For Your Health - Winter 2014

Committed to the Health & Well-being of El Dorado County

WINTER 2014

Marshall Cancer Services

a Lifeline in El Dorado County 

New Providers at Marshall



Dr. Courtney on Gift Giving Safety Tips



Affair of the Heart Returns in February

SPECIAL AD SECTION

Did You Know?

About Marshall Medical Center Marshall Medical Center is an independent, nonprofit community healthcare provider located in the heart of the Sierra Foothills between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe. Marshall Medical Center includes Marshall Hospital, a fully accredited acute care facility with 113 beds located in Placerville; several outpatient facilities in Cameron Park, El Dorado Hills, Placerville and Georgetown; and many community health and education programs. Marshall has over 200 board-certified physicians and a team of over 1,500 employees providing quality healthcare services to more than 175,000 residents of El Dorado County.

For Your HEALTH

Outpatient Rehabilitation Services Has Moved In September, Marshall Outpatient Rehabilitation Services relocated from its office on Marshall Way to a new space at 1000 Fowler Way, Suite 6. The renovated space features a new exercise room and private treatment rooms as well. The office can still be reached at 530-344-5430.

SPECIAL AD SECTION

New Healthcare Providers

2

Venkat Tirumala, MD Marshall Pulmonology 1004 Fowler Way, Suite 4 Placerville

Maryam Sharif-Hassanabadi, MD Marshall Internal Medicine 3581 Palmer Drive, Suite 601 Cameron Park

For Your Health / www.marshallmedical.org

Courtney LaCaze-Adams, MD Marshall Pediatrics 4341-A Golden Center Drive Placerville

is published as a community service by MARSHALL MEDICAL CENTER 1100 Marshall Way Placerville, CA 95667 telephone 530-622-1441 or 916-933-0913; www.marshallmedical.org It is intended to provide information about health in general as well as healthcare services and resources available in El Dorado County.

Information in comes from a wide range of medical experts.

If you have any concerns or questions about specific content that may affect your health, please contact your healthcare provider.

If you have questions, concerns or suggestions for future topics, contact the editor, Carrie Poggio, at (530) 626-2816 or via email at cpoggio@marshallmedical.org.

Better Care for You

Keep the Holidays Safe

Marshall’s New Pediatrician Offers Gift Giving Safety Tips Marshall Pediatrics recently added a new physician— Courtney LaCaze-Adams, MD—who took over after Earl Washburn, MD retired following 37 years in practice. A mother of a one-year-old son, “Dr. Courtney” wants to share some holiday gift-giving safety tips for kids. “The holidays are a source of joy, but they also bring hidden dangers,” she says. “It’s important that parents and giftgivers keep safety in mind when choosing the type of gift to give.”

Her top categories to remember: “Age-appropriate gifts, choking hazards and food-related items are key areas to keep in mind.”

Dr. Courtney’s Gift Giving Safety List: Age-appropriate guidelines: • Read the age labels on toys. They are there for a reason.

• Check that toys and parts are larger than 1 ¼ inches in diameter and 2 ¼ inches in length, especially for very young children who like to put things in their mouths.

• Ensure sports equipment is properly sized. For instance, helmets need to fit correctly and should not be purchased in larger sizes thinking that “children can grow into them.”

• Never allow small children to sleep with stuffed animals.

While cute, stuffed animals are a suffocation risk for young children.

Choking Hazards: • Beware of button batteries found in some toys and sound-equipped greeting cards.

• Avoid balloons, small plastic parts and gifts with strings and long wires.

• Stay away from clothing with strings or ribbons attached.

• Avoid stickers for the very young. While stickers are fun, they can be swallowed and choked on.

Food Gifts and Goodies: • When giving home-baked or other goods, make sure you know of any food allergies the recipient may have.

• For children under one year of age, never give hard candies, raisins, nuts or other small food.

Here’s to a fun and safe holiday season for all.

For more information about Marshall, visit www.marshallmedical.org or follow us on Facebook.com/ marshallmedicalcenter, twitter.com/MarshallMedical or Google+ Marshall Medical Center. www.marshallmedical.org / For Your Health

SPECIAL AD SECTION

The best gifts of all? “Books! Children of all ages should be encouraged to view reading as a fun activity, so stuff their stockings with plenty of books,” Dr. Courtney suggests.

