Brothers Anil and Subhash Sahai sit with their mother, Urmila, in front;
in back are Subhash Gupta; Neena (Sahai) Gupta; Nutan Sahai, Anil’s spouse; Sushma Sahai, Subhash’s spouse; Shashi (Sahai) Agarwal; and Anil Agarwal.

When Prem Sahai, Ph.D., and Urmila Sahai brought their children from India to Iowa in 1967, they also brought their love of family, education and service. Dr. Sahai taught at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, established the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center near Madrid and guided development of the Webster City Medical Clinic campus. Sons Anil Sahai, D.O.’79, Ph.D., FACP, and Subhash Sahai, M.D., ABFP, grew up to serve patients there in addition to their many volunteer activities. Anil Sahai – who died on July 16 – was a longtime member of the DMU Board of Trustees and an adjunct clinical associate professor as well as medical director of Hospice of Hamilton County, director/chair of Hamilton Hospital’s CCU/Critical Care Committee and its chair of internal medicine.

Members of the Sahai family love philanthropy, too. In 1995, Dr. Prem Sahai founded the Sahai Family Foundation for Educational Excellence, a philanthropic organization devoted to educational endeavors and projects in Iowa and India. It since has given millions of dollars to Des Moines University, Iowa’s three state universities and Webster City Community Schools, among many other organizations.

This giving family continues to enhance the lives of countless people, including DMU students, through their careers and contributions.

Establishing a tradition of family philanthropy is a wonderful way to transform our world, or at least part of it. Contact us at 515-271-1387 or via www.dmu.edu/donations.

Twenty-five years ago, Des Moines University – then the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences – moved its Olsen Clinic from 2150 Grand Ave. to a new 10-story clinic on campus. Since then, its clinicians have provided hundreds of thousands of patient visits and an even greater number of hours of instruction for DMU’s clinical students.

This summer, the DMU Clinic gained a new dimension in addition to its services including family medicine, foot and ankle, osteopathic manual medicine and physical therapy: Through a partnership with Iowa Health System, it’s now home to La Clinica de la Esperanza, which provides primary care on a sliding fee scale to central Iowa’s Latino population. La Clinica will generate more patient visits as well as training opportunities for DMU students.

DMU President Angela Walker Franklin, Ph.D., cuts the ribbon to open La Clinica, now on campus, with (from left) clinic staff Karen Reinecke, counselor; Angelica Carnahan, patient service representative; Esperanza Pintor Martinez, clinic administrator; Rosalia De Avila, billing specialist; Cheryl Weatherington, R.N.; Jackie Strang, care manager; Steve Stephenson, M.D., Iowa Methodist Medical Center chief operating officer and executive vice president; and Eric Crowell, Iowa Health-Des Moines president and chief executive operator.

In addition to the printed publication, Abaton is posted on the DMU website at www.dmu.edu/abaton.

What We Have

By Rebecca Minardi, M.P.H.’13

I had just made pancakes when I got the call. “Hello?” It was Peter. “Rebecca, Rebecca. Can you come over? Please? I need you to come over.”

It was Saturday afternoon, and while at my job during the week where I work with teens on living skills, I was not used to receiving phone calls during my weekend off-hours. “Uh, hey, Peter…what’s happening?” I asked through bites of pancakes.

In between shouts of “shut up” and “fucking leave me alone” (and through a brief intervention on the phone from his brother), I learned that Peter, 16, was being kicked out of the family home. I thought back to a few weeks earlier when I read through his chart at the office, a chart that broke this complex boy down to the mere sum of his parts. Diagnosis: reactive attachment disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, PTSD. Social history: born in Romania to a biological mother who suffered from alcoholism and substance abuse, a childhood full of physical and emotional abuse, a history of being dressed in costumes by the father for visiting neighbors to have their way. I slammed the chart shut.

So. Here is Peter. Now safe and adopted in America. Peter, a regular kid in high school. Peter tried really hard to be normal. His adoptive parents tried really hard to treat him like he had

a completely ordinary childhood, trying valiantly to ignore the history of homelessness and orphanages, of physical trauma and gross sexual abuse. And though the family hoped that all this trying would pay off and that Peter would prove to be another resilient success story, things were falling apart. I was now on my way to a household crisis.

When I arrived, Peter was rocking back in forth in the grass in front of his apartment building, head in hands. “Hey, Peter,” I called softly as I walked up to meet him. He walked back to the car with me and got in, his already throaty voice all the more hoarse muttering a simple “hi.”

