've got
a migraine, don't talk to me irritability, everything. We've been using stimulators for
chronic back pain for 30 years or so and Dr. Reed decided one day to somebody with headaches
to try putting a stimulator over the peripheral nerves that supply the, around the scalp and
the patient had really good relief and that's how it all kind of got started. Now to have
a procedure that gives people either complete relief or 80, 90 percent relief that was real
dramatic and that was you know, just the stories you get back from patients was what makes
it worthwhile. I can, I can do anything. I feel like I can experience anything, my pain
isn't holding me back. I'm you know going to school, experiencing life to the fullest
as where I wasn't before. The neurostimulator completely gave me my life back. My life is
completely changed. I've done a 180 and I feel that I can experience anything because
I'm pain free. I am an athlete. I am a world series champion. I'm a hockey player. I'm
a football player. I am strong. I am strong. I am strong. Fight colorectal cancer. Demand
a cure for colon and *** cancer. I am strong because I have lost a friend's mother. Because
I lost both of my parents to this disease. I am strong because nobody should suffer.
Let's beat this cancer. One simple test and you can save your life or someone you love.
Get screening. Be a part of one million strong. For addition health information, be sure to
check out our Healthy Living blog for the best tips, latest medical procedures and up
to date news for modern medicine at our website at bestdocsnetwork.com. All right that'll
do it, that'll wrap up another edition of the Best Docs Network which features some
of the best doctors in the entire middle Tennessee area that helped change people's lives. For
more information on any of the amazing doctors you've seen on today's show, just visit our
website, it's bestdocsnetwork.com. Or if you have a question or comment for us we'd love
to hear from you, send us an email at info@bestdocsnetwork.com. That'll do it, we'll see you next week.