In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Mo Kenney. Mo shares his story of overcoming amputation and his work at Kenney Orthopedics helping others in their recovery.
Season 2 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Matt Yehling, Directory of Claims at Midwest Employers Casualty.
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Mo Kenney. Mo shares his story of overcoming amputation and his work at Kenney Orthopedics helping others in their recovery.
Season 2 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Matt Yehling, Directory of Claims at Midwest Employers Casualty.
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. This is a podcast for workers compensation enthusiasts. We think there's a few of you guys out there. I'm your host Greg Hamlin coming at you from Berkley Industrial Comp in Sweet Home Alabama. And with me is my co-host for the day.
Matthew Yehling:Hello, everyone. This is Matthew Yehling.
Greg Hamlin:Glad to have you with us, Matt. We have with us a special guest today, Mo Kenney from Kenney Orthopedics. And Mo I actually met back when I was living in Kentucky working for the state fund. And I felt like his story and what he chose to do with that story was pretty impressive. So I wanted to take today to have the chance to talk to him. How are you this afternoon Mo?
Mo Kenney:Hi, guys, thanks for having me. I consider this a very big honor to be interviewed with on your program. So thank you very much.
Greg Hamlin:Thanks, Mo. Well, I wanted to today to have you Mo talk a little bit about how you got into the industry. I know you're with Kenney Orthopedics. And we see a need for that often in our industry, especially with our our work comp, being specialized in high hazard. It's always unfortunate when someone loses a limb. But it's folks like you that make it possible for for people who go through those things to regain a quality of life that they may have lost. And so I thought maybe to start with if you could talk a little bit, how did you end up where you are? What got you interested in, in orthopedics?
Mo Kenney:Sure, I'd be happy to share this testimony. When I was a young kid at the age of seven, I was in a car accident. Yeah, I'm 54 years old today. So at the age of seven means I've been an amputee for 47 years in the car accident, I was, I got hit from behind while I was walking from a neighbor's house and I lost my right leg. And so I was just a little, little kid, I don't know if anybody else out there is near my age. But back in the day before Xbox and, you know, social media, we used to play outside and go to our neighbor's house and enjoy ourselves in that manner. And it wasn't uncommon for parents to let kids go from one neighbor's house to another. And this unfortunate day was for me, there was a young man that was out driving his car, or he was out driving his father's car, he was trying to learn how to drive self teaching himself. And he had a pure and simple accident and ran off the road and ran into me. And I think one of the biggest things that I would like to make sure people take away that a lot of traumatic amputations sure simple an accident. And, you know, unfortunately, it was out of everybody's control. But the way I looked at it even back then was this was a blessing in disguise, it ended up being something that even at the young age of seven gave me some guidance to do what I'm doing today, which 47 years later, I now own 18 locations, and we're in three different states. And the mission that we follow is to always make sure we take care of every amputee and that doesn't necessarily mean just in the three states that we're located in, we do humanitarian work around the world as well. But we certainly always try to beat the drum that we want to take care of our own people in our backyard as well. First, if there is that need, and we do our share of taking take care of our own people as well. So what I don't want to get too verbose in my description, but just to kind of frame it out. When I was seventeen, I went to college at Emory University, and I did it under the auspices that this is what I wanted to do. At first I thought maybe it was a psychologist. But after I got my psychology degree, I thought I wanted to do something deeper and I went into prosthetics and orthotics at Northwestern Medical School. And I got my board certification back in the early 90s. And since then, I've been blessed and grew to a certain size where I think we can help further that mission of taking care of other people. What I'd decided to do 40 plus years ago.
Greg Hamlin:So thinking back on that first of all, it was incredible story But thinking back on that having not gone through something like that myself, Mo when you went Through that, what were some of the emotions or feelings you had to go through as a seven year old realizing that life was going to be a little different?
