Little red wagon
ﾩ Copyright 2001, The State Journal-Register

By ANN LONDRIGAN
CORRESPONDENT

Angie Potter's office hours begin at 11 p.m. and end well after 1 in themorning. That's when this 38-year-old mother of six and part-time registered nurse does paperwork and sends e-mail as president of MedWagon Inc., a company based in the mudroom of her family's four-bedroom, red-brick colonial in Brentwood, Mo. There, amid the hockey and hunting gear in a small corner office space, Potter markets her invention, the MedWagon.

An idea born of frustration during Potter's 16 years as a nurse at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis, the MedWagon allows kids who require intravenous fluids to move about the hospital in a comfortable and familiar way: in a wagon. Potter's design eliminates the need for patients and those caring for them to drag along an unwieldy, roller-based IV pole, because the MedWagon is fitted with its own sturdy and proportionately sized pole.

"Getting on and off elevators is especially difficult," says Potter, who started in the pediatric intensive care unit of Glennon straight out of St. Louis University. "A wheel from the IV pole would get caught, and the pole would start to tip. It always is a cumbersome task. A lot of times, mom's pulling the IV pole, dad's got the wheelchair, and he'd get behind and the IV would almost come out."

"It was just the way you had to do it. It was frustrating, but there were no other options." Until now. It's been three years since Potter first mentioned the idea to her sister, Susie Ralph of Chicago, in a telephone conversation, and the two began exploring how to make a wagon with an IV pole.

Family, friends, friends of friends, and Potter's self-described quality of "persistent to the point of driving people crazy" have helped turn an idea into a nearly production-line-ready product. Fifty-six MedWagons have been rolled out in hospitals in Missouri, Minnesota, Kentucky, Georgia and Illinois. The company's goal is to place the wagons in all 178 pediatric hospitals in the United States.

The most recent sale was to Dr. John Dietrich, a pathologist with Memorial Medical Center in Springfield. He paid the $425 unit price and on Oct. 16 donated the wagon to the Memorial Medical Center Foundation.

Potter's mother, Louise Ralph, 68, of Springfield says, "I know (the MedWagon) originated with her thoughts of 'How can I help children?' (Angie's) always doing something for the lady down the street; she's always doing for others. She's very energetic. She stays up all hours of the night."

Such traits run in the Ralph family. Potter is the third of six girls and three boys born and raised by Louise and her late husband, Robert Ralph, in a big white farmhouse at 1775 Chatham Road.

"Things were just getting going about 10 o'clock," recalls Joan Ralph Muench, 39, about their childhood days in the lights-on-late, doors-always-open "Ralph House."

Muench is Angie's older sister and a partner, along with Susie, in the MedWagon venture. Susie, 32, handles marketing and sales out of her Lakeview home. From their house in Mount Prospect, Muench, a mother of five and former meeting planner, focuses on niche sales in the association industry and foundations.

"I'm definitely design," says Potter. "I am very particular and very picky about a lot of things, and they sort of designated that role for me."

Says Louise Ralph: "When (Angie) really started getting serious about (inventing the MedWagon), it involved so much money and a lot of her time. I thought, 'Maybe you're spending too much time here in this, you have six children, lots going on in your life.' I don't think I was pessimistic, but I asked her, 'Are you sure? Do you want to give this your energy? '"

"She said 'Yeah, I need this. I can't let go now. So many people have been so good to (me), I can't stop now. '"

"Ooooh, shoot, I forgot to call Kevin. OK, hold on."

Angie Potter dials Kevin Corrigan on a cell phone while navigating her 1996 navy Suburban down Interstate 40, 20 miles from her home to the Corrigan family's metal-fabricating company, Corpak, in Chesterfield, Mo.

It's 9:30 a.m. on a drizzly Friday in October. The morning chaos alarm clocks, pressed snooze buttons, six kids and two adults getting dressed, eating cereal and out the door is over.

Angie's husband, Steve Potter, a medical malpractice defense attorney, carpools in his gray Suburban like he does every school day for two neighbor girls and the Potters' older children: Molly, 15, Jeff, 12, Timmy, 11, Matt, 9, and Michael, 7. Four-year-old Jack is at half-day preschool.

Angie now has about two hours available to work with the engineers at Corpak on final tweaks to the MedWagon design before it's time to pick up the kids from school. She has been logging these miles, juggling this schedule, about three days a week for more than two years.

Kevin Corrigan is a "friend of a friend" whom Potter met after a Ladies Society fashion show at their church in 1999. He's also CEO and owner of Corpak, which specializes in building products that clean the air in factories owned by companies such as Monsanto.

"At the time I didn't have anyone specific with specifically designed parts that I thought would work (to make a wagon with an IV pole)," says Potter. "I was getting frustrated. It cost $350 just to make one little metal part to even test what might work."

Corrigan says he told her that night: "You know, Angie, I can do that, bring it out here and I can make you this plate. I don't know what your master design's going to look like, but I can make that for you."

"I thought, one week, we'd be done with her, check it off my list, earn the good Samaritan award for, you know, 1999, and be done with it."

Ten designs and 28 months later, Angie and shop superintendent Tom Reichardt still are thumbing through the 3,319-page McMaster-Carr Supply Co. part guide looking for just the right piece to secure the pole to the wagon. It has to lock, but not so tightly that nurses can't remove it easily to clean and store the wagon.

Reichardt thinks he's found the perfect part on page 2,068, a quick-lock hitch pin.

"Well, I think it's great, I love it," says Potter. "That's strong enough?"

"Oh, yes," answers Reichardt. "Because with the quick hitch pin, then you don't need a wrench, no tools. You cannot pull it off. The pin does not interfere, not enough to scuff the wheel."

Reichardt smiles when he says: "Angie knows what she wants and how she wants it. She's a smart lady, but a nitpick."

