Because Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds
Wound Center staff includes (from left) Vanessa Darnell, NP-C; April Barron, CNA; Sarah Belloir, LPN; Jasmine Minyard, RN; Megan Priest-Free, RN.
CHI Mercy’s Center for Wound Healing offers relief to Douglas County patients who are among the 8 million Americans living with chronic, non-healing wounds.
Story by Dick Baltus Photos by Thomas Boyd
Who would have thought a toothpick could cause so much pain and suffering?
Not Steven Smith. At least the 70-year-old Wilbur resident wouldn’t have thought that before he stepped on a toothpick protruding from his shag carpet and drove it through his big toe and into the one next to it, skewering the two together.
That’s why the retired cabinet maker just went about his business after the incident. Sure it hurt, but how could a toothpick wound be anything but a minor injury? Five days later, when the pain and infection had become too much to bear, Smith had his answer.
“Turned out it was a lot more serious than my wife and I realized,” he says. “I almost had to have the foot amputated.”
What followed Smith’s self-characterized “stupid accident” was a trip to urgent care and then to a Roseburg podiatrist, followed by an immediate referral to a Eugene specialist and a five-day stay in a hospital.
Upon his discharge, Smith was released into the care of CHI Mercy Health’s Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Therapy. He may have been out of the hospital but he wasn’t out of the woods. As an inpatient in Eugene, Smith’s wound had become infected. So he had to visit Mercy seven days a week to continue the infusion therapy that was started in the hospital. He also started making weekly visits to the Wound Center.
The Wound Center serves patients with “non-healing” wounds, defined as those that haven’t healed after 30 days, according to the center’s director and registered nurse Misty Jungling. There, patients with wounds from a wide range of accidents or conditions have access to state-of-the-art technology and specially trained staff who work closely with patients’ physicians, surgeons and other providers to achieve the goal of healing patients within 14 weeks.
Steven Smith just went about his business after the incident. Sure it hurt, but how could a toothpick wound be anything but a minor injury?
“We see a lot of post-surgical patients, burn victims and a lot of people experiencing complications from diabetes,” Jungling says. “About 80 percent of the wounds we see are related to venous insufficiency (malfunctioning vein valves that can cause leg ulcers and other issues).”
Patients begin the healing process with a 90-minute to two- hour initial meeting in which staff educate themselves about the patient’s condition and history, their lifestyle and more and in turn educate the patient about “what is going on with their wound, why it’s not healing and what we can do to get it to heal,” Jungling says.
Treatment can take a variety of forms, from compression therapy and wound dressings to bio-engineered skin grafting and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which, says Jungling, “helps the body’s oxygen-dependent, wound-healing mechanisms function more efficiently.”
Mercy’s inpatient staff and Center for Wound Healing team only needed 10 weeks to get Smith’s infection remedied and his wound healed. During his care, he used a wheelchair and walker to get around and keep the weight off his injury.
The care he got at Mercy, Smith says, made a huge difference in his outcome and quality of life.
“Both the infusion unit and the Wound Care Center were fantastic,” he says. “They make sure they have answered all your questions before they go further in the treatment. They were very informative about what they were going to do, how they were going to do it and why they were doing it.”
Smith says he is up to “about 95 percent” of where he was before the accident and what turned into three months of inactivity.
“I’m doing really well,” he says. “I’m able to walk around again and pretty much do the things I was doing before. I can’t tell you how pleased my wife and I were with how I was treated.”
While most patients of Mercy’s Center for Wound Healing are referred by their physicians, self-referrals are accepted. For more information, call 541.677.4501.
