Doc Talk with Monument Health

Hospice might be the most misunderstood word in healthcare, so Dr. Jennifer Eitingon is back on Doc Talk to separate the myths from the reality. She explains why dying isn't a failure and how hospice keeps patients as captain of the ship. She also covers why families do better when hospice starts months before the end instead of the last few days. Plus, she shares why ranch country may see the end of life a little differently and the easiest first step for anyone who isn't ready to commit.

When tremors make it hard to hold a cup of coffee or sign your name, medication isn’t always enough. Monument Health neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Ziechmann explains how deep brain stimulation helps patients with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor get their lives back. He covers how the surgery works under anesthesia, what success looks like for each patient, and what’s next for this technology. Best of all, you no longer have to leave Rapid City to get it.

Until this year, families in western South Dakota had to drive to Minnesota or Colorado for epilepsy monitoring. Now Monument Health has opened the region's first epilepsy monitoring unit, right here in Rapid City. Epileptologist and neurology section chief Dr. Donald Barr talks about what happens during a five-day stay and why doctors sometimes want to trigger a seizure on purpose. He also covers the surgery that can actually cure epilepsy, and how watching his own father live with the disease shaped his career.

This is a repeat episode. Dr. Ashlea Semmens, M.D., medical director of the Breast Center at Monument Health, joins Doc Talk to walk through what every woman should know about breast cancer, risk factors you can and can't control, how to do a real at-home self-check, when mammograms actually start and what they can and can't catch, and what treatment looks like once a diagnosis comes back.

This is a repeat of one of our most compelling Doc Talk conversations. Dr. Keely Ulmer, gynecologic oncologist at the Cancer Care Institute at Monument Health, shares her remarkable path from the Pine Ridge Reservation to the operating room. She walks through the four main gynecologic cancers, the symptoms women too often brush aside, and why the HPV vaccine is the closest thing we have to a cancer eraser. If you or someone you love has ever put off a screening, this one's worth a second listen.

This is a repeat episode. Mark sits down with Breanna Janovy, CSW-PIP, a certified social worker at Monument Health, to talk about something that doesn't get said enough: your mental health and your physical health are the same thing, really. Breanna breaks down why so many of us will run to urgent care for a stomach ache but won't say a word about feeling anxious or depressed, and she shares what it actually looks like to ask for help, why the first visit isn't as scary as you think, and how Monument Health is making mental health support available right in the Sturgis clinic.

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.