3

Cover Story

Rashmi Ramasubbaiah, MD (right) and Helen Garcia, RN discuss the importance of routine mammograms to detect breast cancer as early as possible, as it was in Helen’s case several years ago.

Marshall Cancer Services a Lifeline

in El Dorado County

Survival Starts with Screening and Support Services

SPECIAL AD SECTION

“A cancer diagnosis will stop you in your tracks,” says Rashmi Ramasubbaiah, MD, the new oncologist and breast/GI cancer specialist at Marshall Hematology & Oncology in Cameron Park. Dr. Ramasubbaiah says that the questions, fear and unknown outcome can feel paralyzing. Even waiting for mammogram results when you’re told additional testing is needed can feel like torture.

4

“For women, breast cancer is the most widely publicized and well-known form of cancer, but it’s also one of the ones where we have an excellent screening program with mammograms,” she says. “If more women would get their yearly mammograms after age 40, or sometimes even earlier, we could cut way down on deaths from this dreaded disease.”

For Your Health / www.marshallmedical.org

Patient Navigator Carol Case, BSN, MS reviews helpful literature with a patient. Many resources are available for cancer patients and the community at the Marshall Cancer Resource Center in Cameron Park.

Helen, whose cancer was successfully cured, says her experience had a distinct upside. “I have friends in Wyoming who hadn’t gotten their mammograms in years. After I was diagnosed, they all went in to get them, and now, every year on our birthdays we give ourselves the most important birthday gift of an annual mammogram, so we don’t forget, and so we get to have many more birthdays,” she explains.

According to Dr. Ramasubbaiah, Helen’s case is a good example of treatment plans that might be surprising to women who equate breast cancer with always losing their hair from chemo. “In Helen’s situation, it was caught so early, she never even needed the chemo that so often makes the hair fall out,” she explains. “I cannot stress enough that regular screenings not only save lives, but they dramatically impact the course of treatment. In general, the sooner breast cancer is found, the less severe and dramatic the treatment.”

Arts and Community Involvement Boost Cancer Program Viewing cancer as solely a physical illness is a losing proposition. Marshall’s approach is to view it as a whole-life condition, one that requires treatment of all kinds. Melding the arts and other community events with support for Marshall’s Cancer Resource Center is one way that we have enhanced this effort. Since 2007, the annual Threads of Life event has featured an auction of fine quilts, arts and other valuables to benefit the Cancer Resource Center. The Images of Hope program expands on that, providing various art classes and other enrichment activities to cancer patients and the community. “Without volunteer and community support for these and other programs, the level of support we’re able to offer our patients and families would be greatly diminished,” says Cancer Services Director Wendy Goossen.

“Because of our community, we are able to give back through funding and providing support groups, art therapy, yoga and meditation classes, gas cards and The Marshall Cancer Patient transport car helps cancer transportation assistance, no cost patients get to and from appointments so they don’t and low cost mammograms and miss important check ups and treatment. The car was donated by Thompson’s GMC/Buick. emotional support services.”

Insurance or Money Issues?

In El Dorado County, Marshall Has the Answer for Mammograms Given the dramatic importance of annual screening mammograms, Marshall’s Cancer Services program works with Marshall Foundation for Community Health, as well as Susan G. Komen Foundation, to provide free and reduced cost mammograms to women who do not have insurance or who can’t afford the test.

“We’ve had a recent case of a young mother who didn’t have insurance or the money, and didn’t know of the available resources, so she put off getting a lump checked out,” explains Cancer Services Director Wendy Goossen. “It turned out to be cancer, and during that time it continued to grow and spread.

Now our patient is going through aggressive treatment to cure it, but if we had caught it earlier, it would have been much better.” Wendy says this should never happen again. “With the resources we either directly have, or can direct people to, there is no reason any woman in our county shouldn’t be getting her yearly mammogram, or a mammogram when there is a reason for concern.”

For more information, contact Marshall Cancer Resource Center at 530-672-7050.

www.marshallmedical.org / For Your Health

SPECIAL AD SECTION

In her practice, Dr. Ramasubbaiah stresses the importance of regular mammograms. One patient who knows well how important they are is Helen Garcia, RN. Helen herself has been an infusion and oncology nurse for Marshall for many years. In 2002, a routine mammogram detected calcifications, which are risk factors for developing breast cancer later on.

