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Amputee fighting a serious bacteria infection
By Ed Runyan
MINERAL RIDGE
Up to 30 employees of Boak & Sons of Youngstown and members of the Weathersfield Township Fire Department spent Sunday helping the family of Justin Glaum, who recently had his leg amputated above the knee to fight a flesh-eating bacteria that threatened his life.
Glaum, 33, is a 10-year employee of Boak & Sons and a 10-year member of the volunteer fire department. He and his wife, Jessica, 34, have two daughters, Kiara, 11, and Rylee, 9, who Jessica said “have been amazing through all of this.”
“ I shed happy tears. There are no words to express our gratitude for all they have done, ” said Jessica of Boak and Sons and her husband’s fire department brothers.
The workers started at about 7:30 a.m. and quit at about 3:30 p.m. There were about 15 trucks and vehicles parked on the street, she said.
Boak said some of the work they did is to accommodate Justin’s handicaps when he returns home.
Jessica said that includes a handicap ramp with landscaping around the ramp to replace her flower garden that had to be taken out; changes to doors, grip bars and other things around the house that Justin planned to do, including exterior work to the house and redoing the back steps of their Williamson Street home to ease his mind.
Jessica said her husband is doing better.
He is in the Mercy Health-St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital Inpatient Rehabilitation acute care unit after spending 61/2 weeks in University Hospital in Cleveland and undergoing two amputations, one to remove his foot on June 7 and another to amputate his leg above the knee on July 3 to ensure that the bacteria had not progressed beyond that point, Jessica said.
“I made a deal with the surgeons – a limb for a life. I thought, I’m not going to lose him to a bacteria after being together 12 years,” she said.
The bacteria threatening Justin’s life is methicillin-sensitive staphylococcus aureus, or MSSA, a skin infection that is not resistant to certain antibiotics.