Denver, CO – With elective surgeries being cancelled across the country, orthopedic surgeons have found themselves with an increasing amount of free time. “My patients have to live with torn ACLs – how are they supposed to shred powder and lift?” said Alistair C. Leegament, an orthopaedic surgeon based in Denver.
“After the ski resorts and gyms closed, I realized patients can probably live without their ACLs for a while.” Dr. Leegament says it was meme, warning “#stayhome if you don’t want an orthopedist to treat your pneumonia” that became a call to action. “I realized I did better than all these medicine nerds on Step I, I can help.”
Dr. Leegament offered to staff hospital departments with the greatest need for providers. Unfortunately, he found significant limitations to his skill set. “The ICU asked if I had any experience with intubation, ‘can you believe that?’ I spend my time putting rods down bones of course I can put a tube in the lung medullary canal aka the trachea.” Although he successfully intubated a patient, Dr. Leegament was asked to leave the ICU when it became clear that he had no idea how to manage vent settings. “Well, first I took about an hour to calculate the A-a gradient, and then I just decided to increase the PEEP because I think that’s the only thing a vent can do.”
He was also relieved of duties in the ED. “I was absolutely crushing it in the ED. I walk into a room and the patient looks sick and I shout, ‘admit to medicine.’ I saw 6 or 7 patients in the time it took the ED doc to see one.”
Dejected, Dr. Leegament socially distanced himself and contemplated his next move. “I’m usually picked first for everything – valedictorian, team-captain, always get a rose on the bachelorette but can’t commit because bones are my one true love, but with this COVID stuff, nobody needs me. That’s when I realized, ‘No one will need me until I can do elective surgeries again – we have to beat this thing.” From there he launched a BroFundMe campaign to raise money to fight COVID-19.
While the CDC and NIH are developing vaccines and European researchers are investigating chloroquine as possible treatments, Dr. Leegament is focusing his efforts on another treatment. “Platelet-Rich Plasma, duh,” he explained. “We use PRP all the time in orthopaedics. Insurance doesn’t cover it, so you know it’s worth it.”
He was declined funding from all reputable research organizations, but using his $1000 stimulus check as seed money, he started a grassroots BroFundMe campaign which has raised $1.2 million to date mostly from fellow orthopods who have had their March golf club dues refunded. As for study progress, “So far, PRP has cured COVID-19 in all test subjects under the age of 40 who were former varsity athletes. We inject a symptomatic patient with PRP and then BAM! 10-14 days later they feel great.”