“I had a lumpectomy and was told not to miss a yearly mammogram,” Helen recalls. Sure enough, two years later, a mammogram picked up a suspicious lump that turned out to be cancerous. “They found it so early, at stage zero, that I was able to have only a partial mastectomy, radiation and tamoxifen, and I didn’t need chemotherapy at all,” Helen says.

5

Foundation News

Investing in Health… why should it matter?

The car door opened as emergency room staff pulled a gurney alongside. “Can she sit up?” they asked. “No,” he replied. The air was warm and still as they gently pulled her onto the white sheet.

The bright emergency room parking lights lit up the dark sky. She had helped to raise $3 million dollars for the new emergency room that opened eight months earlier and, aware of her surroundings, it all seemed surreal.

Within seconds she was surrounded by nurses asking questions.

“How long ago did this pain start? Does she have any health problems?” and the list went on. Her husband answered as best he could. She could understand the questions, but couldn’t speak. The abdominal pain had become so severe, it took all the energy she had. Soon the doctor appeared asking questions. “Do you normally get this type of pain? Do you have any chronic problems?”

He was so gentle, so caring, that she felt safe despite the circumstance.

“Do you normally get this type of pain?”

For years she had dealt with episodes of abdominal pain, usually brought on by stress. She’d had so many tests to analyze why the pain would appear out of the blue, sometimes in the middle of a meeting where she faked being OK until she could lie down. She had given up ever finding an answer.

She learned to deal with the pain pretty well, but this time it was different. It wouldn’t go away.

Karen Good, Executive Director of Marshall Foundation for Community Health, and thankful Marshall patient.

SPECIAL AD SECTION

It was now 2 a.m. as they pushed her down a long hallway to Diagnostic Imaging. As they approached the room she had flashbacks, a premonition of sorts. In 2000, along with other community members who cared about making Marshall’s healthcare the best it could be, she had helped to champion a cause to raise a million dollars for a Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA) machine. She had always felt someday she would need to use its technology.

Jerry Arnold, MD performed the test. Finally, they had answers! A flopping and twisting of the large intestine, which cut off the blood flow to that organ, was seen in the diagnostic test. If she had been driving across the desert to Montana, which she and her husband did frequently, the intestine could have perforated. After years and years of recurring episodes, her best option now was surgery. While it was major surgery, the procedure was simple.

6

With surgeon Al diVittorio, MD, she felt confident. He had cared for her father a few years earlier and she knew firsthand of his compassion and expertise to

handle this situation well. After six weeks, she was back to work with no more pain.

Is investing in health important?

Does it matter?

In the year 2000, Karen Good, the Executive Director of Marshall Foundation, had given $3,078.66 as her part in the million dollar fundraising campaign, never realizing that in 2013 it would literally save her life! Today more than ever, she will tell you that the outcome of campaigns is important, but the impact of saving a life is what investing in health is all about.

For more information on how you can help your community, your children, your neighbor or even yourself, contact Marshall Foundation at 530-642-9984 or www.marshallfound.org For Your Health / www.marshallmedical.org

Heart Health

Stay Well with Heart Healthy Tips

Cardiologist Scott Vasconcellos, MD, shares some suggestions With February around the corner and Marshall hosting its second annual Affair of the Heart, it’s time to brush up on some heart healthy tips. Thanks to Scott Vasconcellos, MD, of Marshall Cardiology, we have the most indispensable suggestions for keeping your ticker happy, provided here.

Dr. Vasconcellos shares the top goals for heart health by the American Heart Association: 1) Engage in regular physical activity – at least 30 minutes five days a week, or 45 minutes 3 days a week. More is better. Some is better than none.

2) Eat a healthy diet 3) Don’t smoke – if you do, quit 4) Maintain a healthy weight 5) Manage blood pressure 6) Control cholesterol 7) Keep blood sugar at healthy levels Dr. Vasconcellos explains, “The big secret is, if you take care of 1, 2 and 3 above, it’s a good bet the rest will follow. Some tips I would share about physical activity is first of all, that some is better than none, and that more is better. Exercise and diet, healthy living,

is the single most important thing you can do to prevent heart disease.”

For diet, eat appropriate amounts of and better foods. The American Heart Association web site has excellent guides for healthy eating. Essentially, focus on getting more fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein, low fat and low salt foods. Avoid canned and processed foods and take some time to plan out your meals and snacks in advance so you’re not getting desperate and grabbing junk and fast food because it’s easy.

