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New therapy relieves debilitating heel pain | Platelet-rich plasma therapy from Essentia Health
Persistent and debilitating heel pain was ruining Curtis Sanow’s active life.
The land surveyor-in-training retreated to desk duty at work. During his honeymoon in a Mexican beach town, the newlywed was stuck poolside to avoid a painful flare-up and often wore a plastic orthopedic boot to dinner.
“When I stepped, it felt like my Achilles was going to burst or tear,” Sanow recalls. “But I said no matter what, in my wedding photos I would not have a boot on.”
Sanow started feeling pain in his left Achilles tendon in June 2016. “I’d been playing a lot of softball and thought I’d bruised the back of my heel,” says the former high school baseball player who was playing in three softball leagues.
Sanow’s job on a survey crew requires tramping through all kinds of terrain in all kinds of weather. “We find a lot of property corners,” says the 35-year-old Brainerd resident. “It’s a physical job and I carry a lot of heavy equipment. That took a toll.”
When the heel pain persisted, Sanow went to Urgent Care and later to his doctor. When anti-inflammatory medications and physical therapy didn’t help, he turned to Dr. Jessica Tabatt, a podiatrist at the Essentia Health St. Joseph’s-Brainerd Clinic. She ordered an MRI to see if he had torn his tendon.
“I told my wife, I don’t want them to find anything because that will mean surgery but I wish they’d find something because that would end this,” Sanow recalls.
The MRI showed no damage and physical therapy didn’t help either. The pain last winter kept Sanow on the couch instead of at the gym. “I like to work out and stay in shape,” he says. “I couldn’t even work in my wood shop because that was too much time on my feet.”
“When we went to Mexico for our wedding and honeymoon in January, I had to wear a boot,” Sanow says. The boot is designed to immobilize the heel to help reduce pain and inflammation. Sanow limited his activities to avoid the boot during the day but wore it in the evening and at night.
Platelet-rich plasma therapy from Essentia Health
In February, Sanow was referred to Dr. Nancy Henry-Socha, a pain specialist at the Brainerd Clinic. She explained he had a chronic injury in his tendon that couldn’t heal because tendons don’t have a good supply of blood like the muscles and bones they connect.
Dr. Henry-Socha recommended a treatment called platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Using an ultrasound image to guide her, the pain specialist would precisely inject plasma taken from Sanow’s own blood into the tendon. The plasma would jump-start his body’s own healing. “The platelets send chemical signals to start the healing here,” she explains.
Platelet-rich plasma can be injected into a tendon, joint or ligament to relieve pain. It’s part of regenerative medicine, a practice that helps activate natural healing processes so patients can heal faster and better, Dr. Henry-Socha says.
“I was up for anything,” Sanow says. “I had no reservations about being her first PRP patient in Brainerd. “She made me feel at ease, and my wife feel at ease, about it.”
Pain relief is not immediate but came as the tendon healed, which can take up to 12 weeks. Sanow says he was feeling better at two weeks and even better a month later, when he had a follow-up appointment. At 12 weeks, his pain was 95 percent gone. “If I walk all day, there’s a little tenderness to the touch,” he says. “A year ago, I would have been laying on the couch for a day.”
Sanow is back in field at work and back in his woodshop. He’s doing yard work and biking. He says he wishes platelet-rich plasma therapy would have been available in the Brainerd Lakes area when he first started feeling pain so he would have found relief sooner.
To make an appointment with Dr. Nancy Henry-Socha, a pain medicine specialist at the Essentia Health St. Joseph’s-Brainerd Clinic, you need a referral from your physician or health care provider.
Essentia Health is guided by the values of quality, hospitality, respect, justice, stewardship, and teamwork. From emergency care to convenient care, family care to a specialty practice, Essentia Health delivers on its promise to be “Here With You” in the Brainerd Lakes Area. Learn more at www.essentiahealth.org.
