One man’s COVID-19 diagnosis was just a small part of his health concerns in 2020.
Carter Perry, a Hawaii-based surfer and IT specialist, was rushed to the hospital at the beginning of the year after experiencing cold-like symptoms following a holiday trip home to Ohio.
It wasn’t COVID, but the 23-year-old was diagnosed with methicillin-susceptible staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), a bloodstream infection caused by a combination of flu and pneumonia spreading through his body, according to PEOPLE.
After two weeks, he woke up at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu and found out he needed to have one lung removed along with a below-knee amputation of his right leg due to related wet-gangrene formation, the outlet notes.
In total, Perry underwent 30 surgeries. Doctor's attempted to save his left leg.
"My left foot was ... going down the same route as my right, which had to be amputated because of the vasopressors taking away the blood from my extremities; they'd bring it to my vital organs to keep me alive,” he explained.
He said that doctors took a stretch of skin from his knee to his hip and “the nerve ending” from his thigh to transplant it to his foot in order to prevent amputation.
He also needed the use of ECMO and points out that the timing was very lucky.
"If I got the same thing in 2018, I would've died, 'cause there's no way they could've medivacked me all the way to California in time without the ECMO that I needed," he explained.
He credits the staff at the hospital for saving his life and his other foot.
Perry spent a total of six months in the hospital, which was followed by rehab.
However, upon being released in July, he didn’t catch a break. Instead, he contracted COVID-19 from a friend who unknowingly got it from his sister.
Doctors were concerned because of his pneumonectomy, but Perry explained that “in the scheme of things, compared to the flu, it was nothing."
He recalled his symptoms weren’t “that bad” and that other than feeling “weakened,” he didn’t have many “pulmonary issues.”
“As a man with one lung, that would've been a problem,” he told the outlet of the respiratory virus that has killed upwards of 1 million globally, per John Hopkins.
Perry is focusing on his road to recovery and already looking to his future, which includes returning to work at Avening Tech, a company he says has been “so supportive” in helping him remain employed and on long-term disability.
He also doesn’t want his new reality to prevent him from getting back on the surfboard.
"I might not even be able to stand on a surfboard anymore, but I'm sure as hell gonna try,” he explained.
Despite everything that was thrown his way in 2020, Perry remains optimistic.
"My appreciation for life has just altered so much in a positive way. ... I think my life's gonna be better than it was before,” he told the outlet.
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