These are easy fixes that can help you take charge of your health and your heart.

Marshall Cardiology has three locations, in Placerville, Cameron Park and El Dorado Hills. Visit marshallmedical.org/cardiology for more information.

A FREE event focused on heart health Save the Date!

Thursday, Feb 27 • 4 – 7:30 p.m.

Cameron Park Community Center 2502 Country Club Dr., Cameron Park

Join us

for an evening of heart-healthy foods by local restaurants, wine tasting, health screenings and talks presented

by Marshall Medical Center experts.

Presented By

$5

Free Screenings

Boutique

Wine Tasting Exercise Demos

Chair Massage

Healthy Bites

Programs & Classes

Marshall Health & Wellness Programs & Classes Marshall’s programs can help you get healthy and stay healthy. Offering services for all ages and stages of life, we hope to see you at one or more of the classes below. Our Community Health Education Classes include Smoking Cessation and Childbirth related classes, in addition to a babysitting class. Call 530-626-2990 for more information and to register. We also offer diabetes and Nutrition Education through our Physician Clinic Services. Call 530-672-7021 for more information.

COMMUNITY HEALTH EDUCATION CLASS SCHEDULE Healthy Pregnancy

Designed for women who are thinking about becoming pregnant or have recently become pregnant, the class focuses on nutrition and exercise, fetal development, prenatal tests, hazards to avoid and preventing preterm labor.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013 Wednesday, February 5, 2014 7-9 p.m. (funded by generous grant from Marshall Foundation for Community Health) Childbirth Education

6-week series

Come spend a day with our medical professionals and gain insight into the exciting medical fields. Call 530-6262990 for more details.

Fee: $15 Smoking Cessation 7-Week Series

Pre-registration required and space is limited.

Mondays, January 6-February 17, 2014 Fee: $75

Childbirth Education

HEALTHY LIVING DIABETES EDUCATION CLASSES

The Breastfeeding ExperiencE

SPECIAL AD SECTION

HEALTH CAREER EXPLORATION DAY EVENT

This class provides information on labor, delivery and postpartum issues.

Thursdays, April 3-May 8 7-9 p.m.

1-Day Intensive A custom designed childbirth class for those who do not have the time for the traditional 6-week class format.

Saturday, December 7, 2013 Saturday, February 8, 2014 Saturday, March 22, 2014 9:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

Fee: $60

8

life. Topics include newborn characteristics, physical and emotional needs of the baby, as well as health and safety skills.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013 Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7-9 p.m.

Fee: $25

This class will help you understand breastfeeding, learn techniques and positions, and will give you the confidence to handle common breastfeeding challenges.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013 Wednesday, March 12, 2014 6-8 p.m.

Fee: $25 Baby Basics

This class reviews basic newborn care for the first few weeks of

Live your best life with diabetes!

Our classes can help you gain the knowledge and tools to remain motivated with your healthy lifestyle in the days and years ahead.

Individual Diabetes Education

Appointments with our Registered Nurse, Certified Diabetes Educators (CDEs), are strongly encouraged especially if: • You are newly diagnosed • Beginning a new medication • Need extra support to gain control.

Learn about the latest tools and techniques for self-management of your diabetes.

Individual Nutrition Education

Our Registered Dietitians (RDs) are available for appointments to discuss: • Diabetes meal planning • Weight management/Cholesterol control

For Your Health / www.marshallmedical.org

• Medical Nutrition Therapy for most medical conditions Healthy Living Class: Diabetes Essentials, Carbohydrates, Food & You

• What diabetes is • Controlling blood glucose levels • Using your meter effectively • Carbohydrates and diet • Meal planning • Managing your weight Thursday, December 5 9:30-11:30 a.m.

Placerville Healthy Living: Your meter & gaining better control

• Making sense of your blood glucose numbers • Medication options • Tips on eating out Wednesday, January 15 1-3 p.m.

Placerville Healthy Living: Your Plan for Success

• Reducing your risk—long term complications • Exercise—make it work for you • Staying motivated • Diabetes and emotions Tuesday, December 3 1-3 p.m.

Cameron Park Class Locations: 681 Main St., Ste. 206/207, Placerville 3581 Palmer Dr., Bldg. 600 Cameron Park For more information call: (530) 672-7021