Mo Kenney:Well, it's an excellent question. I will tell you, you know, as a practitioner, I see a variety of different populations of patients. And you know, the three groupings are pediatric, adults, and geriatrics. And so I've had the luxury of treating all three groups of people. And I found that the pediatrics or the peds, those are the guys that do very well. I mean, kids are so hardcore, and one of the one of the blessings I was talking about earlier is that, you know, if you really never really knew what it was like to have two legs, do you really miss it? You know, I mean, I think I have a harder time, especially with the psychology with our adults in geriatrics because they've lived a fairly significant life with two legs. And when they go through the trauma of losing one, it's fairly, fairly difficult, especially psychologically. So I tell you all that, because when I was a kid, I, I remember being a long time ago, but I remember being in the hospital. And I didn't really know where I was when I came to, because I get hit by this vehicle. I was out. My parents told me later for three days. So I must have gone into a coma state that, you know, I didn't know what was going on. When I came out of it. I just think I remembered being in traction and having my leg in the air because I also fractured my femur and seeing that my, my leg was gone. And of course, that's where the flooding of the trauma came in the psychology and everything else. And once I grieved about it, and really understood what was going on, it really kind of went away. And I think kids have that little bit of resilience and luxury that a lot of adults in geriatrics do not get it I distinctly remember my father helping too he came in the hospital, and he had brought me a brand new bicycle, I looked at him like it was crazy. Because I thought like, Why in the world? Would you buy me a bike at him? Like, he thinks kind of workout for me. And he's like, no worries, you know, you're gonna one day be able to ride this bike when you get out of here. And sure enough, he was right. Three months later, I was on that bike, and I'll be doing some pediatric review things around the neighborhood on it. So to answer your question, I think, you know, I adapted a lot better because of the time and circumstance. I see it entirely different today, especially with a traumatic amputation and our adult population, because the theory is they go through life and you know, they really get to a point of fulfillment, then all of a sudden, bam, one day, the whole world turns upside down. And they became an amputee because of some type of trauma and dealing with that, and healing from that is very difficult. My opinion.
Matthew Yehling:So Mo, what the what stigmas Have you noticed our society struggle with regarding amputations, and, you know, you mentioned that you've been living with one for 47 years. So and, and have those stigmas changed? You know, since you were a child, what have you seen over time, regarding the months run amputation?
Mo Kenney:Well, I mean, this is a very good question. And I'll tell you the physical aspect of it. There's been so much technology in the last 40 years, it's just amazing. I mean, you know, think about it. 40 years ago, we didn't have cell phones. I mean, it was probably about 30 years ago that the cool actor started coming out with those big ol you know, brick sized phones that we thought, oh my god, they can make a phone call without having a cord tied to it, you know, that, that the technology has just boomed since then. And I attribute a lot of that to our changing times. And you know, the benefits of that. I don't want to say that some of the old school stuff was better because it'll make me look like an old guy. But you know, it was more simple back then. And so the stigma of, you know, an amputee back then, I firmly believe that it was different because, you know, today you can see in the media and TV, a lot of big, famous people that are, you know, out there with all these cool looking devices and carbon, graphite and titanium, weighing on their legs and you know, they're just out there conquering the world. It's a beautiful thing. Back in the old days, the term wooden leg came about and what leg was because part of the foot that was popular 40 years ago, was definitely had a keel made out of wood. And so some of the even, you know, generations before, made their legs out of tree stumps from different parts of the country, and hence the name wooden leg was back then. So today, you know, that stuff is unheard of. And thanks to the increase in technology, we've got the ability to restore normalcy and more functionality among our patients. And, you know, with, obviously, technology comes price and expense. But I will tell you that no matter how much we spend on that, it always has a return on investment. And I especially go into that with our government peer sources that, you know, invest in the expense that we're talking about, it's only going to come back to you 10 times, because what you're going to do is turn this person back into a taxpayer, you're not going to pay for some type of pathology, where, you know, everybody has to hide this person and feed this person and put him in expensive care. And, you know, for a lifetime need. In fact, the opposite is true, you end up taking this person and making them independent, he goes out and gets a job, or she goes out and gets a job. And the next thing you know, lo and behold he's paying back into the system for the next person. So I think a lot of that short sightedness is out there. And I hope I didn't stray too far from your question about the physiological aspect of it. But I do want to say that some of the, I guess, misconception is that whenever especially as it pertains to a third party payer source, whenever they provide or pay for an arm or leg, it's the confusion out there is you're not paying for a device, you're paying for the device, plus the Clinical Care Plus, you know, all the things that surround that particular expense. And we I like to refer to it as a package of service, not just for a device. And in fact, that's what it ends up being in most cases, on your average transtibial or below the knee prosthesis, you can see from the beginning, it's a minimum of three to six months of a package of care from a highly skilled specialists. You know, so if that leg ends up costing$20,000, it wasn't a $20,000 leg, it was a $20,000 device, plus, you know, 12 to 15, office visits, plus, you know, everything that goes into those offices, it's a care extender involved, nurse involved, the physical therapist, or whatever Allied Health is involved with that care. So, you know, have the comment that, oh, this leg was this much money or that leg was this much money? It's, it's a little misunderstood. And so that's why I really appreciate this interview today. Because we can sit down and explain these things, and have people understand because, you know, gotta be fair looking at it from your point of view, or a third party point of view and say, you know, if they weren't in medicine, or more specifically, if they weren't a specialist, how in the world would they would? Would they know what, what they're cutting the six digit check for? And, you know, to ask the question, to immediately get the mom to because you, quote, unquote, may have offended somebody is not fair to you. So my thoughts are, is that this kind of conversation is a win win for both parties, because it explains everything to each other and hasn't been understand that at the end of the day, the mission creates productivity, which in turn saves dollars. And it just makes everything better.
