San Antonio Express-News (TX)

Life becomes a battle for local man

Josh Baugh EXPRESS-NEWS STAFF WRITER

Publication Date : October 4, 2006

The photographs hung on the wall as a reminder of who Harvey Keckley was and what he still could be.
If there was any doubt in the mind of his wife Janet, she didn't show it. The pictures weren't for her to remember, but for the staff at Christus Santa Rosa Hospital-Medical Center to know -- to really know -- the life they were saving.

The photos showed a man who loves his family, his pets and his homestead, a man who cherishes sitting on the porch and watching the sun set. They showed a man who's been weathered by the years but who still looks vibrant and alive. And they showed a man who loves to fish.

Several of the pictures that hung in Keckley's hospital room were taken on June 11, the day his story began. They were images of a man who looked starkly different -- six feet of life, tan and taut and strong. He looked as if he could walk to the end of the Earth.

Now, he struggles to walk 10 feet.

But taking a dozen steps with the help of a walker is nothing short of a miracle for a man who was given a zero chance of survival after his body was invaded by flesh-eating bacteria that caused his organs to shut down and ate away at his leg until there was no option but to amputate it. Keckley has endured immense pain and struggled to stave off death, a testament of his will to live, his wife says.

Now, he fights for some semblance of normalcy in a life that was once, not so long ago, taken for granted.

Keckley has spent the recent weeks relearning how to do all the things it takes to live independently -- things as simple as using the restroom, bathing and getting dressed. In a wheelchair, he works on his strength and endurance, bouncing a medicine ball off a trampoline, extending his arms out from his chest and pushing himself through other exercises, which, three months ago, he would have considered a nuisance more than anything else.

"Never take your health for granted, no matter how poor it seems to be," he said, fighting back tears as his voice retreated down his throat and gave way to a thick cough. Life is more precious now for the 55-year-old who put in full days as the fleet manager for Grey Forest Utilities and then came home to work more hours at the horse-boarding stable he owns with his wife.

"God decided to keep me around a little longer, so I'm going to live a good life and do whatever it is I'm supposed to do," he said. "He kept me around for a reason, and one of these days, I'll figure it out."

The last trip

Though he loves to fish, Keckley said he would never return to the Gulf Coast, a place that once was a welcoming retreat. Now, it's the place that allowed a bacterial infection to enter his body.

Almost four months ago, Keckley and his wife took a long-overdue trip to the Rockport area, where they fished for red drum in St. Charles Bay. They used to spend lots of weekends at the coast, but it had been a year since the couple had been able to get away from their stables in Northwestern Bexar County.

From their boat, they fished the bay for two days, catching "reds" and sheepshead. Keckley posed for silly photos, holding the fish he caught close to his face, mimicking their croaking jaws.

At some point during the trip, Keckley cut his left leg.

"The cut was so insignificant that I didn't remember it for several days," his wife said. "But that's how the bug got in. I think he cut his self on June 11th, but I can't swear to it."

Keckley said he doesn't remember the minor injury, either.

"I didn't pay any attention to it," he said. "I was too busy catching fish."

But that night, his health plummeted. The couple had sat down to a crab-boil dinner at the Boiling Pot restaurant in Fulton, but before they could dig into the feast served home-style on butcher paper, Keckley ran to their truck and turned on the heater, trying to fight off uncontrollable shivers. By 8:30 p.m., they were in the emergency room at North Bay Hospital in Aransas Pass, Janet said.

"When we went in, the triage nurse asked what was going on. I said he had a real fever and a little tightness in his leg," she said.

"The nurse said, 'I ain't worried about his leg. I'm worried about his fever."'

Around 3:30 a.m., the ER staff, unable to determine what was causing Keckley's illness, sent him on to Doctors Regional hospital in Corpus Christi.

"Janet said I was screaming in pain, but I don't remember any of it," Keckley said. "That's a blessing."

