Eight months of pain and a system that failed him
· Citizen
Earlier this week, 24-year-old Jonothan Gerds gave up. He wanted to get out of hospital, find the nearest butchery and use a bandsaw to sever his left hand from the rest of his body.
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He is in constant pain, has been for eight months. His hand is rotting, with flesh-eating bacteria slowly digesting it.
“I feel like I want to just cut it off with the first sharp instrument I can find,” said Gerds. “Or failing that, I am prepared to lie here and chew it off.”
Man’s untreated infection worsens
While speaking to The Citizen, he was in tears. He tried to keep his thoughts in order as he explained a two-year ordeal.
Gerds’ suffers from high-functioning autism.
“When I encounter any kind of situation that is overwhelming, my brain goes into overdrive and on a tangent,” he said.
Three years ago, a night of hyper overstimulation triggered a series of events that left his life in tatters. He was living in Saldanha in the Western Cape with his then girlfriend and toddler.
“My friends suggested I take a small dose of magic mushrooms,” he said. “They figured it would help me sleep, but it did the opposite.”
He was admitted to Vredenburg Hospital where a young doctor treated him. This, Gerds said, is where it all started to unravel.
Something wrong after injection
“Despite asking the doctor not to inject me with any kind of medication,” he said, “he insisted. All I wanted was a piece of paper and a pen instead, to write, so that I could calm myself down.”
After the injection, he said he felt something had gone wrong.
“I told the doctor straight, you just messed up,” he said. “He went through the vein, nicked my tendon and injected a substance into my brachial artery.”
The brachial artery is a major blood vessel running down the upper arm that supplies blood to the arm and hand, and damage to it can severely affect circulation and tissue health.
He said the injection led to infection within his arterial system, resulting in abscesses forming inside his veins. Then, over the next few months, he was moved between facilities, including treatment in Cape Town, where he spent months on antibiotics.
He said he was placed in psychiatric care under circumstances he still does not understand.
Placed in psychiatric care
“There was nothing there except a hole in the centre where I could ablute,” he said.
When he was eventually discharged and returned home to Johannesburg, the physical damage had already taken hold.
“I had severe vascular and nerve damage,” he said. “My hand was stiff. I could barely move my fingers.”
Recovery was slow. He regained movement and, after months, some sensation returned. Then came another setback.
He had an allergic reaction to latex from gloves that he had to wear for work, that triggered a severe skin condition, which quickly escalated due to the already poor blood supply in his arm following his previous ordeal.
He moved between clinics and hospitals, seeking treatment. At one point, he said, he was given burn cream for what he described as an open, infected wound.
Moving between clinics and hospitals
“It didn’t work.”
For months, he said, he lived with escalating pain and eventually got referred to Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital in late August last year. But they would not accept him.
“They told me it’s not an emergency,” he said.
His mother, Cheryl Gerds, said the family has been fighting for answers and intervention for months, but are getting nowhere.
“Even with a referral letter saying this is urgent, he was still told it’s not an emergency,” she said.
The situation escalated to the point where neighbours had to intervene to get him admitted.
Neighbours intervene to admit Gerds
Since eventual admission, he described a cycle of delays, missed surgical slots, going without meals for three days and treatment that he believes has not kept pace with the severity of his condition.
“My hand moved into a state of necrosis, I had flesh-eating bacteria,” he said. “It was slowly being eaten away.”
“For about eight months straight, I’ve been dealing with probably the most excruciating and escalating pain I have ever experienced in my life.”
Relief came briefly through a private doctor who prescribed a makeshift antibiotic treatment.
When surgery eventually took place, doctors performed multiple procedures in a single session. Blood flow was partially restored, but not completely.
“The radial artery was apparently too damaged,” he said.
Radial artery too damaged
Gerds described repeated incidents where he felt his care lacked urgency. In one instance, he said, he was left to clean his own wound without assistance or adequate pain management.
His mother said what concerns her most now is how rapidly his condition is deteriorating, with new complications emerging after surgery.
Gerds said he’s not okay. “If they can save it, then save it. If they can’t, then just cut it off. I just want normal pain for a change,” he said.