Greg Hamlin:I love what you're talking about there. Because I think in the end of the day, that that is what's most important is the outcome. And sometimes we can get caught up in the nickels and the dimes and we lose sight of at the end of the day, if we do right by the injured worker or the injured person to help them recover and return to life. Everything's gonna cost less in the long run, maybe not in the short run. And I think that that's a really important concept that you're pointing out there. Mo.
Mo Kenney:I couldn't agree with you more.
Greg Hamlin:Yeah, and so again, so I know, switching topics a little bit, a friend of mine, when I lived in Kentucky had his leg amputated, and it was pretty difficult. He was in a car accident by a hit by someone who was drunk driving and in his lane, and that person passed away and had no insurance and after, I think four or five surgeries, they finally reached the point where they had to amputate. And he was in his early 20s. So that was a big thing of like, Well, how am I going to work and when that decision was made, one of the first things I did at the time was call one of your one of your staff members and get you guys in touch with them. And because I was friends with them, I watched him go through some of the pieces of the process before I moved here to Birmingham. And I know a big part of that is getting the prosthesis to adjust correctly, that there's some work in that making sure that what you've designed fits properly, because then there could be other problems talk, talk a little bit about that, of how you do that, and why that's important.
Mo Kenney:So you know, I said earlier between 12 and 15, office visits was not a common for the first three, six months of amputation. And that's because everything's changing so rapidly, at least you're hoping to for the better, you're hoping the patient's going through rehabilitation, and you're hoping that, you know, the residual limb is is atrophied and healing properly, and then the, you know, the prosthesis has to be changed periodically to accommodate the change in the residual, and that also changes in the advancement of the patient in his activity, once he goes from, you know, a sedentary life to, you know, a normal walking life, there's a huge amount of changes that need to be made in alignment, and actually prescription criteria and design. So, you know, there are multiple things that are involved in, I can see that easily confusing a lot of people, I want to reiterate that you hit the nail on the head earlier with your friend, I mean, it's just like some of the wounded warriors, we see. Their biggest fear isn't being able to walk again, their biggest fear is being able to feed their family again. So, you know, we see that these traumatically injured people come in. And one of their biggest I think, and maybe this is the psychologist in me. But I think one of the biggest things that inhibit their progress is, you know, at least a third of our patients are really hit hard with psychological issues, predominantly depression, that there are other pathologies that come along with that. And so some of that slows them down. I mean, we have, we have the same, you can't fix the body until you fix the head. And it's so true sometimes, because it doesn't matter how well you condition the body, if the brain or the center of everything doesn't function properly, it ain't gonna happen, right? So I bring all this up, because going through three to six month period, having multiple visits, is, you know, the practitioners way of making sure there's progress and things are addressed. And there's not, let's get this patients in here are referred here or, you know, whatever medicinally needs to be done and everything else that's involved, for the proper care and evolution of that patient back to normalcy. So I can see too, and I'm trying to look at it while I talk to you from the payers perspective. You know, I thought we just had a doctor, order a prescription for a prosthesis. Next thing, you know, you know, two months later, we got a bill for another socket, you know, why don't you know, the socket, it's a couple thousand dollars. So what in the world do we get? And don't make the mistake of what I just said, it's not just the device, it's everything else that's inclusive around it, and the labor element and the specialty and so forth. But why is that happening? Nobody's picking up the phone, I'm sure calling the third party payer, or top agency and explaining these things. So I've tried to look at it too, from our side, when we get frustrated, because a claim either gets put on hold or denied. It's an immediate insult, right? Somebody's somebody's saying, well, your judgment or your decision isn't appropriate, immediate thought, but I believe personally, it's the third party payers not getting the good explanation as to what's going on and can't just arbitrarily keep shoveling money out the door for not a good reason. And so, I get all that. And as a side note earlier, you know, I tell people, especially when I do talks for surgeons or physicians, you know, don't, you can't look at amputation, as a failure, and unfortunately, a lot of especially vascular surgeons look at it that way, because, you know, their job was to rehabilitate and save the limb and get that patient back to normalcy in that way. But a lot of times, if you look at this in the positive manner that I would look at it is it's a treatment modality that heals, you know, because we have people that get the ability to do that rather than, you know, go into a program that you know, takes 3, 6, 9 months that we find out, they end up getting this taken off and this done and trying to save this and that you end up at the end of the day going through the amputation anyway. So, again, it's not a failure, it's a treatment modality, I think that's a success because it allows that patient, in a lot of cases to get rid of the sickness, and to get back into normalcy sooner than later. Okay, and go too much, I'm Oh, this isn't a question.
