- Hello and welcome to Living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

A clinic dedicated specifically to wound care is now open in Salisbury Township.

Lehigh Valley Wound Specialists and Negative Pressure Clinic offers those coming in with varying degrees of injuries specialized care with a physical therapist.

Over the summer, Irene Tomchik felt pain in her leg.

- In July, I started to notice my leg felt sore, and there was a hard lump, and I didn't know what it was exactly, but it was kind of red and a little bit sore.

And, over the next couple of weeks, it got more sore, and more-angry looking.

And I finally realized I was getting cellulitis in my leg.

- After visiting the emergency room, going through a round of antibiotics, and having a surgeon cut into the lower half of her leg, the Schuylkill County woman was left with gaping injuries, and was still in a lot of pain.

Her doctor suggested that she go to a new clinic that recently opened in the Lehigh Valley.

- The surgeon that did the biopsies on my leg realized I was struggling to take care of the problem myself, and he recommended TJ.

In fact, he had TJ call me and set up the first appointment.

- This was the initial evaluation of her wounds.

- Thomas Shaughnessy, or T.J., as his patients call him, is a wound specialist with his doctorate in physical therapy.

- I work with patients who either have chronic wounds, traumatic wounds, acute post-operative wounds that are hard to heal, been present for a while.

And the way that the physical therapy kind of involves itself is that we can use the same biophysical agents, or biophysical modalities to help kind of jumpstart these wounds and help the tissues heal.

Let me use a little bit of spray adhesive.

- He's very, very thorough.

He listens.

He really paid attention the first time I came in.

I was pretty rattled about how deep they were, and how painful they were at first, but he was great about it, and really put me at ease.

The wounds Shaughnessy treats include chronic, traumatic, surgical vascular, post-operative, or non-healing wounds and amputations.

- Usually the wounds that are getting stuck in kind of that inflammatory phase of healing, or in the proliferative phase, and we need to go back and train the body to recognize it and start over.

- His business, Lehigh Valley Wound Care Specialists And Negative Pressure Clinic, opened over the summer.

It's an independent practice, and one of the only wound care clinics in the area using physical therapy as a way to treat these types of injuries.

It's been Shaughnessy's goal for years.

- Since I graduated, this has always kind of been my dream, to open a private practice.

- That dream came true in July, when he opened the clinic in hopes of offering more time with patients than a traditional hospital setting.

- My location is close to the hospital.

I still work very closely with a lot of the surgeons over there, and case managers.

So, yeah, that's how we ended up over here.

- He says he hopes to complement the care people are receiving at local hospitals, not compete with them.

- It goes directly into the wound.

- Shaughnessy says he has been able to bring in more specialized wound care equipment to treat the medical issues he's faced with.

- Ultrasonic head here.

It kind of shoots sound waves into the tissue that might be surrounding the wound.

Makes this a really fun clinic to be in, and a really fun profession, that we can be really creative with our treatments.

- They accept insurance or private pay options for those who may be underinsured or uninsured.

It's a place designed to make patients feel more at ease, and that's exactly why Tomchik, of Lake Wynona, says she drives nearly an hour to come here.

- I appreciate it, when someone is treating me, that they will share what they're doing with me, because I understand, and it's my body, and I want to know what's going on with it.

- She comes twice a week and says she's seeing and feeling her ailment improve.

- I'm definitely seeing a difference.

I can see how it's healing.

The pain has gone away, but I'm not worried anymore about infection flaring back up.

I know the infection is cleared up.

I can see by looking at it.

It's not angry the way it was when the surgeon first cut into it.

- The clinic, located on Cedar Crest Boulevard, operates independently of the major health networks in the Lehigh Valley.

An appointment is needed to be seen.

That will do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.