A Dream Comes True In Duncan

August 5, 2017

By Linda Provost The Duncan Banner

Dream Team Prosthetics patient Josh Wells carries his wife Lisa while trying out running blades during a July visit to the team. Dream Team Prosthetics / Special to The Duncan Banner

“A dream is a wish your heart makes …” Disney’s Cinderella sang those words as she dreamt of Prince Charming. Others’ dreams may not involve glass slippers, but instead, things we all take for granted. Walking the dog, playing with grandchildren, or two-stepping on a Friday night with the one you love. 

No fairy godmother is needed for these dreams, because Chad Simpson, his wife Brandy Simpson and Randy Richardson, who make up “Dream Team Prosthetics,” (DTP) are right here in Duncan. 

Chad is the clinical director, Randy is the assistant prosthetist and Brandy is the office manager. Together, they make up the “Dream Team” which now calls Duncan and the north industrial park home. Randy is a local Duncan-ite and brainstormed the idea of moving the team to Duncan. 

“The community obviously is fantastic, fortunately with my family’s history here with R&S Drug, my grandfather started R&S Drug and then my father took it over and he passed away four years ago, but my family is certainly involved in the medical community here and when Chad and I were first talking about it, I called up Dr. Robert James Weeden and Dr. Jimmy Jones. —We had a meeting with Jay Johnson at the hospital and then Dr. Ché Miller and everybody was very encouraging and excited that we were bringing this here to Duncan,” Randy said. “We’re proud of what we do here and Duncan’s a community that’s very proud of all of their accomplishments and everything, so I think it’s a perfect fit here.” 

The duo said their friend, Greg Shepherd, got them in touch with Duncan Area Economic Development Foundation (DAEDF) which is how they got their practice up and running in the North Industrial Park at 7111 Nix Dr. 

Since DTP manufactures many parts of their prosthesis in house, they found the location was a better fit than down by Duncan Regional Hospital, as they did not want to disturb their neighbors. 

Serving patients was high on DTP’s priority list for the move to Duncan and according to Chad, the move was kismet as the community has welcomed them with open arms. 

“— We felt like this was probably a very underserved area — the southwest region of Oklahoma — and North Texas and actually even — west Texas, so we thought this might be a good spot. He (Randy) had family relations and relationships from here and we thought that might be beneficial,” said Chad. “— Everybody that I’ve come in contact [with], Brandy has come in contact with … I always comment to him ‘I’ve never seen such a community friendly town as Duncan.’ It really is, people are truly interested in how other folks are doing.” 

The pair find that patient care is the most gratifying and satisfying part of their job.  

“I think our job is to take the prosthetic out of the person’s thought process in their daily life — if they can put the prosthesis on in the morning and not think about it until at night when they take it off to go to bed, then we’ve done our job and the patient has done their job,” Randy said. “I think the goal for almost everybody is that function, that they can not think about, ‘they wear a prosthetic leg’, they just go about their daily life and what they do, and don’t think about it.” 

Chad said getting feedback from their prothesis users was always a highlight.

“I think as individuals who do not have an amputation, there are so many things that we take for granted. —When you are working with a patient and they go and experience something and they come back and their feedback is, ‘Man I haven’t been able to do that for 10 or 15 years, I forgot what that was like,’ I think that is one of the most phenomenal things a patient can tell you. They were able to do something or accomplish something that they hadn’t since their amputation.” 

Randy said the work they do for bilateral above-the-knee amputees is what they bring to the table that many other businesses don’t, because many people with these injuries end up in a wheel chair. However, thanks to the the advent of microprocessor knee systems with the introduction of the Ottobock C-Leg, many users are able, with strengthening, to get back to a normal life. 

One of these users is Josh Wells, Army SPC, who lost his legs in a explosively formed penetrator (EFP, a projectile used to penetrate armor) accident in November 2007 in Iraq. During a patrol, four EFPs hit his vehicle, resulting in the loss of both of his legs above the knee. 

According to the biography from Dream Team, Josh had a hard time using prosthetics and thought he would be wheel-chair bound for the rest of his life — until he met Chad. Josh has been using his computer-regulated hydraulic knees ever since. On July 21, Josh came to the new location to get new sockets. A socket is the area where the existing limb is joined with the prosthetic, usually with vacuum pressure. 

While there, Wells got to take advantage of the Dream Team’s close relationship with other manufactures of prosthetics, and tried out several different types. 

“He also got to try a pair of running blades and he was absolutely over the moon and being able to run around … he was an active Army service member,” Randy said. “He even had his wife on his shoulders, carrying her around. While new sockets doesn’t really seem ‘glamorous’ … but this (the socket) has to fit.”  

If a socket is poorly made, or the user’s body changes due to changes in weight, building muscle, or other factors, it can cause pressure on the limb, which can lead to sores — and even infection. 

“These are prosthetics, but they are a tool for the individual and there may be that tool that’ll work for swimming and then maybe there will be that tool that will work for snow skiing…” said Randy, “I think we are always looking to utilize technology and push technology probably past where it was intended. Manufacturers tend to come to us and solicit our feedback. We work with manufacturers on development of technology and improving things for better componentry and better technology for patients, [with] more functionality.” 

Chad said finding what the patient wanted to achieve daily was important in helping them find the right prothesis because for some, running blades won’t even be on their radar. 

“One time I had a patient who was 82/83 years of age … I was making her a prosthesis and she said ‘Now, I’m I going to be able to run with this thing? I see those kids on TV running with their prosthesis’ and I said ‘Mrs.… How much… running did you do before?’ [She said,] ‘Oh well I never ran,’ and I was like, ‘Well, why would you want to run now?’” Chad laughed.  

The right tool for the right job is what Chad and Randy said they do to help patients find what works for their lifestyle.