 This special topic of Abledon Arnair has been in partnership with TheWayToMyHeart.org. Welcome to this edition of Abledon Arnair. I'm Lauren Seiler. Coming up on this edition of Abledon Arnair, we talk to Douglas Salisbury about persevering from a disease more prevalent and deadlier than all cancers combined except for lung cancer. He'll share his fight for life and limb and how he's helping to inspire others to find the courage to do the same. All that and much more when Abledon Arnair starts right now. We will focus on peripheral artery disease, PAD. PAD is blocked arteries, mainly in the legs that cut off blood flow to the feet. It impacts three in five people who suffer a heart attack and one in five people over age 60. For many, many don't even know they have it at all until they have a heart attack or stroke or amputation that is imminent. Early diagnosis is key. Too many have symptoms of leg pain, leg cramps, and neuropathy brushed off by their doctors. It's either coming off as pulled muscle, diabetes, or back problems. This is PAD Awareness Month, September. I want to bring this to your awareness so you don't suffer. It is important now because Congress is talking about a new legislation, the ARC Act, that would require Medicare and other group insurance to cover testing for anyone at high risk. High risk groups for those with diabetes, like my wife Arlene. Also high cholesterol, high blood pressure, autoimmune conditions, blood clotting, vascular test and blood clotting disorders and smoking. The ARC Act would inspire doctors to perform proper vascular testing before they amputate. Doug Salisbury says this legislation was, if this legislation was passed, he might have known sooner. He was at risk for PAD. Welcome, Douglas Salisbury, to Able Than On Air. Howdy. How's everybody doing this morning? Okay. On a beautiful Friday? Okay. So, Douglas, why don't we start with your story? What is PAD and it's your story. So go ahead. Well, so I guess we could start like four years ago. Let's go back four years. I was working two jobs and my one's about 18 yards a month. So I was fully engaged in life and doing the manual things and enjoying my life. And I was taking care of my mom with Alzheimer's at the time. I'd moved her in and we were taking care of her with Alzheimer's. So mine started a little bit here, a little bit there. Started with the tingling in my left leg and then my legs started to get a little bit numb when I walked too much. And by the end of the day, my legs were starting to hurt and it progressed a little bit in the very beginning, a little bit at a time. And I noticed it mainly when I was walking. And then after a little bit, I noticed I had started having left resting leg pain, which is one of the big things. So my legs started bothering me at night when I was trying to sleep. And then it progressively got worse. And I guess the day it started for me, I was doing a yard here where I live and I fell in the yard. My left leg went totally numb. I fell in the yard and I laid in the yard and I thought to myself, well, maybe it's time to go see a doctor. You know, maybe it's time to have this looked at because as a man, like you were saying Lawrence, in the beginning I kept putting it off because it was like, well, I'm working too hard. I may have pulled a muscle and all the things that we tell ourselves, I'll see the doctor tomorrow. This will pass. You know, I'm just, I'm working too hard. So I tried to relax and do all the things that we do. And I finally saw my primary position and I got lucky in a sense that after the second time I saw him, he said, remove your shoes. So I took my shoes off and he pulled my socks off and he checked my feet. And he said, I don't feel anything down here. You need to see a specialist. So I ended up with a bachelor surgeon here in Beaumont, Texas, where I live. And through that process, I had two stents. He said I was totally blocked. My aorta was totally blocked going to my legs. So I had two stents put in. They lasted maybe about six months. And I ended up back with him and through that process ended up with an aorta bifemoral bypass because that's what he said I needed. So I went through that process and that lasted maybe again about six months, six to eight months, something in there. And in that process, it started off great. And then I noticed within, probably within the first month after that bypass, my legs started hurting again. I was having trouble walking, but I thought maybe at this time it was just me recovering. So I kind of put it off again a little bit and eventually I couldn't walk again. So I went back to the same doctor. He did some checking, some tests and he says, well, if we need to do an axial bifemoral because that bypass was blocked. So he said he was going to go in and clean it out and do a stem. So I'm in the operating room and this is basically how that process went. I was out. He called my brother and said, if we don't do an axial bifemoral bypass, that he would lose his left leg. And my brother's on a forklift at six thirty in the morning at work. And, you know, Grady will tell you today, what was I supposed to say? You know, do the bypass. We want my brother, he said, I want my brother to have his legs. So we did the axial bifemoral bypass. And that's what I live with today. So there were and that's why it's important for all of us to understand, like you were saying, get the second. The second opinions are the number one thing we need to focus on. And the reason for the second opinion is OK. No, we are not doctors. We're advocates with the reason. The reason for the second opinion is so we can feel OK. That everything will be felt. You know, they'll give us the