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Harry Studds, 89, believes Vibrio caused the infection that led doctors to amputate his leg.
This stylized portrait shows Harry 'Long John' Studds in his eel boat in Colonial Beach last year. Studds lost his leg to an infection Aug. 28. |
BY FRANK DELANO
"I gotta get out of here," Harry "Long John" Studds said this week from his bed at VCU Medical Center in Richmond.
"I've got a big battle to face at 90," he said. "If I could get back to Colonial Beach and get a wheelchair and talk to people, I'd feel a whole lot better."
Studds' homecoming may happen tomorrow, but his right leg will not be coming with him. A raging infection that he is certain came from the water caused doctors to amputate his leg to save his life.
"They took the whole leg. They wanted to make sure they got all of the infection to keep it from spreading to my heart," Studds said.
"His doctors said they may never know for sure what caused his infection, but they're pretty confident it was Vibrio," said Studds' granddaughter, Christy Sanders.
Like all watermen in the Potomac and other rivers near the Chesapeake Bay, Studds knows about "fishermen's disease," the common name given to Vibrio and other serious bacterial infections caused by microorganisms in the water.
"I figured it wouldn't get me, but it did," said Studds.
His granddaughter said, "The river has kept him going. Unfortunately, the river may now be the thing that has brought him down a little."
He was a boy in Alexandria when he first started working on the river with an uncle in the seafood business. After serving in the Navy in World War II and driving a bus in Alexandria, Studds moved to Colonial Beach in 1969 and became a waterman.
In recent years, he has trapped eels for bait in about 50 eel pots in Mattox Creek, Monroe Bay and the Potomac. This year, he noticed something different.
"This was the first year in all my time on the water that I saw raw, open sores on the eels and catfish I caught in my pots," he said.
The infected fish first turned red, then developed lesions and died within a day or two, he said.
Studds said he threw overboard the infected fish he found in his pots. He brought what he thought were healthy fish back to Monroe Bay. He kept them in live boxes in the water at his home on Monroe Bay Avenue until he sold them.
He waded out to a live box to get eels for a customer Aug. 19. He was wearing shorts and boat moccasins. "I don't know if I had a cut on my leg or foot or not," he said.
"Damn, my shoe is getting tight," he thought the next day. By the next morning, "My leg was pink and all different colors, and the skin was blistering."
He went to Mary Washington Hospital Aug. 21. Both of his legs were infected.
He spent several days at MWH, "getting all kinds of tests." But doctors couldn't stop the infection from spreading.
He was transferred to Richmond. On Aug. 28, doctors amputated his leg and "gave me antibiotics as high as they could give me" to save his other leg.
He is now undergoing six hours a day of physical therapy, learning how to balance and move on one leg and exercising the stump of his other.
"It hurts like hell when I move it around," he said. "Some nights, it jumps down there. They say it's phantom limb sensation, or something."
Studds turns 90 on Oct. 10. He has buried two wives and a son who was murdered in Colonial Beach in 1976.
He knows that his two other sons, his grandchildren and his friends will help him deal with his new handicap. For his homecoming, some of them built a wheelchair ramp this week at his house.
"I just want to survive. If I can get the hell out of this hospital, I think I can make it. I'm going to battle the hell out of it," he said.
Studds' current battle is not his first. In World War II, he served on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, "the ship that wouldn't die." Studds survived the Franklin's many battles in the Pacific and the attack of a Japanese dive-bomber in 1945 that killed or wounded nearly 1,000 of the ship's crew.
"It's too late to quit now. You don't quit in the middle of a fight. I'm going to do my best to try to reach 100. If I can do it, I'll probably go right back to the water. It would be OK with me to die on the water," he said.
In his hospital bed, he took a call from a friend named Jane, whom he met at the American Legion in Colonial Beach.
He told her it will be months before he can be fitted with an artificial leg.
"When I get home, I'm going to sit on the porch and wave at everybody that goes by. The ones that don't wave can honk," he said.
"We'll go to the American Legion. You can just roll me in."
Frank Delano: 804/761-4300
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
