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Amputee shares message of grit, hope
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Joseph Zajac shows his prosthesis at Greenbriar Healthcare Center.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
POLAND
Wearing a prosthesis where his right foot and leg below the knee used to be, Joseph Zajac is determined to use the last nine, pain-wracked, death-threatening months of his life to inspire others.
His message: “Take care of yourself so you don’t get in the situation I was in, but if you do, don’t give up.”
“My experience at Greenbriar Healthcare Center is that some people come in here and give up. I want people to hear my story and keep fighting,” he said last week before he was to leave Greenbriar and return to his home in Poland.
Zajac’s saga began innocently enough.
The retired Youngstown Superior Beverage Group sales representative’s long road to recovery started in September 2009 when he tripped in his yard and broke his ankle. He didn’t immediately realize it was broken because he is diabetic and did not feel it. Doctors initially decided against surgery and instead put a brace on his ankle.
Then things got worse.
An infection in his heel went undetected for weeks. Once doctors discovered the infection, they performed three amputations, ultimately ending with Zajac’s losing part of his right leg below the knee. However, the amputations didn’t stop the infection from spreading throughout his body, destroying a heart valve in the process and putting Zajac in a comalike state.
Just before Christmas 2009, Zajac, 61, said one doctor advised his family to start making funeral arrangements.
That left his son, A.J. Zajac of Poland, and his sisters, Anna Joy and Marylynn Bailey, both of Boardman, with the difficult decision of taking the doctor’s advice or continuing to fight for his life.
They chose to fight.
“My son said he woke me up from the semi-coma I was in for several months and asked me what I wanted to do. He told me I said I wanted to fight, but I don’t remember any of it,” said Zajac, a 1967 graduate of Cardinal Mooney High School.
He said he was transported to the Cleveland Clinic, but doctors there didn’t want to operate on his heart because he had brain lesions. Finally, his sister prevailed on the doctors to do another MRI. They found no lesions, and the heart surgery was done, he said.
But, it wasn’t just medical problems that Zajac faced.
Five months into his hospitalization, while recovering at a facility in Pennsylvania, he was told he had to leave because his health-care coverage had expired.
Fortunately, Zajac said, it was a computer glitch at the hospital that caused the confusion, and he did not have to leave.
“The thing that gets me is they would jeopardize people’s health for money,” he said.
During the worst of his illness, Zajac said he went from 236 pounds to about 160 pounds, was on feeding tubes and his liver and kidneys were shutting down. Finally, he started to eat solid foods and gain some weight and strength at the Pennsylvania hospital, and then he was transferred to Greenbriar on March 4, 2010.
Zajac’s condition was stabilized, but being bedridden for six months left him extremely weak.
“We initially focused on building up his strength and endurance when he first arrived,” said one of his physical therapists, Mary Ali. “He was so weak, he had trouble even sitting up in bed.”
Once the therapists reached their goals with his strength and endurance, Zajac, who grew up on Youngstown’s South Side, finally was able to receive his prosthesis April 9.
And, for the first time in almost eight months, he was able to walk again.
Now that he is free of hospitals and rehabilitations, Zajac said he wants to get back to as normal a life as possible.
He said he likes to hunt and fish and cook for friends and family; and he wants to give back to the community.
“I wasn’t a good diabetes patient. I ate what I wanted, did what I wanted,” he said.
Then, he said, “with a lot of support from my family and friends and faith and the medical profession, I survived.”
“Now, I tell people to take care of themselves. I want people to know they can overcome a lot of obstacles. Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up,” Zajac said.