He survived flesh-eating disease. Now he's stranded in a St. John's hospital, waiting to return home

Jody Short was ankle-deep in snow in February, a shovel in his hands, when searing pain shot up his left leg.

"I was almost passing out with pain," recalled Short recently, speaking quietly from the recreation room of the Miller Centre in St. John's, where he's been stranded for three months.

Short ended up hospitalized, rushed to an operating room to fix an aortic dissection — a tear in his main artery, and the beginning of a nightmarish series of medical woes that would ultimately leave him unable to walk or return to his home.

He had about a 40 per cent chance of surviving that operation, he said, prompting his family, and even the surgeons, to say a prayer and their goodbyes before he went under the knife.

When he awoke from a coma a week later, Short faced yet another hurdle: unexpected paralysis. Suddenly, in his mid-40s, he found himself bedridden, unable to feed himself or brush his own teeth, in constant pain. 

Some weeks later, Short's mother discovered a bedsore on his left buttock, veins vivid and red, as though "something was spreading from this area," Short said.

He was rushed to surgery again the next day, this time for necrotizing fasciitis — more commonly known as flesh-eating disease.

"Very few people live from that type of disease," he said. "It was just like everything was going wrong. I still hadn't had a chance to really deal with being paralyzed."

Doctors started talking about amputating his leg and removing part of his pelvis to stop the bacteria from its lethal intrusion of his body. Short declined, thinking it was already too late.

"They go in and they debride whatever they can debride to save my life," Short said, referring to removing damaged tissue. Surgeons removed most of the muscle of his left thigh and buttock, tunneling up into his back before essentially giving up, he recalled.

The disease had spread too far, too fast.

Doctors gave Short 48 hours to live. "I started calling, going through my phone and calling all my friends … [to] express how much I appreciate the friendship. My life was about to end, right?"

The next morning, Short woke up feeling oddly better.

"I was reinvigorated with energy and ready to go," he said. "It was like a miracle."