proper advice, correct? Is that the reason for the second opinion? I ended up. My first second opinion was with a doctor out of Omaha, Louisiana. And that was in that one meeting that first meeting with him. It was very simple. He had done some tests on my feet and on my legs. And he come back in and we were talking about the results. And he said, Mr. Southbury. If I had seen you two years ago, you would not have had all these bypasses because we have the techniques today to do what needed to be done back there to prevent you from having all these bypasses. So that's that process of through coming with the way I got engaged with the way to my heart. And I started learning. I started asking questions. I started becoming more engaged in my personal care in that sense. So let me introduce for him. So what type of what kind of organization is way to my heart since you're since you're part of that? It's an organization that advocates that advocates for peripheral artery disease patients. That's that's our whole process is is we're able to assist people getting to the right doctors. You know, our organization is out there. Keon McNicholas, who runs it, is out there in the real world with the real doctors doing the real care. And it's we need that so that we can learn because I would not have known what I know now if it wasn't for the organization in learning through this, what I know now. And that's what a lot of our our patients in our people we deal with every day are learning how to go to their doctors and ask these questions about, well, hang on, before I do an imputation, before you before we even talk about the imputation. Can you go in and do this process? Can you do this? Can you do this? Because I found out when I had right up my for my A or to buy funeral bypass, they have processes. Now they can go in the bottom of your foot with just an incision, no more than a half an inch or whatever, and go up through the bottom of the lake to clear out arteries. But back, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, they didn't have that, but that's the technology today. So instead of having a bypass, why couldn't that doctor have gone in through the bottom of my foot? And help clear out that he didn't. He just went straight to the bypass. No, so that's that part about the doctors where we're trying to also engage the doctors. And, you know, we see that a lot now with some of the articles that are posted out there is before you do an imputation, have you done everything you can do to help clear out those arteries before we even get to imputation? Now, imputation sometimes is a part of life. Sometimes it happens and we have to understand that. Well, no, no, no, I know we're not doctors, but you mentioned an aortic bypass. What it says. So what exactly is an aortic bypass? They basically go in and basically go. I'm my whole understanding it bypassed my aorta valve into my legs. So they, you know, it went around that to get close to my legs. And it worked, but it didn't last maybe about six months, six, seven months somewhere in there before I started having the serious issues again. OK, can you since you are. Big on the task force and co-director of that. What exactly is the task force in relation to it to my heart? Well, for me, what I do is I help with the walking program. We have a walking program and as a PAD patient. You and I talked about this is my number one goal every day is to walk. That is that is number one for so for everybody listening with PAD and having issues. The number one goal is to walk every day. That is that has kept my legs attached to my body right now because I walk, I walk, I walk, I take my medicine, I eat, right, I stop smoking and we have to do all those things. But walking is number one. So I help with the walking group when, you know, we have different things. We have different every month or so. We have tried to do different things to get people engaged in walking. And that's the big thing. And. And I also I help him do things and through the organization, you know, all of us, it takes all of us together as a team. There's just not one of us that does it all. All of us working together make a difference in lives in pre amputation and saving lives. Yeah, because if you don't example, if you don't walk. Your or you don't move around, especially with this disease. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can get pressure source, you can get a whole host of other problems within that, correct? That goes back. Yes. And you mentioned the heart disease. That is probably the number one thing. So I had last September, I had open heart surgery and I had my acne because my whole left side of my heart had gotten so big, it wasn't working right. So they had to go in and shave the whole left side of my heart. Shave the you mean get rid of, get rid of. Yeah, they went in and just shaved the whole inside of my heart so it felt blood better. And it goes back to that walking part where the reason why walking is so important is it creates collateral. And collateral is what we need to keep our legs alive. Because it's like so. It's like a highway. If there's a detour, sometimes you have to get off on the feeder road to bypass a wreck. And it's the same way with our legs and walking creates that walking actually our bodies. It's so safe here. Here how here it is. So you want 30 minutes, right? Nonstop. OK. Don't stop until you get to your legs start to hurt, right? And you feel like you can't take that next step. When you take that next step, even when your legs are hurting, that's when your body says, OK, I need to fix this. And your body will actually create a collateral. It'll create that detour around that blockage. And