At the hospital in Corpus Christi, doctors induced a coma because Keckley had blood poisoning and "all his systems had begun to shut down," his wife said.

He was dying, the doctors told her, and they couldn't save him. But the fisherman fought through the night and into the next day. Over the ensuing two weeks, an arsenal of machines and a cocktail of drugs kept Keckley alive. But the condition of his leg continued to deteriorate.

Friends flocked to visit Keckley. Eventually, he was allowed to regain consciousness and was transferred to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio's Medical Center.

A changed life

For all of the photos next to Keckley's hospital bed that showed him at the height of his health, one picture graphically illustrated how dire his situation had become. It was a photograph of his left leg before it was amputated, and it didn't look like a human limb.

"He looked like he'd been hit with a mortar round or something on that leg," said Ric Lee, a friend who'd fought in Vietnam. "It looked absolutely like he'd stepped on a mine."

Lee, who earned three Purple Hearts in Vietnam, told Janet Keckley that her husband's leg looked like nothing he'd seen during the war. The veteran decided his old friend had earned a medal, so he gave him one of his Purple Hearts.

"All he went through, he was just a tough guy.... He's my hero. He toughed up, pulled through it and went through a lot more than I did," Lee said. "I thought it was appropriate to award him with his Purple Heart."

Keckley still can't talk about the gift because he gets too emotional to speak.

On July 12, a month and a day after he fell ill, Keckley's left leg was amputated at the knee. He couldn't beat the bacteria that was killing the flesh in his leg. So it wasn't a tough decision to agree to the surgery, Keckley said.

"You don't have any choice, do you?" he asked rhetorically. "Crying won't help, and praying won't bring your leg back."

Alan Hibberd, the orthopedic surgeon who conducted the amputation, said the bacteria had eaten up the muscles and tendon, and even if he could have saved the leg, it wouldn't have been useful any longer.

The bacteria that entered Keckley, who has liver disease, lives in saltwater, Hibberd said, and people with pre-existing conditions are more susceptible to it. Keckley had kicked his addiction to alcohol years ago, but it had already compromised his immune system.

His only vice since then has been cigarettes.

"Between you and me, I've smoked a few since I've been here," he said under an awning at the hospital. "That's the only bad habit I have left. I guess I'm on my way to sainthood."

But during his stint at the hospital, Keckley's taste for cigarettes waned. Even the smell of smoke wafting from his wife's cigarette wasn't enticing.

"Being stuck in a hospital, you're going to go through the withdrawals," he said. "There's nothing you can do about it."

At the hospital, Keckley has had to rely on the help of others. When he first awoke from his amputation surgery, Keckley was so weak that he couldn't push the "nurse-call" button by his bed. And his rehabilitation since then sometimes has taken a team of people. But the dependence is only a temporary crutch.

"We've always been pretty equal in our relationship," Janet said. "I never thought that I'd have to take over suddenly. I do what I do, and I'm sure he'll be able to go back to what he does."

The long road home

Going home has been Harvey Keckley's ultimate objective. During his rehab sessions, Keckley would push himself to walk a few feet farther or complete a couple more repetitions, all to a very specific end.

"I think I've been doing pretty well," he said during a recent physical therapy session. "I've been giving it 100 percent because I want out of here."

This past Thursday, the doctors decided he'd recovered enough to begin integrating back into his old life, and he went back to the place of his dreams.

"There isn't one thing. It's just home," he said. "It's more than home. It's a dream we've been working for."

There's still a long road back to normalcy for Keckley, whose rehabilitation is far from over. He'll continue physical and occupational therapy at his home. And sometime in the future, Keckley will be fitted for a prosthetic leg, his wife said, though he'll always have a wheelchair to use when he gets tired.

The Keckleys have already begun modifications on their house to make it more accessible. They've added a ramp and made the bathroom easier to use. And they'll have to make other changes as Keckley spends more time at home.

"A little less mobility is all I have to worry about," he said. "I've still got a lot of living to do."

jbaugh@express-news.net