Unvaccinated Texas man’s lower legs amputated after COVID battle. ‘Learn from me’

Pepe Forina was near death.

After he was rushed to the hospital with COVID-19 in late July, the Alamo, Texas man fought for his life for two weeks in an intensive-care unit.

“My brother was in the ICU room with me,” Forina, 54, told KRGV. “He bathed me in holy water from my head to all over my body and basically, they gave me the last rites.”

But Forina survived.

“Either way you look at it he shouldn’t be alive,” Federico Vallejo, a doctor at DHR Health in Edinburg, told KVEO. “The odds were against him. It’s actually quite amazing that he had recovered.”

Though he did recover, Forina’s life will never be the same. Forina developed sepsis in his legs while fighting the virus, leaving him with the choice of amputation or death, KRGV reported.

“It was either amputate my feet and live, or leave them on and die,” Forina told KRGV. “So it was a no-brainer.”

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that develops when the body’s response to infection damages tissues, according to the Mayo Clinic, and sepsis can worsen to septic shock, a drop in blood pressure that can cause serious organ problems and death.

Vallejo said amputations are not uncommon for coronavirus patients, like Forina, with peripheral vascular disease, hypertension and other high-risk factors, KVEO reported.

“Basically, I’m a toddler again,” Forina said, according to The Monitor. “I have to learn to do things that everybody takes for granted.”

Forina blamed “stupidity” for his decision not be vaccinated, despite the wishes of his wife and daughter, who received the shots, the newspaper reported.

Forina said he won’t push COVID-19 vaccines on others because it’s a personal choice, the newspaper reported.

“It’s a choice — a choice that I made poorly,” Forina told The Monitor. “Learn from me, and hopefully you won’t be in the same situation that I’m in.”

This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 5:10 PM.