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Transcript

18: The Moment Everything Changed · Still Caring

• 0:03
  Abby Fox (Intro): Welcome to the Still Caring Podcast,
• 0:05
  presented by Stillwater Medical.
• 0:07
  Joe Akin (Intro): Here, community is at the heart of healthcare.
• 0:09
  Katon Lunsford (Intro): Through honest conversations and shared experiences
• 0:12
  Abby Fox (Intro): we explore what it means to care for our health—
• 0:14
  Joe Akin (Intro): and each other.
• 0:15
  Katon Lunsford (Intro): Because better health takes a village
• 0:17
  and you're part of ours.
• 0:19
  Abby Fox (Host): Hello and welcome.
• 0:20
  I am Abby Fox, the PR and Marketing Manager here at Stillwater Medical.
• 0:23
  And I am joined today by Jakob Asala.
• 0:26
  Jakob, thank you for being in the studio with us today.
• 0:29
  Jakob Asala: Thank you for having me.
• 0:30
  Host: Absolutely.
• 0:31
  Well, let's start by telling us a little bit about yourself and when
• 0:34
  Stillwater became home for you.
• 0:38
  Jakob Asala: I'm a traveling technician.
• 0:40
  I work on the road.
• 0:41
  My wife goes to school up here, being a PhD graduate student.
• 0:46
  Just an outdoorsman, and we moved up here about almost four years ago now.
• 0:50
  So, we've been up here for quite some time.
• 0:53
  Host: That's great.
• 0:53
  Where are you from originally?
• 0:54
  Jakob Asala: Originally Richmond, Virginia, but I've moved around
• 0:56
  about 27 times now, so…
• 0:59
  Host: So, you're comfortable anywhere.
• 1:01
  That's so great.
• 1:02
  Well, you mentioned being an outdoorsman.
• 1:05
  Tell us a little bit about kind of what drew you to the experience
• 1:08
  you had with Stillwater Medical and how that all happened.
• 1:11
  Jakob Asala: So, I was in a hunting accident back in December 18th.
• 1:16
  I was in a field in Arkansas, just much like any other hunting season.
• 1:21
  This day was a little bit slower.
• 1:23
  So, I was on my phone playing on Facebook Marketplace and texting people,
• 1:26
  and my shotgun had a malfunction.
• 1:29
  And at that moment, you know, the pain didn't hit me, and I saw this,
• 1:34
  like, little cartoon trail of smoke coming out of my boot, and that's
• 1:37
  when I realized what had happened.
• 1:39
  And they took me to Cash, Arkansas, and then they transported me to
• 1:44
  Memphis, Tennessee, for them to send me back home a day later and
• 1:49
  try to figure it out from there.
• 1:51
  So, we had to call around and figure out who can take care of
• 1:54
  me, what I actually needed to do.
• 1:57
  Thankfully, we called the wound care clinic here, and they made it
• 2:00
  completely easy for me to get up to speed and, you know, make sure that my
• 2:04
  foot was going to be okay and not, you know, something worse would happen.
• 2:07
  Host: Absolutely.
• 2:07
  So, was it kind of apparent that like, hey, this is going to be a long-term
• 2:12
  thing that you're going to need help with?
• 2:14
  Like, when did you realize that?
• 2:17
  Jakob Asala: Memphis, Tennessee pretty much told me, "Hey, you need
• 2:20
  to see someone because it's not like a scrape or a cut that you'd
• 2:23
  be able to manage on your own.
• 2:25
  You need to find someone who will take care of it for you, pretty much
• 2:28
  baby it, make sure it, you know, has everything it needs to be taken care of."
• 2:32
  That's when I got to the wound care clinic and really found out what that meant.
• 2:38
  They explained everything to me in basic terms and for me to understand
• 2:42
  truly what I was going to be dealing with in the journey ahead.
• 2:45
  Host: Yeah.
• 2:46
  And wounds can take a long time to heal, right?
