He survived flesh-eating disease. Now he’s stranded in a St. John’s hospital, waiting to return home – CBC

Jody Short is living at the Miller Centre until he can raise enough funds to build a ramp

Nov 08, 2022

Jody Short was ankle-deep in snow in February, a shovel in his hands, when searing pain shot up his left leg.

“I was almost passing out with pain,” recalled Short recently, speaking quietly from the recreation room of the Miller Centre in St. John’s, where he’s been stranded for three months.

Short ended up hospitalized, rushed to an operating room to fix an aortic dissection — a tear in his main artery, and the beginning of a nightmarish series of medical woes that would ultimately leave him unable to walk or return to his home.

He had about a 40 per cent chance of surviving that operation, he said, prompting his family, and even the surgeons, to say a prayer and their goodbyes before he went under the knife.

When he awoke from a coma a week later, Short faced yet another hurdle: unexpected paralysis. Suddenly, in his mid-40s, he found himself bedridden, unable to feed himself or brush his own teeth, in constant pain.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/miller-centre-survivor-1.6643006