"Yes, a nitpick," says Corrigan.

"You guys are supposed to be nice today," chides Potter.

Says Corrigan: "What we're trying to do is take her design that we worked with for the last 21/2 years and develop it to where we can mass produce it. There are machines out there that cost a half million dollars or a million dollars that you can just punch in the program and they'll cut this tube to length. The problem there is you have to have a minimum order of a thousand of 'em."

The basic design specifications call for a premanufactured red plastic wagon that's 3 feet, 8 inches long and nearly 2 feet tall. The attached 30-inch stainless-steel pole, which can hold a 13-pound infusion pump and several IV bags, can be removed and locks into place underneath the wagon for easy storage.

About his extraordinary in-kind involvement, Corrigan says: "To get from where she had a design on a cocktail napkin to now, where we have computer-generated blueprints for every piece, that would cost a lot of money. I know she'd never make it."

Potter agrees. She estimates her financial investment to date at $20,000 without factoring in Corpak's help. Just the patent application has cost $7,000 so far. The MedWagon's patent is pending.

In addition to his employees' time and expertise, Corrigan allows an unused area on Corpak's second floor to be used as MedWagon Inc.'s production and shipping warehouse.

Says Corrigan: "My powers of description couldn't even describe when she went down there for the first major order, which was at Cardinal Glennon to see these little kids with smiles on their faces and just one parent or two being able to handle a child who is pretty much strapped to a bed for a portion of his life, if not the rest of his life.

"They're out there mobile, having a great time, and to think that I had a part of it. That's great. That's all I'm looking for."

"Oooh, shoot. I forgot about Jack "

Angie abruptly breaks from the engineer-talk and dials her neighbor Mary, asking her to pick up Jack from preschool.

"This is my life. Always a few minutes late."

Potter relies on neighbors, fellow parishioners, her sisters, carpools and a detailed calendar that hangs on the kitchen refrigerator with color-coded pens for each child.

"Five years ago when Jack was born and I had four little kids at home, that was sort of survival," says Potter. "I didn't do this (inventing) five years ago.

"But now it's almost an incentive to have things together. I can't really leave my house totally trashed and no laundry done, although it happens a fair amount, and that's where my husband and daughter step in."

Steve tag-teams with Angie on dishes, general pick-up and shuttling the kids to hockey and soccer games. Daughter Molly, who's "very mature for 15," decided on her own to take on the two-load-a-day laundry job this past summer, when the MedWagon roll-out began.

Sam Latragna, principal at Immacalata Catholic School where Molly attends, credits Angie Potter with the idea for a gift fund for the school staff, which has raised more than $10,000 for Christmas bonuses in the past three years. She created a binder with maps and directions for 30 sites where school sporting events are held. It's sold to raise funds for the athletic organization.

Says Latragna: "Just recently she put together a binder for the school. She thought, wouldn't it be great for new families or even existing families to have any important information from the school all in one place? I don't think she sleeps very much."

"Oooo, I think that's my fax I've been waiting for ."

Potter quickly jumps up from the living room sofa and retreats to her corner office in the mudroom. She picks up the fax and the phone, simultaneously, to learn from the wagon manufacturer what temperature the plastic can withstand for sanitizing purposes.

"I really do want to be responsible for the end product, because nobody else would be this particular. They really wouldn't."

It's time to head to downtown St. Louis for her 3-11 p.m. shift at Cardinal Glennon. When Molly was born in 1986, Potter joined the nursing "float pool," so she doesn't have to work weekends and holidays, but she cannot chose where she'll work on any given day. Since the birth of Jack, she has cut back to just one shift every two weeks.

Glennon served as the test market for the MedWagon and now has 35 wagons located throughout the 190-bed hospital's four patient floors, out-patient clinics and main lobby.

Tricia Langston, a registered nurse on the second floor transitional care unit at Cardinal Glennon, calls the MedWagon "awesome."

"I like the convenience and that when you have an IV, you don't have to push a wagon and an IV pole. You can just hook it right on the wagon."

Tiny, bright-eyed Hailey Cawvey, 17 months old, stares down any new face that enters her room at Cardinal Glennon. Cawvey had tumors removed from both kidneys and receives chemo medicine and nutritional fluids through an IV port located under her skin.

"We've been here for over three months now, and (the Medwagon) gets her out of the room," says Hailey's mother, Laura Payton of O'Fallon, Mo. "She loves the wagon. We go to church in the wagon, look at all the fun clocks."

Back in Springfield, the nurses and patients at Memorial Medical Center soon will try out their new MedWagon.

Says Donna Crompton, director of nursing for clinical operations: "From my end, I'm just so proud that a nurse designed this and was really focusing on patients. I can see so many uses for it.

"It can make a child feel better and parents feel better. There are some kids who have to lie down and are stuck in a room. We as nurses tend to want to cuddle and make it better, but you can't push a bed up and down the hall."

Crompton sees uses for the wagon in the regional burn center as well as the hospital's pediatric unit.

"It's unfortunate enough that they're in the hospital maybe the wagon can make it less scary, less hospital-ish.

"What's it's like on the other side is very different. As a parent, you're just scared to death. Those poor parents, you can feel so helpless knowing that a Band-Aid's not going to fix it."

Angie Potter says: "To me the biggest satisfaction of my job is knowing that maybe I made somebody's day a little better or somehow comforted someone or listened to a parent who was totally stressed out and just talked to them for a few minutes and caring for their child as if you would your own.

"If it was my child, I would really want somebody to take good care of him. That's what makes it worth it. You can walk away and say, OK, I made a difference."

Ann Londrigan, a Springfield free-lance writer, can be reached at alondrigan@prodigy.net. For more information about the MedWagon, see www.medwagon.com