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  So, what did it feel like to go from living your life, being able to do
• 2:53
  whatever you wanted, to now having to—you couldn't even walk at the time.
• 2:58
  Is that correct?
• 2:59
  Jakob Asala: That's correct.
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  So, I'm used to going on the road working anywhere from 140 to 180 hours
• 3:04
  a week, going to the gym afterwards and, during the hunting season,
• 3:07
  running through the hills, climbing trees, going through the marsh waters.
• 3:12
  Pretty active lifestyle and pretty healthy guy to not moving for three to four months
• 3:17
  was pretty detrimental plus gained a lot of weight that I'm hoping to get off soon.
• 3:24
  So, it's a big mental thing going from being so active and always moving
• 3:29
  to being a couch potato and can't do anything that you want to do.
• 3:34
  Host: How did the staff at Stillwater Medical help you
• 3:36
  with that piece of it at all?
• 3:38
  Jakob Asala: They pushed to make sure I was able to do certain things.
• 3:41
  And thankfully, my wife was also allowing me to do that as well.
• 3:47
  But they found ways to bandage me up just the right way for it to
• 3:52
  heal, but also for me to be able to move and do normal day-to-day stuff
• 3:58
  as cooking, cleaning, whatever.
• 4:00
  Host: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:03
  You know, you're just living your life like normal, and
• 4:05
  then this accident happens.
• 4:07
  Can you talk to us about kind of what that has felt like and
• 4:12
  just kind of how close we could all be to an accident and, you know, how has
• 4:16
  that changed your perspective on life?
• 4:19
  Jakob Asala: Yeah.
• 4:19
  No, that one is the hardest question, because you go through figuring out
• 4:26
  what happened, how it happened, trying to rationalize how it happened, and
• 4:32
  especially with someone who's messed with firearms my entire life, I
• 4:36
  never thought it would happen to me.
• 4:37
  And then, of course, it does.
• 4:39
  And then, you're blaming yourself and you're beating yourself up over it.
• 4:44
  But part of you has to find a way to realize that it was only an accident.
• 4:48
  That was not, you know, something that you truly did,
• 4:53
  and having to learn how to move along from that.
• 4:56
  Just recently, during turkey season, I went back out into the
• 4:59
  woods, was able to chase a turkey.
• 5:02
  Now, I was a little nervous about it for the first time, and I probably
• 5:05
  checked my shotgun 60 times just to make sure everything was right.
• 5:09
  But after I was able to harvest a turkey, you know, I felt back into
• 5:14
  my groove and was able to, you know, move on from the kind of the
• 5:17
  trauma that came from December 18th.
• 5:20
  Host: Absolutely.
• 5:21
  Yeah.
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  And that's probably a day you'll never forget.
• 5:23
  Jakob Asala: Absolutely not.
• 5:25
  Host: Absolutely, yeah.
• 5:28
  Tell us a little bit more about—so, are you doing, I know the wound
• 5:31
  care has like a hyperbaric chamber.
• 5:33
  Is that a part of your treatment or not necessarily?
• 5:36
  Jakob Asala: No, ma'am.
• 5:37
  So in the beginning, it was more of observing and watching, making
• 5:41
  sure nothing got too extreme.
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  Making sure the dressing was changed out regularly, keeping it nice and how
• 5:48
  they would say wet, but not too wet.
• 5:50
  And then, once we got to a point where they were able to apply skin grafts to
• 5:55
  my foot, that became my new normal of having a skin graft applied to my foot.
• 6:02
  And then, they would go through every week and slowly scrape away whatever they could
• 6:06
  or they thought was, you know, not needed anymore, to the point where today I was
• 6:11
  actually just released from wound care.
• 6:13
  Host: Oh, wow.
• 6:14
  That's really incredible.
• 6:15
  That's exciting.
• 6:16
  Did it feel exciting, like you've accomplished a milestone?
• 6:21
  Jakob Asala: Oh, absolutely.
• 6:22
  I'm not a very patient man.
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  So after almost five months of being in this, you know, predicament, feeling
• 6:30
  okay, I can start my life again.
