Avoid surgery, meds with injections of healing properties from patient’s blood.
Many children spend a part of their youth building forts and treehouses out of scrap materials around their homes and neighborhoods. Some carry that passion into adulthood and build a life around it.
Regenerative medicine allowed Barbara to resume her active lifestyle.
Barbara Smoker did.
While growing up on her grandparents’ farm, Barbara developed such a strong predilection for building things that she went on to become an architectural engineer and later founded her own general contracting company.
“My company built skyscrapers, schools, churches, apartment buildings – all kinds of things,” Barbara relates. “And we built them all over the place. I’ve lived in many places, sometimes for three months, sometimes for three years, whatever the job required.”
Barbara’s most recent move was to Florida, where this active 75-year-old retiree enjoys fishing and “anything that has to do with the water.” A year ago, her ability to enjoy those pastimes was abruptly interrupted by an injury sustained in a bad fall.
“I was fixing something in the ceiling at my home, and as I was coming down off the ladder, I tried stepping over a box that was right there at the foot of the ladder,” Barbara details. “I wound up stumbling and falling on my left side.”
The fall produced aggravating left hip and back pain, but it was her left shoulder that took the brunt. The damage to the ligaments and tendons in that joint was so great that it robbed Barbara of almost all use of her left arm.
“At first, I could not move my left arm away from my abdomen,” Barbara laments. “It was so bad that, for a while, I had to live with a friend because I couldn’t do much of anything for myself. I was almost like an invalid.
“After a while, I regained some movement in my forearm, but the rest of my arm was still so sore and weak that I couldn’t do anything with it. For dinner, for example, I just had to get things that I could pop into the microwave. My shoulder hurt so bad that I couldn’t sleep at night.”
Barbara sought medical attention almost immediately, but she was told the damage was beyond repair and that she needed shoulder replacement surgery. Unwilling to undergo surgery, she went in search of an alternative. She found one at QC Kinetix.
“The doctor I went to told me he could replaces the joint, but that wasn’t what I wanted,” Barbara confirms. “So, I did some research on the internet and found QC Kinetix. The more I read about them, the more I thought, This is something I need to look in to.”
State-of-the-Art Treatment
A local practice with a national reputation, QC Kinetix offers concierge-level, drug-free, nonsurgical pain management and state-of-the-art regenerative medicine treatments for soft tissue pain, joint pain and musculoskeletal conditions.
As an alternative to addictive medications and invasive surgeries, QC Kinetix treatments trigger the body’s ability to heal and repair itself from the inside out using each patient’s healing properties, which are found in the patient’s blood.
The blood, gathered during a typical blood draw, is placed in a centrifuge, where the healing properties are separated, extracted, and then injected into the damaged tissue or joint. The injection sparks a tissue regeneration that allows the body to rebuild itself over a few weeks or months.
“Surgery wasn’t an option for me. I needed to find something else to help me get my life back, and I found it at QC Kinetix.” – Barbara
“Regenerative medicine is a great alternative for many people who thought surgery was their only option,” says Daniel Sucherman, MD, medical director of QC Kinetix Suncoast, which has locations in Bradenton, St. Petersburg and Lakeland, and will soon open a location in Brandon.
After years as a key member of an orthopedic surgical team, Dr. Sucherman recognized the need for a better way to help people in pain. A strong believer in regenerative medicine and the positive impacts it can have on people’s lives, he chose to meet that need through QC Kinetex.
“I’m an anesthesiologist, primarily for orthopedic surgery, and I know that when people with pain go to see an orthopedic surgeon, they are commonly told they need surgery,” Dr. Sucherman adds. “And believe me, surgery has its place.
“But surgery is very strenuous on the body. It involves a lot of cutting, drilling, sawing and hammering, and the recovery process is very arduous. In many cases, there is an alternative people can turn to.
“That’s why I became involved with QC Kinetix. I want to offer people an alternative to surgery, pain medications or steroids for their joint pain. That is exactly what QC Kinetix and its regenerative medicine treatments do.”
Though it is on the leading edge of medical science, regenerative medicine is not a new concept. Its most basic principles have been developed and practiced for years. At QC Kinetix, the process has been updated to make it as effective as possible.
For example, QC Kinetix uses ultramodern equipment that allows for the retrieval of the most useful healing factors from blood. It can also obtain healing factors from bone marrow, one of the best sources of hematopoietic stem cells, which are blood cells with extensive self-renewal properties.
Barbara Smoker
QC Kinetix works with patients over many visits, providing various drug-free injections that are customized for each patient. Symptom improvement is then monitored for several months while the patient experiences no downtime.
“Another thing that sets QC Kinetix apart is that we do all of this in-house,” Dr. Sucherman adds. “Your blood, your tissue never leave our office. And we do all of this work while you’re there. And when we’re done, you go about your normal activities.”
Feeling 20 Years Younger
Regenerative medicine can be used to treat arthritis and muscle or tendon tears almost anywhere in the body, including the knees and shoulders, ankles and wrists, hips, lower back, and neck.
Barbara was deemed a good fit for the therapy and received injections into her shoulder in May 2021. She says her entire body, left shoulder and all, feels better now than it has in years.
“When I first went to QC Kinetix, I was in pretty bad shape,” Barbara says. “But now I feel great. Thanks to the injections I received at QC Kinetix, I’m doing everything as if I was 20 years younger because that’s how good I feel — as if I’m 20 years younger.
“I’m a very active person, and one of the things I love to do is help people. I like to help them with minor fixes around the house or help them with their gardening, and I can do all of that again now that I’ve received these regenerative medicine injections.
“I’m very grateful for what QC Kinetix has done for me. The regenerative medicine injections were a great success because surgery wasn’t an option for me. I needed to find something else to help me get my life back, and I found it at QC Kinetix.”
