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Scott Webb: Some of us have back pain from, let's say, a sports injury while others suffer because of battlefield injury serving in the US military. In part two of this series on the reactivate device and system, we'll hear from Damian Salgado. He's a veteran who suffered for years with debilitating back pain until the revolutionary reactivate system changed his life. Hi, I'm Scott Webb and I've got a Bone to Fix With You. So Damien, thanks so much for joining me In part one of this podcast series we talked to the doctors about reactivate and the many benefits from, you know, their perspective as providers and their experiences with patients..

But it's so great to have you on and to sort of hear your story, and we'll get along to talking about, dealing with insurance and all that. But before we get rolling too far into this, I just want to have you, tell us your story, right? Tell us, as a veteran, what you experience, what you've been through, and this journey to get to this amazing reactivate system?

Damian Salgado: Yeah, absolutely. I enlisted in 2008, 2009. And went through basic training, I was a infantryman in the army I was stationed at Fort Campbell. I wound up deploying with them to Afghanistan in Kandahar. And when we initially got out there, we. Not as acclimated to how we needed to maneuver and patrol and do what we needed to do. And I was August 12th, 2010 the incident I was in, I was the rear team of my squad and was trying to help out my team leader and I was moving up to him and he went on to step onto an IED. He's okay now. But he went up into the air and I went back.

I was close enough that the force threw me backwards and this will come back later to why reactivate was needed. But at the time, I was carrying something called a stiff litter or people think of it as the kind of the stretcher that you would need to carry somebody out to evac them. And so we called that a stiff litter, but it's a long backpack and it has poles running throughout it. And what I can recall, getting blown backwards carrying that, I think I landed incorrectly on one of those poles. But I don't have exact proof of that because when we got blown back, you're kind black out for like three to five seconds and then you come to, and it's just ringing in the ears.

And dust kicked up everywhere and really your brain is trying to get back to what your training was and what needs to happen. And so after that happened, I was put onto a helicopter. But I was patched up at the time and I think I recovered for about 4, 5 days max, and went out and finished my deployment. Upon returning home, Everything seemed okay. I actually was very motivated. I knew the military was something I wanted to make a career out of, and I decided to go for special forces.

And during that time you sign up, you wind up going to selection, which is just a high attrition school. Very high end athletics basically, you're walking miles with a lot of weight on you. Probably anywhere from 80 to 120 pounds, 12 mile movements, three mile movements. And it's meant to really cause attrition and weed people out. And I passed that and I got through that and there was no signs of my back being an issue. So it wasn't until I made it into what they call special forces qualification course. And during one of the courses, small unit tactics.

And that's what it sounds like. You're in smaller units o f a few people and you're doing movements and tactics and things like that. So during one of the shorter movements I was carrying, I wanna say probably a hundred pounds, around 120 pounds, and my legs gave out on me and that was something I had never experienced so far in the military. And it had been coming up around four and a half, five years at that point, and I just fell flat on my face. And because you're in training, the cadre there, they gotta keep with the realism of it, of, if somebody went down, what would you do?

So yeah, pick him up, pick up his stuff, get him up and when I get back, I wind up talking to their medic that's there. And they proposed hey, we can give you, shot in your back and things to keep you going. But that course was about three months long. And so in my head it felt a lot worse and I felt like I'd be doing a lot more damage if I was just getting it numbed up or just the bandaid thrown on for that long, for that amount of time. So, I Got checked out and they wound up giving me a diagnosis that I know now was incorrect. But the pain was very real.

It was high really debilitating. It completely stopped me from doing all the high level stuff I was doing, and upon getting fully inspected by an actual. Doctor and specialist, they told me you can either do a desk job in the military or you're gonna have to, can get medically removed because you're not doing this anymore. And I made the decision with, after speaking with family and wound up getting out and it was very difficult because that I felt like the rug pulled out from underneath me sort of deal. And it was a long struggle. I, physical therapy constantly trying shots and yoga to do whatever I could to try to mitigate the pain.