We drove to an empty park and sat on the creaking swings. I listened as Peter told me what I already knew; his adoptive parents had reached a breaking point with his frequent elopements and sexual contact with far older men, with his screaming and unpredictability, with his disrespect and his sudden profound despair. He had to go somewhere else, anywhere else. My stomach felt leaden.

Here was Peter, an old man in a boy’s body. The most broken of humans. His parents were good people, they would say after he’d gone. It just takes too much to fix these sorts of people. It was too late, the damage was already done, people would reassure themselves. At least they tried. People like Peter are a lost cause.

“Peter,” I said with sudden urgency, “what are you good at? What do you like to do that, you know, makes you happy and stuff?” There was a pause. I sat expectant. His swing slowed more and then stopped.

“Well, um,” he began hesitantly, “when I go grocery shopping with my dad, I always find the best deals.” He sat still. The words started tumbling out then, unbidden. “I’m a good uncle to my brother’s baby. I can color in the lines. I help my grandma clean her house. I’m really good in speech class. I can make sandwiches.”

He sat triumphantly, swaying on his swing. “You can do a lot of things,” I added.

We headed back in silence; his grandma would be at the apartment to take him and a few of his things back to her house. I pulled up and saw a man sitting on the porch steps. “That’s my dad,” Peter said, no longer triumphant, now sullen and resigned, “and I’m staying in your car.”

“I can’t take it anymore. I thought we could do it. He’s just,” he paused, taking another drag, “he’s just so difficult. So we tried. I tried so hard as a father. But I…” and here his voice caught.

“I failed him,” the father finished, letting the words fall like a sigh.

I walked up the yard without Peter. The man’s face was hard and unflinching. He drew on a cigarette. “I can’t take it anymore. I thought we could do it. He’s just,” he paused, taking another drag, “he’s just so difficult. So we tried. I tried so hard as a father. But I…” and here his voice caught.

“I failed him,” the father finished, letting the words fall like a sigh.

The man’s face crumpled and folded like a tent. I heard myself say, “He came to you with such…such a heavy past, and sometimes what we do seems…well, it seems pointless. I guess we work with what we have. You had all the pieces of Peter and you tried as best you could to put them, these broken parts, back together.”

The man closed his eyes, tears pooling in the lines on his face. I walked away as Peter’s grandma pulled up in a rumbling truck. I climbed into my car wishing for Peter…anything. That he would know he was loved. That it wasn’t too late. That the pieces would one day mend. That we all didn’t fail him.

I thought of a poem I had read long ago by Richard Wilbur. A bird was caught in his daughter’s room. He and his child stole in to open a window and retreated behind a cracked door to watch with bated breath as the bird tried again and again to get through to the sky. We provide what we can, we give all we have. But in the end we can just watch and wait, eyes opened. The bird cleared the sill of the world, as Wilbur wrote.

I pulled off the road, grabbed my gloves from the back seat and pulled a knit cap low over my eyes. I walked along a river when I saw the bird. The dove was listing precariously to one side like a ship that had taken on too much water. Slowly I stretched out my hand and stroked its glistening gray-blue head. One eye peered out at the rushing water, the world. I picked up the bird; its warmth filled my hands as I felt the heartbeat steadily, surprisingly strong for such a tiny creature. I turned the dove over and noticed the bloody mess between its feet. I wildly thought that I must rush to the veterinarian and save this bird’s life. I must nurse it back to health, help it recuperate. I must fix this. This was my poem, my broken bird. Its heart beat and one wing reached out, fluttering dimly. It was my turn to close my eyes; I stood very still, the wind breathing for me.

I set the bird behind a fallen log; its eye could continue to watch the flow of the river. The bird still listed. I placed one glove beneath it and one to blanket its sleek back; it would know that someone loved it, I assured myself. It would know that it mattered and that someone sacrificed something for it. It would know, I whispered to the leaves, to the water. I walked away. Don’t look back, don’t look back. I turned. The wind lifted the fingers of the glove into a purple salute. An I’ll-be-all-right-you-did-the-best-you-could wave. Did I? Do we? The moon flickered in and out of the treetops. Clouds drifted across its face like tendrils; a celestial jellyfish. I flexed my ungloved hands open and closed, accepting the chilling bite of the dark air. I wished what I wished for Peter earlier, but now more fiercely. The wind stirred the earth and the leaves sang softly beneath my feet.

Rebecca Minardi is finishing her master’s degree in public health at Des Moines University. She is passionate about working with adolescents to help them become independent young adults. Her essay, excerpted here, appears in the 2012 edition of Abaton, DMU’s annual medical literary journal. She was selected as this year’s recipient of the journal’s $1,000 Richard Selzer Prize, named in honor of the distinguished surgeon, Yale University professor and prolific author.