• 6:32
  You know, I'm not having to see a doctor once a week, and I can, you know, start
• 6:37
  living my life how I want to again.
• 6:39
  Host: Absolutely.
• 6:40
  Are there things that you will miss about that office or the people?
• 6:43
  Jakob Asala: Oh, absolutely.
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  Especially when you're stuck in your couch once a week, you know, all week
• 6:49
  and you get one day to go out to the real world and see faces and talk.
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  I'm sure I talked their ears off while I was in there.
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  They made me feel like a friend, part of the family.
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  Asked about my family.
• 7:00
  You know, I did such.
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  We asked about, you know, how their weekends went.
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  And they made me feel, you know, comfortable being there.
• 7:06
  It wasn't a chore to go
• 7:08
  Host: Yeah, that's incredible.
• 7:09
  So are you able to work in things again or you're still on that limited?
• 7:13
  Jakob Asala: Yes, ma'am.
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  I actually just got off a three-week work trip in Fort Worth.
• 7:18
  This Saturday, I go to Germany for seven weeks.
• 7:21
  So, I'm back to full production of me going and working and back to my life..
• 7:27
  Host: That's amazing.
• 7:27
  That's awesome.
• 7:29
  What is it like to have care professionals in your community
• 7:33
  that can help you in a time of need?
• 7:36
  Jakob Asala: Oh, it's absolutely amazing, especially with the size of Stillwater,
• 7:38
  having true professionals just miles down the road from my home, where I don't have
• 7:43
  to travel to Oklahoma City or Tulsa, which especially right now is, you know, not
• 7:48
  the true cost efficiency, but having it right here, especially if something were
• 7:52
  to go wrong, you know, I wouldn't have to drive an hour, hour and a half just to go
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  see someone to take care of me properly.
• 7:58
  Host: Absolutely.
• 7:59
  That's great.
• 8:01
  Is there anything about your experience that you wanted to share that we
• 8:04
  haven't already talked about that you think is important for people to know?
• 8:08
  Jakob Asala: Probably more along the lines of, you know, trust who you
• 8:12
  have, especially here in Stillwater, they're going to take good care of you.
• 8:15
  No matter how long it takes, they have your best interest at heart.
• 8:18
  They don't want to see you back in that office again.
• 8:22
  They really want to make sure everything's taken care of.
• 8:24
  And so for someone who doesn't like doctors, myself, my wife will be the first
• 8:30
  one to contest that and say I probably should see my doctors a little bit more
• 8:33
  thoroughly and, you know, annual checkups.
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  They actually made it worth going.
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  You know, I felt like I was being listened to.
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  You know, they would talk to me in a way that, you know, wasn't just medical
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  terms, but, "Hey, this is what, you know, we're seeing in plainest terms,"
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  and just make you feel real comfortable.
• 8:51
  Host: Absolutely.
• 8:52
  That's great.
• 8:53
  We end all of our podcast conversations with a challenge to care.
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  So something that people can do for themselves or for this
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  community to improve health.
• 9:01
  What would your challenge to care be?
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  Jakob Asala: Just getting outside and going exploring.
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  We have beautiful lakes here, nice trails everywhere.
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  Tulsa and Oklahoma City aren't far where they also have amazing, you
• 9:12
  know, parks and recreational areas.
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  Just being outside is so good for not only your mental health,
• 9:18
  but your physical health as well.
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  Host: I love that.
• 9:20
  And I love how you have not given that up.
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  Even though you had a negative experience, you're like, "No, there's
• 9:24
  also positives that can be had."
• 9:27
  Jakob Asala: Oh, absolutely.
• 9:28
  Host: So, I appreciate that resilience.
• 9:29
  Well, thank you for sharing your story with us today.
• 9:32
  We're grateful that you did.
• 9:33
  Jakob Asala: Thank you for having me here.
• 9:35
  It's actually really great to tell people about how great I was taken care of.
• 9:39
  Host: That's incredible.
• 9:40
  Thanks.