Quadruple amputee struggles with medical needs
Posted almost 15 years ago by Stanley F Whittaker
ORMOND BEACH -- The antibiotic that would have let Gayle Burnette Monroe keep her arms and legs and spared her from months of hospitalizations is free at local supermarkets.
That's what makes it all the more poignant that her 7-year-old son Caleb Monroe wants to be a scientist so he can figure out how to turn back time.
"He told me that's what he wants so I could have my arms again to hold him," Gayle Monroe, 39, said with her eyes brimming with tears. "That hurts me so bad."
The 1988 Mainland High School graduate and mother of three would have gotten to the doctor sooner to have a sore throat treated if the family hadn't been facing a financial meltdown without health insurance in late 2008.
If she had, she would have avoided the strep throat bacteria attack on her vital organs. Numerous brushes with death later -- one which resulted in the amputation of her feet and hands as the infection went septic -- the family's struggle appears to be an epic with no end in sight.
The family's third fundraiser for Gayle Monroe on Saturday is the latest stab at filling the gap between what help there is for her -- and what they say she needs to get up and going once again.
"We're afraid we're going to lose her," said her dad, Bob Burnette, his voice choking.
Repeated intubations have created scar tissue in her throat that, left alone, closes up her airway. Fixing it requires either an invasive surgery that basically rebuilds her trachea or a stopgap measure to keep her trachea open that puts her in the hospital every five to six weeks.
Just three weeks out from the latest effort to open up an airway big enough to breathe, Gayle Monroe is already talking with a wheeze as she lies in bed. Without the more permanent solution that would rebuild her airway, she doesn't have the breath to begin getting up on prosthetic limbs.
The family can't find doctors who perform the trachea-rebuilding surgery and take Medicaid, the state's insurance for low-income Floridians, which Gayle Monroe has. They say that her doctor, Ormond Beach Pulmonologist Dany Obeid, is doing everything he can to get her to a doctor at Harvard University in Massachusetts to perform the surgery.
"I want to live, I don't want to die," Gayle Monroe said. "I don't think it's right that I have to wonder if I'm going to live through the next week because of the kind of insurance I have."
Her husband, Tim Monroe, a subcontractor, said he's stunned that she's twice been denied Social Security disability -- and hence more widely accepted Medicare health insurance that would get her in to see the doctors she needs.
He said there's only one way he's making it through: Paxil, an antidepressant medicine.
"It's still surreal," he said of the reality that his wife and mother of three is missing her limbs. "I'm hoping one day I'll wake up and this nightmare will be over. And everything will be normal again."