Season 3 Episode 1: Introduction to season 3

We are finally back! It has been almost 2 years since we last published a season. A lot has changed over that time. Dr. Sowers started a faculty position at the University of Iowa in the Department of Pediatrics where he is studying migraine pathophysiology in preclinical models. This is an exciting season! In total, we have 11 new interviews for your from across the spectrum. The Blinded Veterans Association was integral in the topic this season which is all about Vision and Vision related issues in Veterans. We interviewed many awesome Veterans who told amazing stories. One that stuck out to me was Tim Hornick. His interview was one of the most difficult interviews Brandon and I have ever done (in a good way). It is a captivating listen! Several wonderful practitioners join us this season who all have VA funded awards to study vision. We cover glaucoma, diabetic neuropathy, traumatic brain injury induced vision problems and much more! We also interview the former president of the Blinded Veterans Association. 

Moving forward, the podcast will take a little bit of a different shape. We are going to stop doing seasons and attempt to release an episode every month or so. We are going to start bringing guest hosts on in future episodes and we may do join interviews with a Veteran and Researcher/practitioner at the same time. 

Finally, thank you all for listening and we apologize for the long wait! The Vets First Podcast would not be possible without the people that listen.  This project has been one of the most rewarding projects that Brandon and I have ever worked on. We would like to thank the VA Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Visual loss and the Iowa City VA Research foundation for aiding in the production of this season. We also want to give a shout out to Jayme Waite, Thomas Duong, and Michael Huebner who are wonderful undergraduates or VA employees that volunteered their time to edit blogs this season. Once again, thank you all for listening and we hope you enjoy and learn something along the way! 

What is Vets First Podcast?

The Vets First podcast is a research-based podcast that focuses on the VA healthcare system and its patients. Instead of being just another research podcast, the Vets First podcast was created with a primary focus on the Veterans and their stories. The hosts, Levi Sowers PhD, and Brandon Rea work to bridge the gap between the state-of-the-art research being performed at Veterans Affairs and the Veterans themselves in an easy-to-understand manner. Importantly, Levi and Brandon want to assist researchers around the country to better understand the needs of Veterans. In this podcast you will hear interviews from Veterans with specific conditions and then hear from VA funded researchers who are studying those very topics as well as other highlighted services the VA provides.

The Department of Veterans Affairs does not endorse or officially sanction any entities that may be discussed in this podcast, nor any media, products or services they may provide.

Announcer: Welcome to the Vets First Podcast, a research-based conversation centered around the VA health care system, its services, and patients. From Iowa city, Iowa, here's your hosts: Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea.

Levi Sowers: Welcome back, everybody. It is finally, finally, finally here. It's been a long year and a half since we released our last episodes. But welcome back to the Vets First Podcast. I am Levi Sowers and with me, as always, is Brandon Rea.

Brandon Rea: Welcome back, everybody.

Levi Sowers: And we are excited. This is our third season of the Vets First Podcast. We teamed up with the Blinded Veterans Association to highlight the vision problems in veterans. It's been an interesting set of interviews. Brandon, you can talk about that a little bit, too. If you'd like.

Brandon Rea: Right? One, at least for me, when we were going into the season and endorsed the Blind Veterans Association. To me, when I think blindness is just lack of sight and that's it. Not throughout the season learning that it's so much more that there's different reasons for loss of sight. Different different causes and how it affects your life and multiple facets. That, as a person with sight, is really kind of hard to understand. Unless you're able to communicate with somebody who has experienced that.

Levi Sowers: Yeah, you know, it was interesting doing these- this set of interviews because I think the thing that I took away the most from this was that these veterans with sight loss of all degrees are extremely resilient. It led to obvious changes in their life that were struggles for them in the beginning. But it seems that most of them really strove to change themselves for the better, if you will.

Levi Sowers: Right? Like, it was interesting to kind of see that in this set of interviews.

Brandon Rea: Right. I mean, when you think about it like that, how reliant you are on your vision from day to day, like when you're experiencing vision loss, it would appear, and make you think that my life is over now. What do I do? And speaking with all these veterans, it's been amazing because it shows that your life isn't over.

Brandon Rea: You're just doing things a different way and you're learning how to be independent. You're making connections with other people who have similar experiences, and it's inspirational for a lack of a better word to me at least.

Levi Sowers: Yeah. So this season we're going to have 12 episodes, including the one you're listening to right now. We're going to structure it a little differently this year. Brandon and I are not doing intros for every episode, and this We're not going to have an outro episode where we talk about what we learned in the season and we're going to just have this first episode where we kind of talk about that as well.

Levi Sowers: And then, you know, I think moving forward with this, we're going to start releasing episodes maybe like once a month. Instead of doing these large seasons. They've become a huge amount of work, which is totally fine. But I started a faculty position at Iowa, and that's consuming a lot of time. And Brandon has become my lab manager at the same time.

Levi Sowers: And so it's been difficult to get this season out, but we're glad we can finally do it. And we're hoping to have some more topics moving forward. And I think.

Brandon Rea: With this new format on a exciting note, it really opens us up to really utilize opportunities for interviews as they arise. If they don't fit a particular theme. So having episodes, perhaps monthly or not, when it's a really exciting interview we can have that may not fit into a predefined block, I think will spice things up and will be beneficial for all parties.

Levi Sowers: Yeah, you know, we one of the things about doing a serial podcast is that we did a lot of these interviews in like mid 2022 or early 2022. So some of these are pretty old, but they're still very relevant to the topic at hand. And in terms of the topic, you know, vision loss, we have a good mix of veterans and and researchers that that study vision loss and episodes two is going to be an interesting episode with the program officer at Central VA who oversees sensory systems.