Bodies

By Michael Eastman, D.O.’15

What were we doing then, the four of us,
sweating over you with our blades gone dull?
Chest or abdomen or neck,
something like that, not that it mattered.
We were tired, resigned.
Our white coats were stained brown
around our arms and waists.
With forceps and steel probes,
we whittled away at the fat, talking about football,
and cars,
and movie blockbusters.
A piece of fascia flicked on my face.
And you—you weren’t looking so hot either,
by that point not much more
than a pile of scraps with some legs sticking out.
And we’d be getting to those next.
But as I stood up to stretch my back,
I found myself holding your hand,
your tiny hand,
wondering who had held it before
and if anyone else would hold it again.

Before going to medical school, Michael Eastman, D.O.’15, worked for 20 years and earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, and two sons in West Des Moines. This poem was among the honorable mentions for this year’s Richard Selzer Prize.

Eric A. Goldsmith, D.O.’84, FACOS, FICS, FASAS, will conclude his tenure as president of the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons (ACOS) during its annual clinical assembly Sept. 30-Oct. 3 in Chicago. DMU will present Goldsmith with a plaque for his leadership and service on Sept. 30.

Robert G. Good, D.O.’77, FACOI, will begin his term as president of the American College of Osteopathic Internists during its annual convention and scientific sessions Oct. 17-21 in Orlando, FL. DMU will present a plaque to him on Oct. 20.

A board-certified general surgeon in Fort Myers, FL, Goldsmith is medical director of academics and medical education at the Lee Memorial Hospital System. President of the District 11 Society of the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association, he has conducted many curriculum lectures, led specialty conferences and served in teaching and director capacities over the past two decades. He is a fellow in the International College of Surgeons and the American Society of Abdominal Surgeons as well as the ACOS, which he has served in several leadership positions.

Good is a board-certified general internist practicing in Mattoon, IL, and the medical director of Carle Foundation Physician Services, a large multispecialty group in southern Illinois. In addition to his year as president-elect of ACOI, he has served as the organization’s secretary-treasurer and on numerous committees. He chairs its clinical practice committee and Phoenix Physician Task Force and serves on the fundraising committee and committee on government affairs. Good is chair of the program for ACOI’s 2012 convention.

Members of the doctor of physical therapy Class of 2007 recently got together in Des Moines to reminisce and update each other on their careers and lives. They were even able to recall their class seating chart, which they sketched out on a to-go box. From left are Richaille Rus, Gio Villanueva, Julie Greenwood, Mandi Eastin, Theresa Pudlo Legg, Michelle Vogl Connell and Jennifer Hohrmann.

DMU Magazine received this photo from Villanueva, D.P.T., ATC, who practices physical therapy in Southeast Alaska, evaluating, treating and educating primarily the native population. He is a direct-hire physical therapist with the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium and is also associated with the Indian Health Service, the federal health program for American Indians and Alaska natives. Other D.P.T. Class of 2007 members practice physical therapy throughout the United States including in Arizona, California, Iowa, Nebraska and Washington.

Board-certified in neuromusculoskeletal medicine/osteopathic manipulative medicine, Cantieri has served on various hospital staffs as a consultant in utilizing OMM to treat newborns, post-operative patients and patients in intensive care units. He currently operates a private practice, Corrective Care, PC, in Mishawaka, IN, that specializes in the treatment of chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Cantieri has taught and lectured for various organizations, including teaching the annual prolotherapy course for the AAO since 1999. In 2008, he and co-authors Thomas H. Ravin, M.D., and George Pasquarello, D.O., FAAO, published the medical textbook Principles of Prolotherapy. Cantieri has received numerous professional awards, most notably the 1996 George Northup Writing Award from the American Osteopathic Association, the 2006 T.L. Northup Memorial Lecturer Award from the AAO, and the 2009 Dr. J.B. Kinsinger Award for Outstanding Service to the Indiana Osteopathic Association.

A current member of the AAO Board of Governors, Cantieri is a past president and secretary-treasurer of the organization and has served on several AAO committees.

DMU dominates West Penn’s podiatric residency. Graduates in the program and CPMS students recently on rotation there include, from left, Colin Zdenek, John Erickson and Kyle Moore, members of the CPMS Class of 2013; Class of 2012 members Erica Evans, John Baca and Tee Adeleke; Phil Richardson, D.P.M.’11; Kyle Peterson, D.P.M.’10; Matthew Hentges, D.P.M.’11; Brian Dix, D.P.M.’11; Peter Stasko, D.P.M.’09; and Jared Maker, D.P.M.’10. True to the camaraderie among West Penn residents, the group had gathered for a picnic.