The one thing I was trying to avoid as much as I could was narcotics and opiates and things of that nature. And I didn't want to go down that and re relying on those for the pain relief. So I just, at times it was just a grin and bare it situation. But it became very difficult when my children came around and my son now is six and my daughter's three. And so far what they knew before reactivate was, that's back hurts. Or he can't do that. Or Why didn't dad come out? I was missing out on things simple things around the house, just helping out with chores, helping my wife out became difficult and that put strain on her.

And a strain on the kids, let alone how I was feeling. So it was difficult all around and it really seemed like there was no answer. I had tried at this point three different private doctors to speak to. And it always came down to, it was a pain management in the sense that as much as we can, we're gonna manage this pain with maybe low end kind of steroidal ibuprofens, trying those things. And ultimately it led me to then try medical marijuana. That was kind of where I was at. Oh it's legalized. I live in Pennsylvania, and it got legalized.

And I said maybe I'll give this a shot. And it helped. But yeah, I wasn't in the state of mind I like to be in. That's not just how I like to carry myself. So I felt uncomfortable. It just didn't feel right. I felt relief, but I also felt like I wasn't myself or as capable as I can be. And it didn't seem like something I could logically do all the time being coherent for work and I'm a programmer by trade, so you know, I have to really concentrate and problem solve and be in tune with what I'm doing. So it just was, seemed like another kind of a miss well this isn't really gonna do what I need it to do.

My next step that I had done a little research and I said, maybe this is the next thing, I'm not sure. And I wound up going to another pain management specialist, Dr. Smith. And at first the discussion was a little bit around nerve ablation and I thought, Okay, that's the step we're gonna take. I got more MRIs done countless times at this point. More MRIs, more CTs and x-rays and things like that. But Dr. Smith was like, look, I wanna start this. Let's start this as fresh as we can. I'm going to Send you for more scans again.

And let's go from there. And he's like, I know you've been through it with these procedures and I wanna start you so that I can have a good look. And he did. And he, offered reactivate. He said, Are you interested in this? to do my due diligence on it, and it was very interesting. What really caught me was it being a restorative procedure. And that word had never been thrown at me before. It's Oh, we can actually fix this. We can actually make it better.

Scott Webb: And, No more bandaids, right?

Damian Salgado: Yeah, no more bandage. Exactly. And I was like, Let's, Sure, let's go. It was. It was interesting because I, reading about it in, in the US it had just been approved I think that August of 2020. And I wasn't expecting too much movement because I couldn't go too much anyway, especially with Covid being around and people by staying inside. So I was kind of hunkered down with that. But finally when I was like, let's push forward. We did and Mainstay was excellent. They showed me how to use the device and how to control it and what I needed to do, two times a day and how to operate it. And that was in November of 21.

And so we're coming up on a year ago and it has changed everyth. The difficulties in the simple things. Brushing my teeth just bending over to pick up my daughter outta her crib. And even just on walk with my dogs. All those things were difficult. I just wouldn't do them. Or I avoid it if I could. But now it. I do it without a second thought, without the thought of this is gonna hurt, or if I do this now, I'm gonna pay for it later. There's none of that. I just go about my day. And especially work wise too is a big one. I'm pretty sedentary. With what I do.

I have a standing desk and stuff, but ultimately it's really just being in one place and that would take a huge toll. It doesn't seem like it would because you're not being active, but it was almost worse at times. And that's completely gone now as well. Yeah, that going from the stress and constant pain, really just the removal of not being able to participate in just your normal everyday thing that I would've probably taken granted if this wasn't the case. To be in that state to now it did feel like a bit of a magic wand. Like it's gone.

Scott Webb: Right. It's really amazing and you and I were speaking before we got rolling here and you've become, because it's a fairly new, procedure, a fairly new system and is a little bit untested with patients and, being a veteran and thank you for your service and what you've been through in this long journey, I was a little disappointed to hear that there was a lot of hoops you had to jump through specifically about insurance.

Not so much the paying for things, but more the. What you had to do and always like you, you would take a step forward and then it would be two steps back on this journey to get to reactivate. So I'm just wondering if you could maybe just share that a little bit with listeners that, part of the journey about what's expected of you, what's asked of you, and how much you would really love everyone to know that it would be okay to skip over some of that stuff and go right to reactivate. Right?

