'Don't ignore your doctor' urges Dundalk man after losing leg

Don't ignore your doctor, and always take your medication, is the message Dundalk man, Garrett O'Rourke, urges everyone to take on board, after a traumatic number of months, which saw him losing a leg and long periods of time in hospital.

“I took sick back in February of this year”, Garrett told the Dundalk Democrat, “I'm a diabetic but I ignored all the signs and I didn't do anything about it. I ended up with an infected foot that was badly infected and caused me sepsis. Low blood pressure, high temperature, fever, enough there to kill an elephant, never mind kill me.

Garrett said he spent a month in the Lourdes Hospital but after being discharged had to return a month later after his foot became infected again.

“I was very unwell and I ended up having my leg amputated, my left leg amputated below the knee, such was the badness of the infection in my foot.

“I got it off in the Beaumont [Hospital], the surgeon told me, 'your leg's coming off tonight, Garrett, to save your life', I only had a few hours to live at that stage, I didn't know I was that bad. Luckily enough I did go to the hospital, because I wouldn't be here if I hadn't gone, I had only a few hours to live.

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“I ended up back in the Lourdes for respite, then I went down to the Louth [County Hospital] for more respite.” Garrett was then sent to The National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire, where he was fitted with a prosthetic leg.

“I was to be there for an eight week time frame, they let me out after three weeks, because my recovery just went through the roof”, he revealed.

“I was walking on my prosthetic leg after a week, when they weren't expecting it, I was walking on crutches after two weeks when they weren't expecting it and I was walking with no crutches, unaided after three weeks when they weren't expecting it.

“So they just told me, 'Garrett, there's nothing more we can do for you, we're letting you home, you're flying here, we can't teach you anymore.

“The surgeon that took my leg off, told me two days after, 'I know its a tough time, I know it's depressing, but six months down the line, you'll be walking up and down the street, and people won't even know you have a prosthetic leg.

“And true to his word, I'm walking up and down the street and people don't know I have a prosthetic leg. People have to ask me again, can I ask you again Garrett, which is your bad leg and which is your good one?

“The moral of the story is, don't do what I done, don't ignore your doctor, don't ignore an appointment, don't ignore a hospital appointment, don't ever stop taking your medication, always take your medication. Sickness can come upon you very qucikly and in a heartbeat you can be very sick.

“You can go beyond repair very quickly. If I hadn't gone to the hospital, I would have passed on. Because the doctor told me, if your leg doesn't come off tonight Garrett, you won't see the night out. That was scary stuff.”

He added, “there is life after major surgery, you can get up and get on with it and lead a normal life. Although it was traumatic at the time, when you think about it, it's not the end of the world, I can still do things.”

Garrett added that he also wanted to highlight, that most of the nurses and doctors he dealt with and who treated him, “either in the Lourdes, the Louth, the Beaumont or the Rehab hospital, have been foreign ones. And with so much bull about telling immigrants to go home take these wonderful people out of our health system and it would collapse.”