that's where you keep getting blood to your legs. So it's like working out, you know, when you go out and you're doing presses and all this and the trainer goes, give me one more. Give me one. You think to yourself, I can't I can't push out one more, you know, and when you push that one extra one, that's when you develop the muscle. Same way with our legs. So we have to walk 30 minutes nonstop till we get to that point. We can't walk. And then from that point, when you take that next step, the next five minutes, the next 10 minute step, that's when your body will say, I have to create a collateral. And that's when it will do it for you. And that through my walking, that is right now. That's a technically what's kept my left leg attached to my body right now is because I walk and I have created collateral around those blockages. Now, in terms of I mean, I'm going to kind of ad-lib this for a quick minute. Nutrition is very important, especially with health problems such as pad as I'm looking on the website here. So let me how important is the nutrition? Well, obviously, people need to eat right when they have all these health issues. But with pad, in terms of your situation, did you have to change your diet? Yes, I did. Three hundred and sixty degrees or at that time, I started listening to to my to the position I have my vascular surgeon I have now smoking was number one, walking was number two. Am I eating because, you know, if you have diabetes, you know you have to eat properly, don't you? Yes. So if I have if I have a degenerative disease called P.A.D. is my artery blocked easy and I'm eating at McDonald's every day. How good is that? No, as a matter of fact, there was. I don't know if you remember, I'm going to mention this. There's a movie some time ago, it was called Super Size Me, and it follows a guy who eats remember who eats McDonald's. And then the doctor tells him, if you don't stop, you're going to die or, you know, you know, if I have already have a disease that create blockages easy and I'm putting in fat and high calories and doing all that. What's the use? So I have to check. I had to change my eating habits. You know, I use a crock pot a lot. I eat a lot of chicken and a lot of vegetables. And I've learned as a single man, it's, you know, it's it's easy just to do the quick stuff. But I have to be careful because of what I put in my body. I it helps save my legs. It's just that simple. And I feel better. So if I have diabetes and you're eating properly, don't you feel better? Yes. If you're eating all that stuff and I'm not walking, am I going to get bigger? Yeah, I get bigger. Will that will that work? No, it won't work. If you get bigger, if you get bigger, it will it will stop your circulation. It will cause a whole host of other problems. So that's why eating is important. It is one of the things that we need to be careful of. Watch as as patients with PAD. We need to watch our intake, a lot of water. I'm a Dr. Pepper nut. I love Dr. Peppers. So I've had to be careful with I'm probably addicted to my Dr. Peppers. I'll admit that. But so I have to be careful sometimes with my Dr. Peppers, because it is not real healthy for me. So if I want to keep my legs, I have to apply all these things together in unison to make a difference. Now, what makes you we're focusing on your success story and everything. What makes you a powerful advocate? Besides, with you having this issue, what makes you a powerful advocate in in in your situation? And how do you motivate people? What's the easiest way to motivate people to stop their habits? Obviously, people are going to have habits all the way around. That's just life. I guess I'm lucky in a sense. I'm also a recovering addict. I just celebrated 39 years of recovery sobriety or recovery. Was that both sobriety sobriety from using? I was an addict. I stopped using June 19th, 1983. I've been I've been clean, but it so working that program, I think, has helped me in this program. Now, I've been dealing with this, what, three years now. I am not going to sit here and say it's been easy every day. I have my moments also where, you know, this disease affects us mentally. Think about I had to retire early because I used up all my time. I didn't have any more time. I got lucky. They were they allowed me to grandfather in and retire early. So I got lucky there. But I can't I can't ride my bike. I can't do my kayak. I can't. So it's affected my ability to live my daily life at 100 percent. But I also know this too shall pass because that's where I guess I'm lucky in the sense I worked my recovery program. So I know, even though I have bad days, tomorrow is going to be a different day and now you walk in on the walking part. Now, mornings, I get up and I don't want to walk. I just don't want to walk my graph. The axial bifemoral that's in me now is totally blocked. And it bothers me 24 hours a day. So there are mornings I get up and I just don't want to walk. I don't feel like it. I mean, I mean, I'm a little behind on money and paying bills because I live on a budget and all of that. Well, it doesn't doesn't 99 percent of the world now live on a budget. Yeah. Yeah. So. But I also know if I if I sit on the couch today all day long and do nothing tomorrow is going to be a worse day. And it just doesn't get better by doing that. So even though I don't want to walk this morning, I'm going to get up and walk because I kind of like having my legs attached to my body right now. And I know this disease will not go away. I'm going to be I live with this the rest of my life. Now, it's the same way I did with my recovery. So I have to get up every day and think, all right, the day sucks. But I'm going to do