Damian Salgado: Yeah, absolutely. I would say the hurdles there were exactly what you said. I would start feeling like, okay, maybe we're progressing towards what the next step was, and let's say at the time for in my head, it was nerve ablation. Okay, if I happen to. Say, Okay, well I wanted another opinion, And when I did that, I got knocked back down again. Insurance. I, Okay hey look, we need to put you through physical therapy so that the insurance can see we're progressing through the steps. Okay, well let's, fine, let's do that again.

And it would lead to a shot or something I had done already again, said Okay. And that time I actually, I wound up moving, so I was in a different state now, so a new doctor and trying to rehash everything. Okay, here's my records. I can, and it was just, All over again.

Scott Webb: Right. Start all over again.

Damian Salgado: Yeah. And it really was this reiteration of, I was like this Groundhog Day with insurance. And that's what it felt. Cause, and I think nothing against the doctors, they, I think they understood, but I think they also understood the game of insurance. They were like, Hey, to get this next step covered, we need to show you've done this. And they need to see, it's come from me. And it's like, I understand it. It is really just as a wall against anyone trying to progress to that next step. If you have any deviation, It's like a shoots and ladders like, whoop, there we go, right back down.

Scott Webb: Back down. Yeah.

Damian Salgado: So yeah, that was extremely difficult. So to finally have. The doctor come around and say, Hey, you know what, don't even, Let's not even worry about nerve ablation. You're a candidate for reactivate. Okay, let's give it a shot. And I think, yeah, to your point, if this is more known and available, absolutely. I think there are steps that can be completely skipped. And also the, in my head, there's avenues where you can have situations in which, like a veteran doesn't have to leave the service. Because this is available.

Scott Webb: Yeah. If you think back to, when you you had to leave the service, and you had had this sort of dream and plan and they're like, Yeah, sorry. The thing is, you're back and if you'd been able to get the reactivate system, then you might have been able to stay in and I mean, Maybe it's just my opinion, but it feels like it would be good to keep people in the military, men and women who want to be there, who want to stay in, who perhaps want to be lifers, but we have to be able to make systems like Reactivate available, clear those hurdles out of the way.

And as you say, the things that. We all just take for granted brushing our teeth, picking our daughter up out of the crib, as I did when my daughter was little. Those things, it would be great if we could convince everybody if they'd listen to this podcast, Damian and part one with the docs, if they listen to this and say, You know what? At least for our veterans, we have got to find a way to, get over those hurdles and get there a little quicker for their quality of life. Sure. But also maybe to keep them in. Right?

Damian Salgado: Yeah, exactly. again, my example is, they definitely would've given me the window to recover and the course that I was in, they know that people are, if they've already made it that far into that course they're obviously willing to put in the work. So they try to give people who maybe a medical concern has come up or something like that. They give them a, if I'm not mistaken, there was like a six month window on, Hey, you can get better. Personally from what happened. Now, I'm in a different shape, obviously than when I was then, but if in the six months that I had used Reactivate, I felt a lot better.

And in my opinion if I would've had that then to recover, then yeah, that would've been fantastic. And obviously there's a lot of logistics about having that device in your body trying to do these ther things, if you're sure able to at least get on the recovery path and they can start having those conversations that, yeah, will go a long way.

Scott Webb: Well, As I said, you know, reactivate is fairly new and a lot of this is just about education. So we hope that parts one and part two help to do that. Teach folks, tell folks about reactivate, Hear your story being a veteran, all the hurdles you had to jump through or jump over, whatever the right way is to say that, but to get where you are. With the reactivate device and being able to walk your dogs and pick your daughter up and just be a person and brush your teeth it's been really great to hear your story. Thank you so much.

Damian Salgado: Thank you.

Host: Find out more about us online at mdbonedocs.com. And please remember to share and subscribe to this podcast and that's all for today. I'm Scott Webb and that was a Bone That's Fixed.