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Letter from Gordie’s wife Joan: It all started out for Gordie to get his legs to feel better for golf. They found he had PAD, peripheral artery disease, and he had a blockage in his groin that required surgery to open. He had a successful surgery, until 12 days after when he started getting drainage in his groin area and a lot of pain. After a few calls to the surgeon explaining what was happening, he had an eruption in the artery with massive bleeding at home. We rushed him back to the hospital by ambulance on June 24th last summer. They had to take him into surgery to see what was going on and after several hours came out to tell us he had a severe infection, which turned out to be staph, a bacteria infection that had eaten away at his artery in the groin. After the surgery, which was late Friday night they put a wound vac on to drain all the infection out and were going to go in and close up the artery area on Monday. By Saturday morning he had a major bleed out and was rushed to surgery again with the doctor riding on his bed to keep him from hemorrhaging. He lost massive amounts of blood again and they had to do a bypass in the groin area using a vein and artery. We hoped and prayed he would get enough circulation to the lower leg to be able to save it, but it was turning toxic and they had to amputate his left leg above the knee.
Shortly after that surgery he developed lung issues, which they didn’t know if it was blood clots or what and he ended up in the ICU for four months One problem then led to another with him getting C-Diff, a hospital acquired severe diarrhea. They had inserted a balloon device catheter inside of him for 16 days. He was almost in an induced coma for weeks at that point. After taking out the catheter in him, he started hemorrhaging very bad and called in a specialist who could not believe the shape he was in, with huge bleeding ulcers, and rushed him to surgery again. After two days, he started bleeding again and lost so much blood pressure as they operated again for another ulcer he had missed. Because of all the blood pressure losses that had happened to him his kidneys started to fail and has been on dialysis since August. The most devastating problem he had were the pressure ulcers, bed sores he had developed on his back. We have been in the hospital since last June and have been treating this massive sore, which was 8 inches in size and deep to his bones. He has been healing it with a wound vac. He has had debilitating pain to deal with for months now. Our family has been through an emotional rollercoaster with Gordie’s problems, but have been looking forward to him being able to come home soon in the near future. He has a long way to go with physical therapy and going through 3 days a week on dialysis machines.
I can’t thank our families and friends and even strangers enough for all the prayers, masses that have been said for him over these 10 months. The hospital has been renting him the top of the line of beds for pressure sores and have also got him an electric chair he can ride all over the hospital to keep his spirits up. We all can’t believe how he has handled these last 10 months mentally, but he has been amazing. I know that it is God’s power that has gotten him through all of this nightmare. Gordie is about half of his body weight right now and is trying to acquire his tastes back to the food he always enjoyed. Sometimes with kidney troubles your taste buds change too, so time will tell.