Among the foot and ankle surgical residents at West Penn Allegheny Health System (WPAHS) in Pennsylvania, it would be no surprise to spot some DMU purple. That’s because currently eight of those 10 residents are graduates of DMU’s College of Podiatric Medicine and Surgery (CPMS).

In addition, three DMU podiatric medical students recently were on rotation there.

“It’s a credit to your school that we have quite a few kids from DMU,” says Alan Catanzariti, D.P.M., FACFAS, ABPS, ABPOPPM, director of the residency program. “That’s not by intention; we take the best people.”

The CPMS graduates share the feeling. Many say the residency was their first choice, for multiple reasons.

“The moment I stepped into the hospital, I felt like I was part of a family which cares about you not only as a doctor in training but as a person,” says Brian Dix, D.P.M.’11. “The balance between surgery and clinic was crucial…The amazing rearfoot and ankle surgery being taught by Dr. Catanzariti, among others, is among the best in the profession.”

In addition to the bonds among physicians and residents at West Penn, alumni of the residency program form a “fraternity,” says Michael Lee, D.P.M.’96, M.H.A., FACFAS, who practices with Capital Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in central Iowa. A WPAHS resident from 1996 to 1999, he has since recommended other CPMS graduates for the program.

“It has a reputation for being a tough program and also has strong alumni connections – West Penn [residency] graduates know other West Penn grads,” he says. “It opens doors for people down the road. That’s pretty unique among programs.”

Lee adds that the program prepares residents not only to be excellent physicians and surgeons but also leaders in the profession. Lee himself is past president of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons (ACFAS).

That leadership training was underscored for Kyle Peterson, D.P.M.’10, WPAHS chief resident. At this year’s ACFAS scientific conference, he met several WPAHS residency alumni, who hold an annual reunion during the event. “I had heard their names a lot,” he says. “This residency puts you on a path to leadership roles.”

The CPMS graduates say they feel ready for those roles and the residency’s rigor. Despite moments when “you feel like a student all over again,” Tee Adeleke, D.P.M.’12, says he and his fellow CPMS alumni were well prepared by DMU.

“All the credit for my getting this residency goes to the DMU faculty,” he says. “I can’t say enough about them. They molded me into the student I was and the doctor I hope to become.”

Huxley, IA, physical therapist Rob Drew, here cheering on the Ballard girls’ basketball team at the girls’ state basketball tournament in March, was given the Sports Medicine Award by the Iowa High School Athletic Association.
Photo: Joe Randleman/Tri-County Times

After 15 years of mending athletes and reviving their spirits, Huxley, IA, physical therapist Rob Drew, D.P.T.’94, LAT, got his time in the spotlight in March as he was given the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s Sports Medicine Award.

Drew has been a resident of Huxley for the past 18 years. He and his wife, Amy, have one daughter, Ashley, and one son, Connor.

Drew worked at Mary Greeley Medical Center, headquartered in Ames, IA; at 21st Century Rehab out of Nevada, IA, for five years and spent one and a half years working at a nursing home before starting up Huxley Physical Therapy in August of 2002. He has served as an athletic trainer at both Ballard and North Polk high schools for over a decade – starting 15 years ago at Ballard and adding North Polk two years later.

The services Drew has provided have been invaluable according to current North Polk athletic director and former Comet football coach there, Rob Sinclair, who nominated Drew for the IHSAA award.

“More than anything, Rob has always been available,” Sinclair said. “Over the years, I have called, and he has been willing to squeeze our kids in…When finances are an issue, he has always been able to make the adjustments for families.”

Sinclair noted that Drew gets amazing results in his work rehabbing injured athletes.

“I had a football player tear an ACL during a playoff game…he had surgery and started working with Rob,” Sinclair said. “Rob set up individual workouts, and even met with him outside of the office many times to help him get through workouts. The North Polk athlete was able to get into track three and a half months after the surgery.”

Current Ballard head football coach Al Christian echoed Sinclair’s sentiments toward Drew.

“Rob has been with us since day one,” Christian said. “He has been a great trainer and friend to Ballard High School. He works his own work schedule and family schedule around helping athletes. He is active in the Ballard community in many ways and is a huge asset to us.”

Drew said he was surprised upon hearing the news that he’d been selected for the award, which he received at halftime of the Class 2A Iowa boys’ state basketball championship game in Des Moines’ Wells Fargo Arena on March 9.