Matthew Yehling:You're fine, it's great. The more information the better, I think, for all parties, you know. So I work for an excess of loss workers comp carrier, so we're usually not involved in that. The, you know, the first dollar claims, but when a when there's a serious injury, like amputations, we we get involved pretty early and, like to know about those claims, and we have an amputee expert on staff. So I see a lot of these, we probably have several 100 of these cases you know, some that are brand new, some that are, you know, 20 years ago. So, you know, so it's interesting speaking to you, you know, so for an adjuster out there that's listening to this and thinking, you know, what, you know, they get that bill, or they get that first notice that, Oh, Dr. So and so has ordered a myo electric arm, and these range, you know, from, you know, 80,000 to $150,000, upward or even more, and oh, it's, you know, it's a specialized device that's gotta be adjusted in, you know, Germany or Sweden or something, you know, you get this weird thing, and then there's all these health codes and everything else, but it's very, you know, from the adjuster, and me, there's a lot of unknown, and most people don't have that expertise of seeing hundreds of these types of claims, you know, even experienced adjusters, so the, you know, how would you recommend to them that they best work with the prosthetist in that example, where, hey, it's, you know, it's an upper arm or even a lower extremity? I mean, they're equally can be as expensive, right? Where would you? Where would you start in that process?
Mo Kenney:That's such a good question. And so, you know, we we, we kind of joke around to, on our end, say, you know, if you're, as an adjuster, if you've processed two amputee claims, you're the expert, you know, I mean, so that a whole lot of us out there either are gonna have a lot of these cases out there. I'm quite amazed about the 100 cases that, you know, your party's been exposed to, but the fact is that we're so small in medicine, I mean, there's only 6000 board certified prosthetist orthotist, in the country, which, you know, I tried to put that in perspective that there's, you know, there's 125,000, roughly more or less physical therapists out there and Allied Health, in the MD do world, there's probably about a little over half 1,515,000 of those in the US that are board certified roughly rough numbers. And then I put it in real big perspective. And I say, there's 1.4 million attorneys out there in the US. So you can get a big picture of what's going on in this crazy world. Usually, the non attorneys laugh at that one. But the point is, is that we're so small, and nobody really, really knows who we are, unless they've had a person in the family that lost a leg, and I couldn't imagine an adjuster knowing a thing about it. So my, my assumption is that, you know, your biggest ally immediately is to go on Google and start learning on your own, but I'll tell you, what would be the biggest asset for you, as an adjuster is not just whoever the provider is you're working with, but maybe even somebody at a local level, seeing if you can physically go to one of the appointments, you know, go and see what's all involved, see, you know, the different interaction, find out what it is that that claimant does, when they touch that doorknob. And then when they walk out of there with a prosthesis, we like to say limp in leap out, right. So if you have the luxury of a local facility, again, we're not that big. So unfortunately, may not be just down the road for you. It would be so much better, just to I think most process worth this point, inherently, for you guys to be exposed to that. And so there might be some HIPAA concerns and things of that nature. But if it is one of your cases, then it would be a win win, in my opinion, not only would you impress the provider, but the claimant itself would be very impressed. But outside of that, you know, I wouldn't expect any adjuster to really have very much information at all because prosthetic school is quite involved as well as the board certification process and Because again, remember, this is a specialty credential that's so small that I think information is your power. And that's what you need to go pursue, find out about it.
