11/20/2023
To my clients, and my friends, and all those who have sent me prayers and stayed with me throughout the years....
Let me start off by saying in July of the Year 2021 I contracted covid Delta strain. I was quarantined for 15 days where I slept for an average of 20 hours a day and lost a great deal of weight. About 10 days after the virus, my left foot and leg started swelling and turning red. I was instructed to go to the ER from my wound care doctor because she knew what was happening. You see, I had been fighting diabetic ulcers on the bottom of my left foot, and well my body was fighting the covid, I was losing the battle to osteomyelitis and other poisons that were attacking the ulcers on my foot. I was admitted to the hospital on a Friday night or early Saturday morning, and was immediately started on vancomycin drip for antibiotics. Saturday night a surgeon came in and introduced himself and announced that the next morning they would be taking my greater toe and ball of the foot due to severe infection of the bones. That surgery went well except for 2 days after on a Tuesday they came in and announced that they had found poison in two more toes of that foot and after discussion decided on a procedure called a mid metatarsal procedure. This is where all the toes are taken at the first joint so the incision is straight across the healing time is not as long and the results were fantastic. After two major surgeries I was in and out of the hospital within six days. People can say what they want but the attitude of the patient and their belief in the body healing quicker with good attitude is proven right here in this author.
For two years after I had been in and out of the doctor's offices and to the ER and urgent cares in the middle of the night mostly telling the doctors that my problems are wounds on my arms and never heal, and that the core of my body always felt like it was burning up but my fingers and toes always felt like they were freezing. Time and time again they would look at me like I was crazy or just an old man that needed someone to talk to or somewhere warm to stay for the night but they've never took me seriously and sent me home saying that nothing was wrong. This past January of 2023 changed my life drastically....
I woke up on a Saturday, feeling heavy and could not breathe. When I looked in the mirror my face was so swollen, and it looks like a football, and my legs were huge at the thighs. As I decided to drive myself to the ER, they took me in quickly to see if I was having a heart attack. They said I was not and left me in the waiting room for four and a half hours swollen and having trouble breathing when I approached them and told them that I was getting worse the lady an admissions just looked at me and commented that there were three more ahead of me. I politely told her that I was willing to take that but if anything should go wrong and I should stop breathing out in the waiting room that it was on her because I had reported that I was having more problems. I let her know that she could not BS me with her jargon, I told her that the oximeter on my fingertip might very well show what they want to see in the way of the oxygen level, but what it took to get it there might be in trouble. Again she looked at me and gave me a false "I'm sorry" comment, and still stated that there were three ahead of me. When they finally took me back to the room and the doctors came in and looked at me and did some more tests, I showed them my arms and told them that I had been through all kinds of techniques with the wound care facility and they're still not healed, and I told them that I believe that there was other problems and when I told them what I thought them to be, they sent me through a psych eval! My oldest son was not in the least amused by this and when they got their test results back from prior test that they did before this eval, they found out that I had 28 lb of excess fluid around my heart and for two years that they told me nothing was wrong, I now have chronic heart failure, lung disease, stage 3 kidney failure, and diverticulitis. Although the top three there might do away with me, I told the doctor that I was going to eat what I damn well wanted on the way out! 😊
I was scheduled for a heart cath very soon after that visit to the ER where they found for blockages in my heart. They had to fix one right then because it was 97% plugged up and they scheduled the rest to be repaired in the following two weeks. That was in February of this year. I now have four stents in my heart and I grow weaker it seems like every two weeks or so. They told me that their damage cannot be repaired because of the calcification inside the lower lobe of the heart. I am not a candidate for heart transplant due to being diabetic and over 60. This all started around November of the Year 2022, and trying to save my health and my life, I neglected to renew my license and was late in getting my fees in on time to the Board, so I lost my license to practice here in Missouri. I have also put in a lot of prayers and thoughts, and have come to the conclusion that since I cannot maintain my balance very well yet around the table, that it is best for me to just concentrate on my health and what I can do and not what I can't do. So it saddens me to announce this...
Darwin Holly ~ Peace at Hand ~ will no longer be practicing and has retired. It saddens me with all my heart to know that I have let my clients down. God has blessed me in so many ways by getting to know the people I have throughout my years of practice. God has not let me down, but I believe that he has altered my path of doing his work. Please lift me up in your prayers to those that believe in our Lord, and to my clients I wish you to keep in touch, because, as I have told so many of you that you all became more like family than clients and that's what I think of you.
This was a very hard decision to make but it is the best one. To all my colleagues out there, I respect and admire each one of you and know that when you actually love what you do you never work again! God be with you!
Darwin Holly ~Peace at Hand~