Levi Sowers: Dr. Lina Kubli. So when people submit merit awards at the VA to do research, at least through research, rehabilitation and development, they send their awards. To Dr. Kubli, she oversees that portfolio for vision hearing, etc.. So that's a pretty interesting look into how and what drives us to do research for veterans. Episode three is going to be investigating visual dysfunction in after blast TBI, and that's with Dr. Steven Fliesler. Brandon, can you talk a little bit about him?

Brandon Rea: Yeah. One Dr. Fliesler’s resume is large. He is very impressive, but he researches blast TBI and the effects that that has on vision loss. And what I find really interesting is how he goes into the various mechanisms that really cause vision deficits, like how what actually happens in blast TBI that causes vision loss because even if it's not a physical object that is, say, hitting the eye or hitting the head.

Brandon Rea: Vision loss can still occur, which conceptually can be kind of hard to wrap your head around. At least it was for me. So Dr. Fliesler are going in depth on that. It was really insightful and really awesome to sit down and chat, But.

Levi Sowers: Yeah, he was a great interview, is really interactive, one of our more interactive researchers that we talked to. And then next, we have Dr. Laura Peters, who talks about providing support and community with sight loss. She was a really interesting interview as well. We next go into connecting TBI or- whoops, I messed up. So actually episode four is resilience and growth through traumatic vision loss and that's what Tim Hornick was probably one of the most interesting interviews that we've done to date.

Levi Sowers: He lost his vision instantly while serving overseas when he was at a traumatic event. And if you want to know what that is, you can listen to the episode. But I'm not going to talk about it specifically here. I'll let him tell it in his own words. It was kind of a striking interview. It's the first time I've ever been at a loss for words.

Brandon Rea: Yeah.

Levi Sowers: Doing an interview with a veteran that was really interesting. And then we get into Dr. Laura Peters as I was talking about, and then episode six is.

Brandon Rea: Episode six is us talking with Dr. Eric Sigman- and Dr. Sigman, he's a neuro ophthalmologist who worked- who's working for the Department of Defense Vision Center and Excellence and Maryland. And he also talks about TBI and vision loss, but I think what was really impressive and striking as Dr. Sigmund talks about building a care network when you're- after you're experiencing- and during while you're experiencing this vision loss.

Brandon Rea: What type of network you should try to build and tips for building that to best succeed in life while receiving your care and while moving on from that.

Levi Sowers: In Episode seven and eight, we have a topic of diabetic vision loss, which is kind of a common problem not only in veterans but also in the general population. In our first episode, our first of two episodes, Episode seven is Loretta Phillip. She's a veteran who lost her sight over a period of time due to diabetic vision loss.

Levi Sowers: And she tells a really poignant story about how that occurred and what occurred and how it really transformed her life. And then we talked to Dr. Carden, who is a returning person on our podcast, who's on the very first season of the podcast, and he talks about how diabetes affects vision loss. And he gives a walk through with that and how it affects the cells of the eye.

Brandon Rea: Right. And moving from there. We also talk with veteran listeners who also experienced vision loss through glaucoma and glaucoma related issues. She talks about her service and how she experienced the vision loss through this medical condition. And to follow up with that, we speak with Dr. Oliver Gramlich, who's a researcher who studies glaucoma related vision loss and really highlights what happens and what you can do to hopefully try to mitigate this vision loss, but also optimistic about treatments that could be coming in the future.

Levi Sowers: Dr. Gramlich was pretty fun to interview because we know him well, and I think he was actually pretty nervous to be on the podcast, which was very spectacular. That was pretty funny. And in fact, if you can look it up on the Internet. Oliver and Brandon and I did a photoshoot while we were interviewing him to sort of have an article about the Vets First Podcast on the VA website.

Levi Sowers: So you can find that on the Internet if you want. And then.

Brandon Rea: Yeah, it doesn't look closed at all.

Levi Sowers: Yeah, no, no, not at all. I just have a creepy mustache. It’s fine.

[laughter]

Levi Sowers: And so in episodes 11 and 12, which are our last two, we talked to two veterans organizations. One is the Blinded Veterans Association and Dr. Thomas McGarry, who's the former president of that organization. And then in episode 12, on our final episode for the season. It's an interesting interview with Dr. Renata Gomez from Bravo Victor over in England or in Britain.

Levi Sowers: And they are sort of like the Wounded Veterans Association, but in England. And she talks about how they're trying to form strong collaboration networks with the United States and the VA here. Yeah. So we talk with Dr. Gomez about who is the medical and forensic specialist and subspecialties and regenerative biomedicine for blinded veterans in the United Kingdom. And she has a really interesting story about how she grew up.

Levi Sowers: She has a wonderful accent as well. So you get to hear, you know, Brendan and I's mediocre voices with the voice of Dr. Renata Gomez.

Brandon Rea: Will have a good mixing of Midwest dialect with UK accent, something I took away from our viewers. Dr. Gomez is really especially tough with our allied veterans. We have veterans stateside and there are veterans overseas as well, and collaborative efforts between multiple groups in the service of veterans can really, really push forward in terms of how we can provide so that that aspect I think is really exciting.

Levi Sowers: Yeah. So overall, we think it's a pretty good season. It's taking a long time, so we're sorry about that, but we're hoping to have a more concrete schedule moving forward with monthly, maybe bi monthly episodes, maybe more often, and depends on how we we set up and do do more interviews, but we're going to still keep creating content and we hope you keep on listing in the future.

Levi Sowers: Thank you all for listening and good luck.

Brandon Rea: Thanks everyone. Hope you enjoy the season.

Announcer: This concludes today's Vets First Podcast. For questions or comments relating to the program, please direct email correspondence to [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!