By Ashley Thompson
THE HANTS JOURNAL
NovaNewsNow.com
Chris Fleming still wonders what went through his kids’ minds as he lay in a hospital bed in Halifax, fighting to stay alive.
The Curry’s Corner resident hadn’t quite felt like himself for about a week before he actually swallowed his pride and went to outpatients.
“I was experiencing massive temperature fluctuations. I would get sweats that couldn’t be controlled and chills. I guess I stuck it out like any person would when you’re staunch and you don’t want to go anywhere,” he recalls.
A dedicated worker, and father of four growing boys, it was business as usual for Fleming who flew to Toronto for work, hoping his symptoms would subside with time. He returned home to learn just how crucial of a role time would play in the next few months.
“I felt kind of a knot in the back of my leg, like on my calf, and didn’t really think much of it until it got worse. I had a hard time walking, it was really painful.”
Fleming was in and out of the hospital three times that same day. The date, May 3, seemed insignificant before that year, 2008.
“I went to the hospital in the morning and they couldn’t really figure out what it was because there was nothing visible; it was basically symptom-based pain and discomfort.”
Several tests and, what seemed like, countless hours later, an intern in Halifax had a diagnosis: Necrotizing Fasciitis, commonly known as the flesh-eating disease.
At this point - after spending about eight hours in observation in Windsor, travelling to Halifax and waiting another two hours in transfer on an ambulance cart – Fleming’s memory is foggy.
“I had become quite septic. The infection gets into your blood and it starts to affect other organs and you start to shut down.”
Whether or not he could keep his leg, and, more importantly, his life, depended on how fast the surgeons worked to cut the infection out before it spread to his internal organs.
“They just start removing parts of your leg to get ahead of the infection.”
Feeling compelled to act, Fleming’s then 10-year-old son, Luke, thought of a way he and his brother’s could help their father. Luke remembered learning about the Japanese legend of the origami paper cranes at school.
“Earlier in the year we were reading a book - I forget what it was called - but this girl made 1,000 paper cranes because her friend was sick from one of the bombs dropped in Nagasaki, and one of her friends in her class made 1,000 paper cranes for her to help her get better,” Luke, now 12, explains.
The legend promises that a person who folds 1,000 paper origami cranes will be granted one wish. So, Luke, his brothers – Will, Cole and Chad – and mother, Heather, went to work.
Meanwhile, Fleming says the flesh-eating disease pushed his body to unimaginable limits.
“I’ve got one strip of original flesh down over the top of my thigh, but the rest is all skin grafts all the way around and underneath,” he explained.
He could never predict when his next surgery would be or where the infection had spread.
“I don’t have a calf muscle or Achilles tendon. That’s all been removed.”
As word of Fleming’s condition spread, and people learned of his family’s efforts to bring him home, more hands began folding origami paper cranes in Hants County.
“From what Heather was telling me, it started off with just Luke and the kids, and then some of their classmates, and then the school.”
Heather says the side project was a source of hope for her family. Sifting through a bag of professionally-crafted cranes in her living room, she smiles, and reflects on how members of the community came together to help them exceed their target by 1,015 cranes.
“We found two bags of them outside the door when we came home one day with a note: ‘thinking of you - hope these help,’” she said, smiling.
A skilled origami folder, who had once visited Luke’s classroom to demonstrate how to make paper cranes, added his unique touch to the collection.
“He made four boxes of 50 beautiful cranes, really professional,” Heather recalled.
“High end,” her husband teased.