something to change it. Now, you're a you're a certified a former certified addiction addiction counselor. And you used to work. You used to work in the prisons of Texas. What I worked at I worked with probation in a drug court. We did a drug court here in Jefferson County. And it was an amazing process. It was an amazing court. It affected a lot of lives. But that's what I did for the last. I was an alcohol and drug counselor for probably 30 years. But how so you motivated people in prison so did that motivate you to do what you're doing now? Well, yeah. So if we take my disease and apply it to my recovery. Right. Mm hmm. When I was using I would do anything it took to get my next fix with me. Go ahead. So that's what that's what addiction is. When I was using I would do anything to you because I was stuck in that cycle. OK, so you were stuck in your own you were stuck in your own prison pretty much or your own box. Yeah. Yes. You know, I lost everything living on the streets, all that stuff that you hear about, you know. Yeah, I went through all that. So it's the same thing now. I know today that even though I'm having a bad day, maybe if I stay there, that's what I'm going to stay in. So I have to an addiction is addiction is a habit. So if I keep doing the same thing over and over and over, I'm going to get what? Same result. Yeah, exactly. Period. That's just a fact. So if I sit on the couch with P.A.D., I'm not going to be able to walk to the mailbox next month. So I have to get up every day, whether I walk 10 steps, 100 steps, a thousand steps or 10,000 steps, I have. That is the number one thing we have to do every day to become engaged in our care with P.A.D. so that we can keep going. Here's scientific fact. Doc or the doctor, one of the doctors actually states this. If you do this with P.A.D., you will create collateral that is scientifically proven. It will work and how else did you save your legs? So if I sit on the couch and do nothing, I'm going to keep getting the same thing, right? Yes. So motivation. I mean, it's like, I guess it's like smoking. We had that smoking conversation, you know, how how easy for some people to say, all right, if I quit smoking, I'm going to keep my legs or if I keep smoking, I'm going to have an imputation. Some people can just quit like that, can't they? Yeah, but some people can't. Some people, it takes periods of time for us to relapse and go back, relapse and go back, relapse and go back till we finally are able. So that like the eating, I started off simple. Changing one thing here, taking the salt, I started using sea salt, then I went to pink salt. Now I'm not using salt really on hardly anything I eat now. So that made a difference, didn't it? So as we progress with our disease, we have to start changing those habits and changing those things. Same way with smoking, how whatever works for you works for you. And so you quit two weeks later, distress and all this stuff and you go back and you smoke a couple of cigarettes. OK, get on the horse and start riding again. Then you learn, well, as a stress, I started smoking. So next time you start feeling stress, what are you going to do? I'm a walk or I'm going to read a book. I'm going to do something different. Makes sense? That's how we change things. And so even the day with 39 years of recovery, my life looks different than it did two years ago, than it did last year. So I constantly have to change as like with my heart disease, I had to change some things to fit that also. But it's made a difference. And if I didn't do that, where would I be today? I don't know if I'd be here today. It's almost it's almost the same scenario when we're young kids, if we are young children, if we go to the stove and put our hand in the stove, it's going to be hot. So a child does the same thing. And then the parents is, no, you can't do that. You'll burn your hand off. So it's the same thing. Like you said, if we keep doing the same old habits, we're going to end up the same way. So we just have to change our habits. So I want everybody out there in the real and in the in the internet world to take your right hand, raise it up. Left hand, raise it up. Look at your hands. Do you see those little round marks? Yeah. Do you see it? No, from like, remember the old gas stove where it would get red and make that big circle? Yeah. Most of us don't have those circles on our hands because we didn't touch the stove. We were just told, don't touch that. Right? Yeah. So it's the same thing, like with amputation and smoking. If you're told by your doctor, quit smoking. Are you going to lose your leg? Some people just quit. Some people have to go back and forth. So that's the that's the mental health side of our disease, where we have to also be aware of that part because. Think about like with your wife, how it changed not only her life, your life, the neighbors work and everyone is it associated in your circle because the one thing changes everything, doesn't it? It's a domino effect. Yeah, it affects everything. So. It it it's that that mental health side. We also have to look at and that's why I say I do this with people I was teaching, you know, raise your hand. Nobody ever touched that. I don't remember 30 years of seeing anybody raise their hand with those red marks from where they got burned because they were told not to touch that. So. Before we end. What is now the support group has been around for. Four years and there's come for and there's conferences and there's other things going on. Can you tell us a little bit more about the website and what people can find on it? Yeah, the number one thing is support is that we're there for each other to support each other. We