Greg Hamlin:That's really important. And something we could probably do better at for sure is, and I think you're right, no mass company is a little unique in that they focus on access to insurance. So they only see the claims that got that when that got big. So they have a lot more of those than than even we do. But I do think you're right, like going and seeing could make a big difference. And that's definitely a takeaway that I'm gonna get for our, our catastrophic unit is to make sure that we do that in the next year. So I know, when you go through a work injury or any kind of injury, one of the things we've noticed is how important the support system outside the injury is. Friends, family, and that can be for positive or negative. I thought maybe it would be good if you could talk a little bit about what you've seen as you've helped people go through this process, what role does family friends and family play in that for someone who's trying to recover from an amputation?
Mo Kenney:I think that's very important. I mean, you're actually experiencing some of it with your friend, because you're probably a good friend of his that can give him at least some help from the, you know, future and payer perspective world and with all your exposure. But to me, that's huge medicine. And I see, you know, I see, when somebody goes through an amputation, the fat gets rounded by family and the community and then everybody else. And so, to me, that's some of the best medicine now, there's a double edged sword here, the flip side is, especially like in the pediatric world, you can get a helicopter parents who come in and, you know, they, they, of course, they love their child. And so the natural reaction is to coddle them and try to protect them from the world. And it's difficult for a provider to say, lady, you need to toughen up your kids. So quick cuddling is so much, you know, or, you know, I have to sit down and, and with the consultation, and just talk and educate and recommend and a lot of times, we'll say we have to fit the parents first before we fit the child in or treat the parents before we treat the child because that can have a negative impact as well. However, in most cases, like I said, earlier, kids are somewhat resilient in coming through with flying colors. But am telling you this out of a little bit of hypocrisy, because I'll share something personal. From my life, you know, I with a psychology background and a board certification with prosthetics, I had the luxury of really, and I think most practitioners in our world do, really getting to know your patient. More as they're more like, they end up being more like family, because if you think about it, there's a lifetime pathology, you know, our legs aren't gonna grow back. I know, it sounds sarcastic say that, but it's true. And, you know, we deal with an amputee for life. And what a lot of people don't know a lot of third party payers don't know is a prosthetic life is going to be somewhere between three to five years, so every three to five years, no matter what happens to that patient, they're going to need another prosthesis. And, you know, in between who knows what can happen if they lose or gain a lot of weight, or different issues that create the need for appropriate fitting prosthesis, those expenses are in there as well. But the point that I'm bringing about with lifetime patients and stuff is something that I would sit down with them and say, I know that you blame yourself with the parents mind you, I know you can blame yourself at times. Or you could think if what if scenarios or you know, if I was there for my child when this happened, I could have prevented it. These are very difficult for parents, I think you'll find out too and other pathology worlds such as breast cancer, the spouse or the family really needs this medicine, almost as much as the patients sometimes more because it just has such a strong psychological impact on everybody and all the loved ones. And so I tell you this, that hypocrisy component was, you know, I'm, I'm in my mid 50s, and I've been seeing 1000s of patients for decades. One day, it just hit me when I was in my mid 30s. You know, make sure I'd ever thought about this, but I need to make sure I do the same medicine With my own mom, I never come to think of it. 20 years later, I never did sit down to talk with her. So I do call her out of the blue one day. And I just said, Hey, mom, and mind you. My mom's a strong woman. I mean, she used to beat the tar out of us if we were ever deviants, we were very, very much. And, and she, you know, she literally, I said, Mom, I said, I didn't want to take this for granted. And I know this was kind of really strange for me to bring this up now, but I just want to make sure you understood that I never once blamed you for this accident, I never once blamed anybody really, for that matter for his actions. Even the young man or one of the biggest things that I was proud of that I at least had the ability to do at a young age was let this young man know that, you know, I didn't have anything against him. And I knew it was a complete accident. And I'm hoping to God it helped him with his progress in life. But I told my mom this and she, you know, I said, I just want to make sure you you didn't carry any blame others. She literally broke down and cried, not harder than I've ever seen cry, of course, you know, all of us started crying. So yeah, after theopener for me, it was like, Lord, you know, I need to start practicing what I preach and be more careful. And then the irony is I literally, last year, I got a reconstruction surgery called the herbal procedure done by Yan Arroyo in Indianapolis, his dad perfected this home bridge procedure, which is a wonderful way station. I'm not trying to promote anything, I'm just telling you a personal life aspect that sure, you know, going through that really opened my eyes again and reminded me I'm glad I did it because I was holed up again for three months on. Usually I used to, I used a pair of crutches, something called the I walk, which you can strap on and walk on your knee bent, and a nice scooter. And just for some of you guys out there that might go through this, the knee scooter will get you through the airports faster than anything people get out of your way. I recommend the knee scooter. But yet, it really made me remember what it was all about. Because it's taken me an extra 30 minutes in the morning, I'm still on one crutch, I'm going slowly. But if I had two surgeries recently, I think I'm on the tail end of this really opened my eyes again, like it's taking me an extra 30 minutes to get ready morning, it's difficult to get in and out a car, God forbid I parked the car to close to the car, because I'll start cussing that I can't get in and out without banging up somebody's car door. So, you know, it reminded me that are able bodied people, we really do severely take it for granted how how easy life can be. And we need to be a little more compassionate and more eye opening to people that are going through different types of disabilities.
