St. Joseph Regional Medical Center | Healthcare Video Production Louisville

Dave is a firefighter from Lewiston, Idaho. He was diagnosed with amyloidosis — a serious, complex condition that often sends patients traveling far from home in search of specialized care. Dave's story went differently.

Instead of leaving his community, Dave received exceptional, expert treatment right in Lewiston at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center. We traveled to Idaho to capture his story as a patient testimonial — a piece designed to demonstrate the quality of care available at St. Joseph's and the difference it makes when world-class medicine is accessible close to home.

Healthcare storytelling like this is among the most meaningful work we do. It requires patience — both in the production process and in working with real patients who are sharing deeply personal experiences. It requires sensitivity to the subject matter. And it requires the ability to create a filming environment where a real person feels comfortable enough to speak openly and honestly, not as a spokesperson, but as themselves.

The result is a genuinely moving piece that communicates everything St. Joseph's needed it to communicate — through the story of one firefighter and the care that got him back to his family.

About This Project
Client: St. Joseph Regional Medical Center
Type: Patient testimonial, healthcare video production
Location: Lewiston, Idaho
Services: On-location production, patient interview, editing

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Video Transcript:

My name is Dave. I've been a firefighter here in Lewiston, Idaho for 33 years. We have three sons and our oldest son is a firefighter, too. The guys love their job love what they do, but it does come with hazards. I started feeling like I just was wore out felt like I was just winded more than I should have been. We go to Saint Joe's. He presented to us with symptoms of heart failure. Mostly the interesting thing about David was he wasn't responding to therapies, like someone normally would with heart failure. And so it became obvious relatively early on that. There was something more to his case.

He would have episodes where he would jump out of bed in the middle of the night his arms way up in the air and gas being for air and that happened three or four times and scared me and scared him and with my background and knowledge of what firefighters get I was thinking. This isn't good.

I mean this isn't good at all. And Dr. Kim came down and said we're going to take you the cath lab. We're gonna have a look at everything once and for all we're gonna we're gonna find out what's going on. So Saint Joseph is the only hospital within a two-hour radius that has a cardiac catheterization lab. So we're the only hospital that is capable of taking care of patients with acute cardiac issues. His heart failure was very much out of proportion relative to some of the laboratory values that I was investigating and so immediately amalidosis was on the differential for us and I went back and talked to Dr. Kim about it and said, you know Dr. Kim. I have a really funny feeling about this. I really like to screen him and and see and and you know, Dr. Kim was 100% supportive and said, yes, definitely do that.

At this point I'm I'm getting sicker. I'm getting very short of breath. Like I can't do stairs anymore without taking a rest. Noticeably sicker, like daily almost we then proceeded with a cardiac biopsy or myocardial biopsy and that definitively proved that he did have amyloidosis specifically in his heart. Amlodocus is a disease process that starts in your bone marrow. Instead of my heart muscle doing this like it's supposed to it gets stiff. And it gets oversized and if fumes send in all of those chemicals that they get exposed regularly as firefighters, you know, even with the gear that they work with is known well known that they can cause plasmas of disgracious multiple. Myeloma and amyloidosis. 90% will not make it past six months of diagnosis. I was terrified I was this is how I was gonna die.

We always say in cardiology time is muscle and what treatment as early as possible time is muscle Carly earners practitioner reached out to the Cancer Center and they got on board very quickly. This is not curable. Is it treatable? Yes, how much time do you have one day at a time? And one of the better days through this process.

Is when you get the phone call and they tell your treatment starts.

That moment was where things.

Turn the corner I guess. It's gonna it's either going to get better or it's not but at least we're gonna fight we're in this now we are going to fight the treatment for amaloidosis is chemotherapy and a couple other injectable drugs. When you first hear anything that's a diagnosis that puts you at a Cancer Care Center. If you're not a little scared that this is how it ends then you're a better person than I am. But we get to week three. I'm really starting to feel better. And get to week four and I'm feeling a lot better. Also, we get the first round of lab work back and lo and behold some of the markers. Are within normal limits you get to see those numbers in your skit feeling better. It's like all right. There's there's a chance we're gonna get this. It was a lot of teamwork that got David to care in the diagnosis that he needed and the outcome.

If Carly wouldn't have caught Dave's disease so early then it probably most likely would have spread throughout his body. It was important that we made the diagnosis relatively quickly and that he got treatment relatively quickly and now he's doing quite well, he has starting to get that sparkle back in his eye starting to get the color back in his cheeks. You feel more hopeful so then you start setting goals in your first goal is Getting to my 31 year olds wedding in July before treatment started. I didn't know if I was gonna get to the way and then you get to the wedding you get home and you start setting up long-term goals. We have a 16 year old son graduates in two years. So we got to be there for that. There's no all out if you will cure but completely remission would be our goal here. I believe we will we'll be on the winning side of this. you know, there's a statement of like hey, if you're really sick get out Valley go to go to Spokane go to see how I never felt like I needed to do that. There are some very gifted sharp and very smart providers here in the valley. I can't stress enough how How overwhelmed we've been by everyone in their professionalism The Compassion they've showed. Still here able to talk to you because of the team as angels.