share stories. We share inspiration. We share hope. We share courage and strength. We share our walking steps and how we are able to walk better. And we share doctor's appointments. We share the good days. We share the bad days together. The number one thing is to support is knowing that there is somebody out there who experiences the same thing I experienced that I can share that with who understands me. And nobody nobody can do this alone. No, you can't. There I know people try and it's not going to work. Why? Why? Why doesn't it work? Because when you get when it starts taking away from you and it keeps taking it keeps taking it keeps taking and you don't have that support. You just keep my my dad used to say when you're in a hole, what's the first thing you stop doing? You can you repeat it again? If you're in a hole, what's the first thing you stop doing? Stop. Oh, digging, of course. Digging. So it's the same thing with depression. If it keeps taking from you and you keep getting further and further into that rabbit hole, that's where you're going to be in the process with this group is to help each other stay out of that hole so that I can't when I have a bad day and I get on the Internet and I get into the group and I say life sucks. This is just I can't do this no more. Somebody will say I know how you feel, though, but this is what we do today. But just knowing that somebody is there who understands where I'm at right now is a big difference. And that's the whole thing about supporting each other and giving each other that. So if there's a lady in our room in our group who lost her left leg and she got her prosthetic and she walked 10 steps. So yesterday, I did want to walk 10 steps. If she can walk 10 steps, I can walk 10 steps. That's that. That's that. I have to have people to help motivate me, too. Mm-hmm. Because it's going to be it's not everybody can do the same thing. All of us are every single one of us in this group, in the weight of my heart, is in a different place. At some level, we're all at a different place. But we all are on the same journey, right? Yeah. It's like a football team. You've got to have quarterbacks. You've got to have wide receivers. You've got to have linemen. You've got to have a center. You've got to have all this stuff for the whole thing to work. You know, we don't want if we all had chiefs, nobody would be Indians if everybody Indians and we didn't have any chiefs. It wouldn't work the same way. So it's it's it's that part where we support each other and we know that somebody's there for me. That, you know, I was half. Personally, I was having a bad day yesterday. I spoke to a gentleman and I really felt better after talking to him and we shared and we laughed and we told bad jokes and and we were at each other. But I felt better because I got out of that. I got out of that and reached out. That's how we need to do this. And that's what we're here for. That's what I'm here for, for each and every one in this group. And if we don't and if we don't work together, it won't work. You know, yeah. Well, yeah. And that's why it's very important for us now to understand we're working with these doctors that are making a major difference. And we got to work with them as well as they have to work with us because we're all in the same boat. If I'm paddling north and they're trying to paddle south, we're having a big issue. OK, well, I would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Abledon on Air for more information on way to my on the way to my heart.org. You can go to www.thewaytomyheart.org. So that's www.thewaytomyheart.org. Do you have the the support group number, Doug? Yeah, I'll get if you go to that website, everything is there. OK. So I want to say one last thing. Y'all hang in there. Remember, we're in this together. Get up and walk. He right. Stop smoking. But the number one thing we are here for you. So get on there. Join us. And we're going to get through this. OK, again, for more information on the support group for the way to my heart.org, you can go to www.thewaytomyheart.org. Thank you again, Douglas Salisbury for joining us today and being a part of the Pad Warrior Task Force in Texas. And we thank you for your work and we hope to have you again. I'm Lauren Seiler. See you next time on the next edition of Abled and On Air. Now let's take a look at the public service announcement that was done by the support group of The Way to My Heart. It's entitled, Why Do I Have Leg Pain, Leg Cramps and Neuropathy? Let's take a look at this. It's a very important public service announcement. Three years ago, my symptoms started with leg pain and leg cramps while walking. Me, too, with a tightness in my calves. Would you know, my doctor thought that my leg cramps would have side effects of the startling prescribed me? Well, my doctor just brushed them off as another symptom of old age. Mine thought the pain was radiating from my spine. My doctor blamed my neuropathy on diabetes until I got a wound on my foot that just wouldn't heal. Yeah, it turns out we all have peripheral artery disease, also known as PAD. It's plaque buildup, mainly in the leg. Arteries causing poor circulation. For me, the diagnosis came too late and I lost my leg. But that does not have to happen to you. No, it does not, because there are treatment options available if you're diagnosed early enough. PAD, peripheral artery disease. If you are experiencing leg pain or leg cramps when walking, call The Way to My Heart's Leg Saver hotline now. Thank you for joining us on this edition of Abledin Arnair. I'm Lauren Seiler. See you next time. This special topic of Abledin Arnair has been in partnership with TheWayToMyHeart.org.