Matthew Yehling:That's that's probably a good segue into where I was gonna go. Next is, and you've touched on this, I think, a couple of different points, but how can a prosthetic or prosthesis really restore functionality? Can you give some practical examples, I mean, I think we probably take for granted, you know, all the things we do with our hands and our legs and, you know, the the, you know, how many different grips and functions that your hands and arms do so and maybe walk us through some of the, you know, somewhat basic functionality levels that an upper prosthetic can can help people restore functionality with?
Mo Kenney:Well, at the risk of, well I don't want to I don't want to take up too much of your time and go into a prosthetic lesson because we go really deep into all these things you know, everything from upper extremity down to lower extremity, you know, there's a big difference between the two because one's weight bearing one's not weight bearing if you get up into the intricacies of the hand and you know what I really stressed a lot of third party payers hands even today have become more and more critical for normal normalcy and functional life because have you ever seen anybody that didn't have a smartphone? Have you ever seen anybody that could function without doing three jaw chuck or keep French or using their fingers for whatever so it can be very debilitating just to be missing part of your hand and or one finger for that matter? I I tell everybody most people don't know it but Jerry Garcia lost his finger. Yeah, even though he's mad at the bone with the Grateful Dead right? He played the game right? Like There's no tomorrow. So it's it's to me that's a success story. But you know to answer your question, Matt, that's that's That's the lesson I could go into, and literally teach for hours. Now, the general obvious is that, you know, our goal is to return people in normalcy. So if somebody lost a limb, you know, in the lower extremity, you replace it to hopefully get him back functional again and rehabilitated enough to where they can go back to work and do things that they were doing before. But that's not, that's not our goal, our goal is not just to return him to normalcy is to have him do better. So we don't want you to walk, I don't want you to walk better, you've got that ability, people get a psychological misconception that when they get a prosthesis, they can only walk to a certain standard, but I argue that you can, a lot of times walk better, especially if you are having problems with some type of circulatory disease or something that was slowing you down. It made that leg a boat anchor for the last 10 years. So, you know, we have Paralympians now that are breaking records that microseconds slower than able bodied people, you know, and yeah, the whole big thing with Oscar Pistorius, you know, that bilateral amputee that they allowed to compete in the regular Olympics, that was huge news back in the day, because it was funny, because there was a two processes here, they almost didn't think it was fair, to allow him to compete, because they were saying, you know, these mechanical legs or this machine was helping them cheat to compete in the Olympics. And then the other side of it was, how dare you say that about somebody that's debilitated. And so with all that being said, they proved in a couple of outcome tests that it was fair for an amputee to compete in the actual Olympics. And if you look at some of the times in the Paralympics, which always dovetails with the Olympics, it's always about two weeks after Olympics, those times and those, those athletes are phenomenal. There. They are true athletes in my opinion. In fact, I volunteered to be the staff prosth, prosthetist in Salt Lake City, Utah back in the late 90s. And the great thing was they, the Olympic Committee would offer transportation. So they sent an SUV to pick me up at the airport where when they did that they were dropping off some of the athletes from the Olympics, and they were dropping off the Alpine Ski Team. As I was getting on, they were getting off to get on a plane. So when I got in there, the drivers said to me, and I believe a conversation I just had with Alpine guys. I'm like, oh, geez, you guys are coming. Well, they were watching the, you know, the above knee amputees training. Keep in mind, they're going down the same downhill slopes that that the Olympic guys were if you ever seen the Super G or any of these things, it's like a clip from a year looking like a diamond run. And it's crazy. But they were they were all going down and practicing doing warmups. And they were doing these times that were just about as close as the Alpine Ski guys. And so they were just amazed at how they were how truly athletic these above knee athletic downhill skiers were. So they they said before we left, we wanted to try it. So they would try to get down this, this Triple Diamond heel with one leg and like nobody made it. Everybody Alpine ski team failed. So you know, it's amazing to be exposed to that kind of human human power that overcomes the debilitation.
