Every week at Hey Clinic, we get a chance to interact with families from all over the country, and sometimes overseas as well, which really keeps things interesting. I really enjoy learning more about where people are from. In the past couple of weeks, I have been in touch with folks from Greece who are bringing their daughter for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis surgery later this month, as well as doing surgery on a cardiologist from Idaho, teenagers from Knoxville Tennessee, and Georgia, as well as Alabama, Florida and California. My staff does a lot to help our many potential guests, including helping with transportation, reviewing films and records ahead of time, hotels, ground transportation and the like. We’ve even help coordinate visits to Hey Clinic with college visits to UNC, Duke, NC State and other local universities, or with trips to the beautiful North Carolina coast or mountain areas. Recently we have been able to coordinate some special flight arrangements to help get our patients home quicker and safely to their home towns. This has really helped improve comfort, and decrease the time traveling, to minimize DVT/PE risk.
This past week we took care of Angela and her family from Poplar Bluff, MO. Poplar Bluff is a small town of about 17,000 people. Tyler Hansbrough, a very famous recent UNC Basketball player, grew up in Poplar Bluff.
Angela brought her whole family with her, including her kids, husband and many others, who all made the 13+ hour drive to Hey Clinic and Duke Raleigh Hospital. Angela had an anterior scoliosis surgery and a revision posterior hook TSRH surgery done years ago, and now, in her 30’s was really suffering with flat back syndrome and adjacent level failure and progressive scoliosis and kyphosis above and below her old fusion.
This past week I performed an anterior-posterior spinal reconstruction, all on one day, and got things fixed up.
We are pictured here with her whole family right before her surgery. She did well with her surgery, and is progressing well with her postop recovery.
If everything continues to go well, she’ll be flying back to Poplar Bluff early Monday morning with her husband. The rest of the clan will drive on ahead and meet her there when she arrives. We will do most of her postop follow-up by getting xrays done locally, and sent to us with contact via email and phone and Skype. This follow-up method has worked especially well for our most distant guests, including a massage therapist from Hawaii, that I performed a revision scoliosis and kyphosis surgery for a few years ago!
Get well soon Angela!
Dr. Lloyd Hey
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