I speak with Dr Kurt Pappenfus, rural emergency medicine physician, about his amazing 35-year medical career and adventures as an alpine expedition physician, medical team leader on a movie set, and master falconeer. Kurt has worked in austere environments all over the world, from the peaks of the Himalayas and Alps, to the windswept mountains and plains of the American West, and shares his insights about the unique challenges of rural medicine. In 2019, Kurt and his wife settled in Cheyenne Wells, on Colorado's Eastern plains where he worked as one of the only physicians caring for farming community patients across hundreds of square miles. In 2020, Kurt was stricken with COVID pneumonia, and battled back from a prolonged ICU hospitalization with COVID pneumonia in 2020 and subsequent long-COVID syndrome. The impact of his absence from the Cheyenne Wells community was deeply felt and highlights how much rural America depends on sparse medical resources and a dedicated medical corps. Kurt has returned to his rural practice, and we talk about the imperatives of embracing gratitude, connectivity and spending time in the natural world for preserving longevity in medicine.
Dr Pappenfus' story and recovery from COVID was covered by NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/01/940697524/the-ripple-effect-of-1-rural-colorado-doctor-catching-the-coronavirus
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Check out these resources from previous podcast guests for assistance with tracking your mental health, and reaching out for therapeutic assistance:
1. Jonathan Wilson and INVI MindHealth have developed an App using smart watch technology to track your daily mental health wellness:
2. From Raul Rivas and his Trauma Behind the Badge podcast episode he shared the inline resource therapy resource:
https://www.lighthousehw.org/
Available on the App Store or on Google Play.
Lighthouse Health & Wellness is an in-hand, on-demand, 100% confidential health and wellness platform available at no cost to our nation's public safety agencies.
Lighthouse was designed to provide your employees and their families anonymous access to your agency's existing health and wellness programs, along with a growing library of the latest educational health and wellness information and tools that have been tailored to the unique needs of those working in public safety.