“I am very honored and humbled to be recognized for something I truly enjoy: anything I can do to help athletes stay strong. That’s my job.”

“When I first got the letter, I thought it was a joke,” Drew said. “Then I had to find out who nominated me. I thank Rob [Sinclair] so much for nominating me. I am very honored and humbled to be recognized for something I truly enjoy: anything I can do to help athletes stay strong. That’s my job.”

Drew added that he likes the perks of getting to attend so many high school athletic events at Ballard and North Polk. But he stressed that he isn’t there to be a spectator.

“I look at the games a little differently,” Drew said. “I’m looking for injuries and the mechanics of injuries; like if a lineman gets hit in the knee, I have a pretty good idea of what the injury might be as I’m running out to the athlete on the field.”

Drew recently was helping a North Polk girls’ basketball player recover from an injury that cut her junior season short. He said there is no better feeling than when an athlete comes back from a devastating injury to continue his or her athletic career in high school and beyond.

“It’s very rewarding to help a young athlete go from being depressed to regaining their confidence along with their physical ability,” Drew said. “To see someone like this girl, who is just bummed, not be able to finish her junior year is tough. But she’ll be back for her senior year.”

Modified instruction in the tango, says Marnie Coutts, D.P.T.’12, can help people with Parkinson’s disease improve their gait, balance, cognition and social lives. She says it combines the “art of connection” with the “science of movement.”

Hollywood legend Rudolph Valentino and Beatrice Dominguez wowed audiences when they danced the tango in the 1921 film, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” At the time, no one realized that the dance could ease the effects of Parkinson’s disease. Flash-forward to recent years and medical studies, including the capstone project Marnie Coutts, D.P.T.’12, took on as a student in DMU’s post-professional doctor of physical therapy (PPDPT) program: She sought to meld “the scientific expertise of the therapist and the artistic expertise of the dancer” to benefit Parkinson’s disease sufferers in community-based exercise groups. The benefit goes beyond physical movement, she notes.

“Dancing is such a social and engaging activity,” says Coutts, the PPDPT program’s 2012 Graduate of Distinction. “You’re doing a connected activity with another person.”

The capstone melded two of Coutts’ passions: She provides manual outpatient physical therapy services in two locations in Coos County, OR, and teaches ballroom dancing two evenings a week. In addition to the area’s “active ballroom dancing community,” she discovered that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a larger proportion of adults over age 65, 21.4 percent, compared to the state overall, 13.9 percent; with the increased incidence of Parkinson’s after age 60, “it is reasonable to assume we have a larger proportion of persons” with the disease, she stated in her capstone.

Coutts conducted a literature review of Parkinson’s, a debilitating, progressive neurologic disorder that typically leaves its victims with impaired strength, motor performance, hand-eye coordination, balance, gait stability, speech and cognition. While pharmacological and physical therapies exist to manage the disease, it isn’t curable.

Elements of tango – specifically, Coutts says, Argentinian-style – match those of effective physical therapy intervention for Parkinson’s patients. The walking dance includes “metered rhythms, external cues, cognitive movement strategies, large amplitude movements and close social contact – all of the recommended parameters for effective exercise” for these individuals, she concluded in her capstone.

Coutts reviewed other studies that showed the benefits of tango instruction for Parkinson’s patients. She then tested tango with a friend, a registered nurse with moderate Parkinson’s disease. Coutts and her partner and fellow dance instructor, Lynn Haller – both in the photo above – put her friend through experimental tango paces. “She was very patient with us,” Coutts says. “With her medical background, she was able to provide invaluable feedback on the exercises.”

The session also convinced Coutts they were on the right track. “When she and I were just walking around the room, the minute Lynn turned on the music, her posture improved,” she recalls.

Coutts’ capstone included an outline for a one-day pilot educational clinic for dance instructors, therapists and volunteers. Participants would take pre- and post-tests, gain knowledge on Parkinson’s disease and the tango, receive dance instruction and then practice basic tango techniques. She and Haller remodeled their dance studio to ensure its accessibility and plan to offer the clinic in the coming months.

This isn’t the first time Coutts has brought personal interests into her practice. For many years, she offered hippotherapy, an approach that uses horses to help patients experience movement and improve function. She has helped coach Special Olympics equestrian teams, now offers aquatic exercise therapy at a community pool and wants to explore using tai chi with arthritis sufferers.

“It seems like whatever recreational activity I’m involved with finds its way into my practice,” she says.

That’s one reason she loves physical therapy and the benefits it offers individuals of all abilities. “There is something sort of magical about it,” she notes.