Nine months ago Dale Pocock could stand on both legs.
Today the Nipawin, Sask., farmer uses crutches and a walker to get around while waiting for an artificial leg.
There was no obvious problem with his leg last June 9. Pocock said he was feeling achy and flu-like at the end of a day welding his tractor.
He had turned 65 the month before and “thought it’s what happens” when you get older. He stayed home the next two days, not eating and not feeling right. Daily trips to the hospital revealed nothing and provided no help other than over-the counter pills.
Read Also
Communication key to bridging generation gap
Each generation is shaped by the predominant forces at play during their formative years. Acknowledging these influences can improve communication among the generations.
On the third day of his illness, he was able to see his regular doctor at 10:30 a.m. An X-ray was ordered and as Pocock walked back he noticed his right foot was swelling, turning blue and feeling like pins and needles, as if the circulation was cut off.
A few minutes later his doctor told him he was going to a Saskatoon hospital right away, by plane, because the condition was serious. The air ambulance landed him at 12:30 and by 1 p.m., doctors had amputated his right leg and hip. The culprit was flesh-eating disease.
Pocock credits his doctor, Steven Cronjé, with saving his life.
“He said this was the first case he’d seen in Canada, but he’d seen a lot of it in South Africa. He called it gas gangrene. … The X-ray didn’t show it but he felt it under the skin.”
The doctors in Saskatoon thought Pocock would die. After the operation they gave him a 10 percent chance of surviving. Pocock beat those odds.
In Canada, there are 100-200 cases of necrotizing fascitis each year and one-third of the people die. Canadians became aware of this bacterial infection after former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard lost a leg to it.
Pocock’s physical recovery was slow. He went through several operations, including one to remove a tumour in his colon that the doctors think might have created the toxins that led to his leg infection.
Because of skin grafting procedures, his wrist was attached to his abdomen for a month. Pocock was in hospital and rehabilitation in Saskatoon for six months and returned home in January.
But that hasn’t changed his resolve to continue farming. He even wanted to return to his farm one month after his hospitalization.
“We had a field day planned for July 10 and I was hoping to go to it in the van but the doctors said ‘no, you’re not going.’ We took it step by step.”
Pocock has a dream of encouraging more farmers to grow forage. He started with the registration in 1998 of the non-profit group Saskatchewan Crop Improvement Association Inc. Each year he has turned some of his 1,000-acre farm over to propagating seed and plots for different types of forage.
He plans to plant more this year with help from summer students, local people and those who are part of the association.
Besides workers, the association needs donations. It also hopes to sell foundation seed from some of the lines it received from Utah.
Pocock hopes to eventually turn his farm over to the association with himself ending up as an employee.
His interest in forages started when professors at the University of Saskatchewan encouraged the use of Russian wild rye.
“Unfortunately what I learned in the academic world wasn’t always true in the real world.”
Pocock said the potential of forages “is out of this world. It’s not something we want to shut down.” That is why he is eager to resume the farm’s forage trials and the association’s work.
“I hope to do some of the fieldwork myself. The artificial limb will help to some extent … to get up on the tractor.”
Pocock said farmers who become disabled should seek out support from Farmers with Disabilities groups. They can encourage producers to stay on the farm, but Pocock said the farmer must “recognize you’re not going to be quite right.”
He said through all his operations he joked with doctors that the final thing he had to do was grow a new leg.
“They said OK, if you’re an am-phibian.”
But in the end, it all comes down to the farmer’s determination. As Pocock said, “I’m still here.”
