Errett B. kissed his wife and two children goodbye on that unknowingly fateful day in 1989, then left for the airport on the first leg of his return to active duty as an Indiana Air National Guard fighter pilot. For the past 10 years, this 39-year-old vet had been a commercial pilot for American Airlines while serving in the Air National Guard. He never reached the airport. A violent car accident on the way there severely damaged 3 vertebra in Errett’s neck. And when his awareness returned 2 weeks later, Errett discovered that he would spend the rest of his life as a quadriplegic, with minimal shoulder muscle control his only remaining ability to move.

Today Errett is a highly alert 75-year-old man who has been wheelchair-bound for the past 36 years. He currently lives in Terre Haute, Indiana. His stellar care has been anchored by his devoted 48-year-old daughter Brooke, a professional nurse who brings extensive experience with wound prevention and care. She has a hands-on understanding of how vulnerable immobile patients are to pressure ulcers (ie, bed sores, also called PUs), how resistant these wounds are to healing, and how easily chronic wounds become infected—with potentially lethal consequences. And these realities increase exponentially as aging skin becomes thinner and more fragile. Errett’s informed and fastidious care has minimized the development of PUs and had kept him free of chronic wounds (those more than 4 weeks old) for many years.

But the growing impact of Errett’s aging skin eventually upset this balance. He has had an ongoing sacral (tailbone) PU since September of last year, which led to a local bacterial infection in the bone (osteomyelitis) that required surgical removal of part of his sacrum and periodic IV antibiotic treatment. A very large wound on his right buttock that appeared around the same time now extends into deeper tissue (stage 3). He has had a stage 2 wound (skin breakdown exposing tissue below the surface) on each hip for 2 months now. And the loop reversible colostomy procedure that Errett underwent some time ago created fertile conditions for the groin wound that appeared around 8 years ago. All of his wounds are seen biweekly by his medical wound-care team, and Brooke maintains “meticulous wound care” at home.

This outstanding care had stabilized Errett’s wounds and prevented infection within the wounds themselves—but actual healing was only a distant hope. Healing requires a way to restore the skin’s ability to normalize dysfunctional cells and produce healthy new cells. But existing medical interventions merely make worsening wounds less threatening (via debridement, ie, removal of dead/damaged/ infected tissue; and possible surgery). Brooke emphasizes that she has “thrown everything but the kitchen sink at my father’s wounds to try to get healing underway—but it’s been fruitless.” Errett laments that “it’s a real chore trying to find helpful treatments, and there has been nothing we could put on my wounds to help them actually heal!”

Until Crescel came into their lives, that is. Errett’s son Jon had become friends with a fellow Floridian who is very familiar with Crescel Skin Renewal Cream, the simple, side-effects-free topical therapeutic that works—uniquely—by restoring the ability of dysfunctional skin cells to regain and maintain their cellular health. When Jon’s friend learned of Errett’s wounds, at the beginning of June he provided the family with a supply of Crescel for them to try. “When we learned that it’s for wounds of all kinds,” Errett says, “we were very interested. And we decided to start out slowly, and test it first on two non-PUs.”

One was a brand new wound that was not expected to heal—the area on Errett’s shin where Mohs surgery had just been performed to remove a basal cell carcinoma. Shin wounds in general heal slowly because of that area’s very thin skin and limited blood flow. With Errett’s debilitated legs and aging skin added to the equation, his dermatologist warned that this surgical wound was likely to remain open permanently. But Crescel made this warning irrelevant. “Beginning Crescel application at the start of the second week post-op, after 2 weeks the wound was half its original size, and new granulation tissue had formed,” Brooke reports. Errett’s infectious disease and wound care doctors were amazed. “And,” he adds, “Crescel is so easy to use!” The other test run was the longstanding wound in Errett’s groin. After the first week of once-daily (instead of twice) Crescel application, his wound- care doctor found this unresponsive, 8-year-old wound to be roughly half its original diameter and almost half its previous depth.

Now Crescel is going to be applied to all of Errett’s pressure ulcers. He emphasizes the diminishing discomfort and anxiety that he is experiencing from the wounds that Crescel has already begun to heal. And he eagerly looks forward to the results with his PUs.

It’s critical to place Errett’s experience with Crescel in the larger perspective. “Chronic wounds are a silent epidemic in the United States,” Chandan K. Sen, PhD, points out. This globally recognized leader in wound care innovation and regenerative medicine periodically publishes a data-based assessment of the societal burden of chronic wounds. He emphasizes that 3% of the over-65 population in the US live with open wounds, impairing their quality of life and burdening the healthcare system. Looking at pressure ulcers in particular, the total annual cost of caring for them is more than $26.8 billion. The annual per ulcer cost of care ranges from $20,900 to $151,700. “Yet despite these alarming statistics, the investment in research support is not on par with the threat of these debilitating health issues,” Dr. Sen cautions.

Returning to Errett and the liberation that his wound healing progress has already given him, he says that “nothing would make me happier than being able to get the word out about Crescel!” He’s hoping that it can quickly become available to help his fellow veterans. Brooke—with her years of professional experience in caring for chronic wounds in elderly patients—is convinced that if Crescel’s ability to heal her father’s PUs duplicates the success with his shin wound, “it has the potential to transform the existing wound-care industry.” And Errett’s daughter-in- law, a regular observer of his progress with Crescel, insists that “this product deserves the Nobel Peace Prize!”