Greg Hamlin:I completely agree in anytime you see people overcoming things. It's always inspiring to me. And I know I mean, that's one of the things that stood out when I met you a few years back and Kentucky was just how you've decided to make your life a mission to help other people who've been through what you've been through. And so I want to be sure to applaud you for that. Because the world needs people who are trying to make positive change and who can understand what it's like to go through a challenge. And you're certainly doing that. So I want to especially thank you for taking time to meet with us. And I wanted mo for you for anybody who is listening. I know your regional company, if you could share with folks your footprint so that if they did have a need, they know where you guys are at. I think that would be great.
Mo Kenney:Yeah, so at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, you can always google Kenney Orthopaedics and find us in the state of Kentucky, Indiana, or Carolina. But keep in mind, you know, there's so few of us there. I you know, we don't call each other competitors. At least I'm hoping that at least that's part of my my message. incentive out there to negotiate with everybody to understand we're colleagues, you know, there's too few of us to compete against each other. And so we're not, you know, leg salesmen. We're, we're board certified clinicians that there's only 6000 of us. So we don't really have to compete because there's a huge need out there. And, you know, as a past president of the empty coalition of America amputees I learned a lot of things when I was in that position. And, you know, one of them that's a big eye opener, is that, you know, there's 2 million amputees in the United States of America alone, for whatever reasons, the majority of the reasons that I think around 60 something percent of them is for divascular or diabetes reasons, but there's a lot of out there people you wouldn't even know I mean, you know, there's there's famous people, one of my favorite amputees of all time. You know, of course, the I think a lot of us guys I grew up in the 80s in the 90s are big fans of Def Leppard. But Rick Allen, oh, yeah, the drummer for them, right. Like he was bad the bone right now. He was the obvious because he was an arm amputees. And he didn't always utilize his prosthesis, and it's very easy to see he was an amputee. But there's a lot of hidden ones out there that most people don't know about, you know, either meals, was making them Dancing with the Stars, not only she married to a Beatle, and divorced when she was also famous for, you know, being really awesome on the dance floor with Dancing with the Stars. And so these guys, you wouldn't even know because there's so many of them. What one guy I met, was just at a restaurant when I was sitting at the bar waiting for my table, and he sat down next to me started talking, just like a cool guy was fairly buff and everything. When I found out who he was, it was Tom Whitaker, the first below the knee amputee to ever Summit, Mount Everest. The very first disabled person I think, like number nine in the world ever summit Mount Everest, this was back in the 80s. And I thought, Oh, my God, like quite, quite Royal. So. But I guess the big thing is that, you know, if if you don't catch the amputee its the successor he returned, or she returned back to normalcy.
Greg Hamlin:That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Why, just appreciate you and the example that you are in the industry, encourage others if they want to learn more to reach out to you guys, especially if you're in that the Kentucky, Indiana, North Carolina area. I know you guys do good work. And with that, I want to thank Matt also for joining me as our guest co host. And we hope that you'll join us for future podcasts releasing every two weeks on Monday. And if you can't get enough adjusted in your life, you can check out our blog from our resident blogger, Natalie, and that drops on the opposite Monday of the podcast and can be found at www.berkindcomp.com And of course, if you have any questions regarding this episode or previous episodes, we'd love to hear from you. Please send your questions via email to marketing@berkindcomp.com We read everything you send us and we try to address questions in future episodes of the podcast. If you'd like your Listen, it always helps us if you go ahead and do a review on Apple's podcast platform. And of course we want to express Special thanks to Cameron Runyan for our excellent music. If you need more music in your life, please contact him directly by locating this email in our show notes. And remember to do right think differently, and don't forget to care. That's it for today guys.