Doc Talk with Monument Health

This is a repeat airing of Doc Talk with Monument Health. Anesthesiologist and pain medicine specialist Dr. Steven Frost, Rapid City's first pain management doctor, joins Mark Houston to talk about the intrathecal pain pump, a device that delivers pain relief straight to the spinal cord at a fraction of the dose needed with oral medication. They cover how it works, who's a candidate, and why getting ahead of chronic and cancer pain can lead to a better quality of life and better outcomes.

In this repeat episode of Doc Talk, Chaston Ellis, D.O., Psychiatrist at Behavioral Health in Rapid City, speaks on Monument Health’s efforts to increase access to psychiatric treatment and mental health care in the Black Hills. Dr. Ellis shares a bit about his background and motivations for pursuing psychiatry and gives perspective on how social media might be complicating anxiety disorders, while simultaneously helping to destigmatize mental health care. The most important message Dr. Ellis would like to share is that mental health care is now more accessible in the area than it has ever been before and that simply showing up and staying optimistic is one of the biggest steps you can take toward improvement.

Description: Athletic trainer Sonnie Neiman spends her school year taping ankles and covering games in Hulett Wyoming, but the Fourth of July finds her behind the chutes at the Black Hills Roundup. She explains what athletic trainers actually do, how Monument Health places her in the community as a contracted trainer and why rodeo athletes will take gobs of tape just to get through eight seconds. Sonnie walks through the injuries that surprise people, from rope burns to ACL tears, and the ones that look like any other sport. It's a close-up on the crew keeping cowboys and cowgirls in the arena.

Monument Health opens the doors to a brand-new hybrid operating room built for the region's most complex heart and vascular cases. Cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon Tommaso Cambiaghi, M.D. walks through the space and explains the TAMBE device, a branched endovascular graft he helped evaluate that treats aortic aneurysms without open surgery. He breaks down the OR team, the technology behind the C-arm imaging system, and what AI's growing role in cardiovascular care means for patients. It's advanced aortic care now available close to home in Rapid City.

Host Mark Houston sits down with colorectal surgeon Dr. Steven Donahue to talk about diverticulitis, a condition Houston has lived with for over two decades. They walk through what causes it, when repeat flare-ups turn into a real conversation about surgery, and what recovery looks like using Monument Health's da Vinci robotic surgery system. Houston shares his own experience going through the procedure, start to finish, and Dr. Donahue breaks down what patients can actually expect, from that first consult to the fear most people have about ending up with a colostomy bag.

Millions of women are turning to social media for answers about perimenopause and menopause, but how much of it holds up? Dr. Heather Moline, an OB-GYN with Rapid City Medical, joins Mark Houston to cut through the noise: what actually separates perimenopause from menopause, why two decades of fear around hormone replacement therapy were built on flawed research, and what treatment really looks like today. It's a candid, practical look at symptoms, testing, and the long-term health benefits women may have missed out on, and a clear first step for anyone wondering if this is them.