Man Recovers From The "Black Plague"

We checked… this story was not originally written in 1350.

This was now, and a man, Paul Gaylord is currently in the hospital recovering from a rare case of the plague.

He's currently recovering but his hands are black now.

His fingers are dead.

Doctors aren't sure what of his fingers they can save.

The worst part? He's a professional welder.

He said:

"I don’t think I can do my job. I’m going to lose all my fingers on both hands. I don’t know about my thumbs. The toes — I might lose all them, too."

He got the rare disease when he tried to take a mouse from the jaws of a choking cat at his home in Oregon. The cat bit him while he tried to get the mouse out and so he had to shoot it to end its suffering.

A few days later he became very ill.

After waiting weeks to be seen at a local clinic because he has no insurance he was diagnosed with cat scratch fever (which we didn't know was a real thing.)

It wasn't until he was almost on his death bed that he was taken to a proper hospital and diagnosed with plague.

He spent a month on life support and almost died.

He's finally much better but he still has a long road of recovery ahead of him.

We can only hope that he realizes how lucky he is to be alive.

[Image via Gaylord Family.]

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