Tara Peerenboom is one of 35 licensed athletic trainers in the Seattle Children’s Athletic Trainers Program.
They are a constant presence on the sidelines of sporting events, but they don’t adorn a jersey or get a trophy at the end of a season. We see them as they spring into action when an athlete suffers an injury. They run onto the field or court and quickly care for an athlete writhing in pain, but their time in the limelight is short lived, at least from what we see from the stands.
What you don’t see are the hours athletic trainers spend before, during and after games preparing, rehabilitating or counseling athletes and coaches. And so, in recognition of Athletic Training Month, On the Pulse shadowed Tara Peerenboom, an athletic trainer at Seattle Children’s, to get a behind the scenes look at her role both on and off the field.
“People see us on the sidelines and think of us as the individuals who give water to athletes,” said Peerenboom. “They don’t see the time we spend in the athletic training room before, after and during a game or practice. We’re not just medical providers. Our athletes trust us, and we’re there for them during difficult times. Taping and getting ready for games is a small part of our work.” Read full post »
Young pitchers can avoid throwing injuries by following some simple guidelines.
According to The American Journal of Sports Medicine, more than 15 million people will be playing baseball and softball this spring and summer, nearly 5.7 million of which are children in eighth grade or lower. Dr. Michael Saper, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Seattle Children’s, has some useful information about how young players can avoid arm injuries.
Before joining Seattle Children’s, Saper trained under Dr. James Andrews, a renowned orthopedic surgeon who has treated many professional athletes, including hall of fame pitchers Nolan Ryan and John Smoltz. It was in working with Andrews that Saper developed his passion and expertise for the treatment and prevention of throwing elbow and shoulder issues.
Saper noticed injuries that were common in high-level athletes occurring in younger athletes and realized that education about how to stay healthy is just as important as treating the patient after a serious arm injury occurs.
Emmy Anderson and her daughter Wren sharing a happy moment
When your child is sick with a rare condition that can’t be named, the search for an answer can seem frustrating and hopeless. For Kirk and Emmy Anderson, navigating the lengthy diagnostic process for their daughter, Wren, was something they endured with the hope that an answer would eventually come.
By about 6 months of age, Kirk and Emmy noticed that Wren was not meeting her developmental milestones. After a febrile seizure led to a stay in in Seattle Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), they received the news that a brain MRI showed Wren had a decrease in the amount of white matter in the brain, as well as a fluid filled sack growing between her brain and spinal cord. Despite the findings, doctors didn’t yet know what was causing these issues to arise.
Danielson was recognized by the Simms/Mann Institute as a recipient of the 2017 Whole Child Award.
Today, Dr. Ben Danielson, senior medical director of Seattle Children’s Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic (OBCC), was honored by the Simms/Mann Institute as a recipient of the Whole Child Award, a national recognition that honors extraordinary leaders in medicine and education. Launched in 2015, the Whole Child Award is given to individuals who are focused on a whole child approach to caring for children and their families.
On the Pulse sat down with Danielson to talk about this achievement and how OBCC, a community clinic located in Seattle’s Central District that provides medical, dental, mental health and nutrition services to families, approaches caring for the whole child. Read full post »
Brooklyn Clasby, now 10 years old, received a Potts shunt at the age of 8.
In February 2010, Jennica Clasby knew something was wrong when her 3-year-old daughter, Brooklyn, said she needed to sit down because her “heart hurt.”
“I thought it was really odd to hear that coming from a 3-year-old,” Clasby said. “I sat her down on my lap, put my hand over her heart and I was terrified to feel that it was practically pounding out of her chest.”
Clasby and her husband Brandon, who lived in Colorado, rushed Brooklyn to the emergency room where they were shocked to learn she was in heart failure. Brooklyn was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension (PH), or high blood pressure in the lungs. PH is a chronic condition that occurs when the muscle in the wall of the blood vessels and arteries in the lungs thickens and cannot properly expand to receive blood coming from the heart. This causes resistance to the heart, which then works harder to pump the blue blood in need of oxygenation into the lungs. Over time, the strain on the heart can cause it to fail.
“Our world was turned upside down,” Clasby said. “It’s incredibly hard to hear that your daughter has an incurable, lifelong disease that will progressively get worse. It changed the way we lived and gave us a new appreciation for life.”
Dr. Rebecca Gardner, oncologist and lead investigator for Seattle Children’s PLAT-02 trial.
T-cell immunotherapy continues to take center stage as one of the most promising new cancer therapies of our time. After receiving the therapy, which reprograms a person’s own T cells to detect and destroy cancer, 93% of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who enrolled in Seattle Children’s Pediatric Leukemia Adoptive Therapy (PLAT-02) trial and were unlikely to survive, achieved complete remission. Some are still in remission now more than two years out from the therapy.
