* * Clay Quesenberry’s life of pain

I wrote this a couple of years ago about my long-time friend and co-worker, Clay Quesenberry.

“My doctors all say the same thing, that I must be the toughest man alive,” Clay admitted sardonically as he sat in his wheelchair, musing about his life. “I’ve had 21 surgeries in the last 20 years.”

Clay and I have known each other for thirty years since he joined Christiansburg Printing, which my parents owned at the time. Then when my wife and I inherited the company 20 years ago, he worked for me.

He told me that with his new prosthetic leg, he’s learning how to walk again.

“I am 53 years old. I began having problems in the spring of 1991. I was on my usual spring outing, hunting for morel mushrooms. I began to notice that my legs didn't want to do what they used to do. They seemed to want to drag behind me and my hips hurt.

“Gradually things began to worsen and I saw a doctor about it. He tried to take a pulse measurement on my feet, but he could not find any pulse whatsoever. I saw a specialist at the Radford Hospital and he determined that my abdominal aorta had clogged. This was unusual for someone as young as me. It is the biggest artery in the body and it is in the abdominal area just south of the heart. My clot was right where the artery splits into two branches, towards each leg. I spent seven days in the hospital after surgery to replace this artery with a synthetic unit. Several months I felt much better but nine months went by and I began to feel the same symptoms again. One night, I woke up and both legs were completely numb and I couldn’t walk. I was rushed into the emergency room again. In this surgery, my doctor removed 300 separate clots.

“I have a hyper-coagulative blood disorder. It is hereditary and my mother died from it at age 49. They didn’t know what it was or how to treat it. I have had the worst case that many of my doctors have ever seen in terms of the virulence of the disease and the speed with which the clots form. Smoking cigarettes of course makes things worse and I was smoking at the time.

“To make a long story short, as I said, I have had 21 surgeries. One day, I measured 17 linear feet of scars over much of my body. In the last surgery, they amputated my left leg just below the knee because my foot had been destroyed by so much time with intermittent blood flow. I went to Roanoke Memorial Hospital for surgery. They tried to save the foot, but it was too far gone. I was doing reasonably well in recovery until I got a MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection, which delayed the process of healing. I couldn’t get my prosthesis for 22 weeks. I am now in physical therapy learning to use my new leg.

“I have always been a strong-willed person. If there is something that happens that can’t be undone, and it is how it is, you either deal with it or you don’t. You either have to live or die, and I have chosen to live. I have tried to be as happy and positive as I can. If I had chosen to give up, I would have been dead twenty years ago,” he shrugged his head philosophically. He is a casual, informal man of great intelligence, with a magnetic personality that people like.

“Beyond the pain, it is a bitch monetarily. I have insurance, but each surgery can cost $25,000 or more, sometimes much more. If my co-pay is 20%, over 20 surgeries, that adds up to a pile of money. I am likely to remain in debt indefinitely because of it.”

I asked if he had his life to live over again, what he would have done differently. “I would never have started smoking and if I did, I would have quit sooner. Until I got sick, I thought I had a cool life. I had a great family and a good job. I got to do whatever I wanted to do. I was always happy. I had a great, albeit poor, childhood, with lots of friends.

“All my recent surgeries were to save my left leg and in the last one, they took it. So I hopefully won’t continue to have problems. I’ll be on blood thinners for the rest of my life.

“They say I’m the toughest man alive. But you either tough it out or you die. Other than twenty years of constant pain, I’ve had a good life. I’m not done yet!”

Clay Quesenberry died in July at age 56. I have submitted it for publication with the approval of his widow, Linda A. Quesenberry.