By Dan McFadden
Oculus Director of Investor Relations
As director of investor and public relations at Oculus, I have one of the best jobs in the company. Since I joined the Oculus team in January 2004, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with hundreds of doctors/patients from around the globe (in my efforts to document through video, photos and written chronicle, their experiences) that have been successfully treated with the Microcyn Technology. It’s truly an uplifting experience when you can see the real-world impact of saving patient lives.
As an example, I share with you recent accounts of two patients on opposite ends of the U.S. continent—thus, the tale of two cites. As is often the case in these retellings, I’ve changed the names of the patients, but have held true to the cities of origin.
Our first story involves Cindy and Chantael from Oxford, New York, a village of 4,000 people on the Chenango River with beautiful old homes, churches and well-kept parks. Without divulging ages, Cindy, who is Chantael’s friend and caretaker, shared with us that Chantael was born the same day that the Titanic sank, but her birth coming just a few years after its sinking. Chantael has traveled all over the world—as a ballroom dancer as well as a French and German language teacher. She effuses culture and is highly thought of by all in Oxford.
This March, Chantael was diagnosed with dry gangrene in her foot, and she was seen by her primary care physician, who originally prescribed a conservative regimen of silfadene cream. Cindy felt frustrated with this approach because it didn’t seem to be doing anything and she was spending hours each day scraping away the silfadene paste, which acted like a wax and would plug the creases in Chantael’s skin. But eventually the wound deteriorated to a point that was cause for the doctor to strongly suggest they amputate the foot. That wasn’t an easy conversation for either Cindy or Chantael, so on March 11, 2010, they opted instead to have Microcyn Wound and Skin Care added to her treatment regimen.
Twenty days later, on March 31, Cindy shared with me via email: “Thanks so much for all your help and interest. Chantael is doing much better. The Microcyn is helping to bring back both the toes and heel back. We have a nursing service that comes to the house twice a week and they work with the doctors and her doctor is not opposed to anything that will help her gangrene. I can’t begin to thank you enough for all your help. There is no more talk of amputation! It won’t be long and Chantael will be up and about – just in time for good weather.”
Most recently, I spoke with Cindy on May 14, and having seen the phenomenal recovery of Chantael’s foot, she has taken it upon herself to become the Microcyn Technology town-crier in the city of Oxford. She is working with the local pharmacies to get it placed on their shelves as well as with the local newspaper to share the good news of Chantael’s recovery and the role that Microcyn played in it. Thanks Cindy!
Now we fly via the magic of the written word to the capital of California, the sunny city of Sacramento. But life isn’t always sunny there, as Marilyn and Claudia (another caretaker/elderly patient tandem) can attest. As Marilyn, who is a retired nurse, tells the story, her daughter was to be married on a Sunday in March. The night before the wedding, the rehearsal dinner was held at the groom’s house in one of those stately homes on Capital Avenue. Though recently refurbished, the outside veranda apparently couldn’t support the weight of the twenty people who had gathered upon it, which included Marilyn’s 90-year-old mother, Claudia. To make a long story short, the veranda collapsed—a 12-foot fall—and many were injured, including Claudia who suffered an eight-inch gash on her right tibia. She was transported by ambulance to the local hospital where the wound was debrided and bandaged. Being of stoic Scottish stock, she refused to be hospitalized, and instead walked with a new cane down the aisle the next day and read a collection of gaelic poetry that brought the house to tears.
Shortly thereafter, however, her wound was diagnosed as being infected with either MRSA, staph or strep–none of it good. The doctors implemented acute infection management and infused her with antibiotics, but the infection failed to respond. Fortunately, Marilyn had heard of Microcyn through a family friend and suggested it to Claudia’s doctors. In that the hospital was trying the last antibiotic available, still to no avail, Claudia’s treatment regimen was changed to include Microcyn Technology. Her wound responded and within a week the infection disappeared. Using FAA jargon, Marilyn refers to this experience as a “near miss” that may have turned to disaster if not for the intervention with Microcyn.
Now I suppose I could end here, but in the spirit of Charles Dickens (who penned the original Tale of Two Cities), I must digress to the British Isles, where another amazing Microcyn story came to light a few years back. Rather than performing a Yankee-translated disservice to her prose, I simply include this woman’s email in 2007, which reads like a Victorian novel and serves as a heart-warming closing to today’s tale. Microcyn is sold as Dermacyn in the EU:
Dear Dan
Many thanks for your note and interest in my mother’s condition. We had the best Christmas ever – hard work, as I prepare sufficient quantity and variety to feed the Russian and US armies – as not only was Mum able to join us with my beloved daughter and new grandson, but she was absolutely free of pain and discomfort. My prayers for her continuing survival, free of trauma, were answered and I can assure you that I have said thank you not just to God but to you and the Dermacyn scientists over and over – and over again. Finding this product, and having access to your phenomenal support, is akin to winning a thousand major lotteries (not that I have ever won any!) although, to be honest, there is no material thing in the entire universe which could come close to matching what we have just experienced over Christmas. On Boxing Day, my mother thanked me for her best Christmas to date – what could better that? My response is always that it is a team effort: it is an amalgam of prayers, products and phenomenal people like you, all wrapped up as a gift from God.
During the awful time of my last email, sent before Christmas, my mother had succumbed to a new symptom, again on the poor circulation right leg, with awful water retention, which saw clear fluid pouring from the pores, from knee to ankle. It left the skin tender and red and ultimately a sore, blackened, spider shaped area of about one an a half inches in circumference, developed, which I am continuing to treat twice daily with Dermacyn. The papery, red skin remains but the blackened areas are diminishing and that section of skin is a lot less sensitive than before. The foot remains stable, with slowly demarcating areas lifting between healthy and necrotic points.
The doctors and nurses here are utterly dumbfounded at the stability and clean status of the necrotic toes and, even more so, of my mother’s renewed buoyancy. It is with extreme pride that I have made them all aware of Dermacyn’s existence and most have been made to sit and read the data about this product. There is no doubt they expected Mum to perish after she nose-dived before Christmas and more or less gave up on her. It was the loneliest time of my life and all I had was my faith in God to do whatever was best for Mum. She slept virtually non-stop like a drowsy, weighty caterpillar for about a week and then suddenly emerged like a lively butterfly from a chrysalis of gloom and doom on Christmas Eve: it was truly the best family gift, ever.
Forgive this wieldy response – I am simply overwhelmed with the miracles, which have surrounded my mother since I have had the privilege of having been born in her care. Her life has been full of the most incredible adventures and I hope I can find time to start my book about her, while she can read and help edit. She has a virtually encyclopaedic memory of family events and accurately graphic recall over more than eight decades Anyone who has ever known her has always been utterly captivated by her grace, charm and good humour, all of which she has employed to change the negatives of her life into the most glittering and unbelievable positives. I just pray she has sprinkled a little bit of that gold dust into the DNA of her daughter!
I send the very best of loving gratitude and good wishes to you, your family and colleagues for the healthiest, happiest and most successful year ever in 2008. I shall be forever grateful to you and those unseen Dermacyn personnel who have helped me to reclaim precious time with my lovely mum.
Jocelyn