This is a message that Dr. Rebecca Gardner, oncologist and lead investigator for the PLAT-02 trial at Seattle Children’s, will be underscoring in her abstract presentations at The American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting. However, she will also highlight that there is still work to be done, and will present a possible answer to one of the most challenging puzzles facing researchers in the field: How can we limit the possible side effects of the treatment while retaining the effectiveness of the T cells?
“We are in a pivotal time where we know this therapy works in getting patients who are very sick into remission, but now we’re focusing on how to improve the treatment experience, which includes limiting the possible side effects,” said Gardner. “Our latest results mark an exciting milestone where we have potentially found the key to better controlling the body’s reaction to the T cells while still ensuring efficacy.” Read full post »
Greta Oberhofer’s leukemia is in remission thanks to T-cell immunotherapy developed at Seattle Children’s.
Greta Oberhofer survived a bone marrow transplant for leukemia when she was just 8 months old — but the side effects nearly killed her. Then, six months later, her family’s worst fears came to life.
“My husband put the doctor on speaker phone — he told me Greta relapsed and that her prognosis was bad,” remembers her mother, Maggie Oberhofer. “She had already suffered so much with the chemotherapy and transplant, and we didn’t want to put her through that again. We didn’t know what to do.”
The Oberhofers — who live in Portland — were considering hospice for Greta. Then they heard that Seattle Children’s Dr. Rebecca Gardner was testing a therapy that uses reprogrammed immune cells to attack certain kinds of leukemia.
“Dr. Gardner said not to give up because her therapy was putting kids like Greta in remission, and that the side effects were often a lot easier to tolerate,” Oberhofer says. “We suddenly had a way forward.”
A few months later, the Oberhofers watched Greta’s reprogrammed cells drip into her body. Two weeks after that, her cancer was in remission.
In December of last year, Laura Coffman began to notice that something wasn’t quite right with her 2-year-old son, Hunter. He was leaning to one side and seemed to lose his balance easily. When he became lethargic and started vomiting a few days later on Dec. 28, she knew it was time to see the pediatrician.
After all standard tests came back normal, they were sent to Seattle Children’s for further testing and to find an answer. Unfortunately, it was far worse than anything Coffman could have imagined.
“What I thought was probably just Hunter being a wobbly toddler with a virus turned out to be a brain tumor,” said Coffman. “I will never forget that day. It was the most traumatic six hours of our lives.” Read full post »
Going to summer camp can be perceived as a childhood rite of passage. It’s a place for kids to cut loose and embrace their independence for a few special days. Whether it’s participating in new activities like fishing or archery, or bonding with fellow campers — camp can be a magical place that creates memories that last a lifetime.
Unfortunately for some kids who have medically complex conditions, the idea of going to summer camp doesn’t seem like an option. It can be especially true for children who require a wheelchair or rely on ventilators or feeding tubes to keep their health stable.
It wasn’t an option until a doctor from Seattle Children’s, Dr. Stanley Stamm, came up with a remarkable idea 50 years ago — create a summer camp catered specifically for kids who face serious medical challenges.
Every August since 1967, Seattle Children’s Stanley Stamm Summer Camp has given children with complex medical conditions the chance to step out of their diagnoses to “just be kids.”
Funded exclusively by generous donors so kids can attend for free, the week-long sleepover camp has become a powerful opportunity for campers to connect with peers, as well as former campers turned volunteers who understand what it’s like to live with a chronic illness.
Ever wonder what it’s like to walk in the ‘shoes’, or rather the ‘paw prints’, of a furry friend? In honor of National Dog Day, On the Pulse is featuring one of the incredible canine and human companion pairs that bring joy and comfort to the hospital each week through Seattle Children’s Visiting Dog Program.
Hank, the 5-year-old, 78-pound Old English sheepdog, may seem like an unlikely visitor strolling through the colorful halls of Seattle Children’s, but he’s there for one important reason — to put as many smiles on the faces of young patients as possible.
The shaggy canine with a slow strut makes his rounds visiting patients in different units of the hospital every other Thursday of the month alongside his trusty human companion, Tom Whalen.
During their visits, the “Tom Hanks” duo carry a celebrity-like status, frequently being stopped in the hallways by patients, parents and staff for a quick pet on the head or simple greeting.
From his calm demeanor, soulful stare and wag of the tail each time he encounters someone, it’s clear that Hank, a registered therapy dog who has been visiting the hospital for two years, is skilled in comforting those that he meets.
Going to summer camp can be perceived as a childhood rite of passage. It’s a place for kids to cut loose and embrace their independence for a few special days. Whether it’s participating in new activities like fishing or archery, or bonding with fellow campers — camp can be a magical place that creates memories that last a lifetime.
Hank, the 5-year-old, 78-pound Old English sheepdog, may seem like an unlikely visitor strolling through the colorful halls of Seattle Children’s, but he’s there for one important reason — to put as many smiles on the faces of young patients as possible.
