Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Derry Dunn isn’t sitting on his bench wearing a robe these days. He’s propped up in bed, wearing shorts, with a small medical device connected to hoses taped around the calf of his right leg. Every couple of minutes the machine starts up and makes a noise. It’s a wound vacuum doing its job to help heal the two large holes in Dunn’s leg. The bedside table is covered in prescription pill bottles of all sizes. But at least he’s home in Mauriceville. He spent 14 of the past 16 days in hospitals. Dunn is a survivor of what is called ‘flesh-eating’ bacteria. He contracted the bacteria while in the Gulf of Mexico during a family reunion at Crystal Beach. On Tuesday, he and his wife Jane were joking and laughing about the past few days. She pointed out, though, that she’s had a lot of tears, too. “It was so fast it was insane,” she said about the spread of the bacteria. He faced the possibility of having the leg amputated. Some people die. “It just got so severe so quick,” he said. “You’re going along in your life and all of a sudden you’re making a decision: Do I want to keep my leg?”
The extended Dunn family with about 40 people gathered the last weekend of July at Crystal Beach for the annual summer reunion on the shore. Dunn said he didn’t go in the water but watched the children. The waters had some currents that day and he noticed 8-year-old Luke, his grandson, was swimming out. Dunn decided to go get him. “He was exhausted,” Dunn said. The water was waist-high on the 6-foot-4 judge. He scooped up the boy in his arms and carried him to shore. The reunion activities continued through the weekend and he and Jane went home Monday.
On Friday, Dunn began to feel like he had the flu. He had a fever and ached. He didn’t have any redness on his leg. He was officiating at a Saturday wedding. As he was getting dressed, Jane noticed the redness on the leg. He said his socks must have been tight. After the wedding the red area had grown. He didn’t have a wound, yet. His son, Dr. Mark Dunn, is a physician with a general practice. Jane’s son, Dr. Philip Harmon, is also a physician, an ob-gyn. Jane took a photo of the red leg and sent it to the two doctors. Both quickly replied to get to a hospital immediately. The Dunns went straight to Baptist Hospital Orange. The judge said it’s a good thing he didn’t even travel to Beaumont. “They saved my leg, if not my life,” he says about the local hospital.
The doctors in Orange knew the symptoms immediately and hooked him up with strong antibiotics. By Sunday, the leg had gotten so infected with tissue dying that two wounds opened up. One looked like a seven-inch-wide open mouth. He needed surgery to go in and clean out the dead tissue. The doctors told Jane if the infection had spread too much, they might have to amputate and they would ask her because he would be unconscious. She consulted her husband about what his decision would be. She said his first reaction was “That’s my tractor leg.” He agreed. The amputation wasn’t needed. The next couple of days were another round of ups and downs. He seemed to be recovering then the leg got worst. On Wednesday, they were riding in an ambulance to the Trauma Center at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston to consult with specialists.
The judge is a fan of “Lonesome Dove,” the novel and later mini-series about two aging cowboys on a cattle drive. One of the heroes is Gus McCrae, who gets an infected leg after being shot with an arrow. He eventually dies because he doesn’t want a leg amputated. Dunn sometimes got called “Gus” during the hospital ordeal. He jokes that he wished he had an arrow so he could bite down on it. Many of the treatments were painful. Jane recalls one time that doctors punctured his skin with what looked like tiny fish hooks. Sixty of the hooks were put in and then thread was laced through the hook like shoestrings. Dunn had local anesthesia for that procedure.
Dunn said only about 30 people a year contract necrotizing fasciitis, the real name for the “flesh-eating bacteria.” He believes the bacteria got in his leg from a mosquito bite that left an opening in the skin for the bacteria to invade. Jane said it looked like 5,000 people were at the beach that day, but no one else contracted the disease.
The judge became news. When he went to the Houston hospital, the Houston Chronicle and KHOU TV did stories on him. The stories spread to other publications and TV stations. Dunn’s former college roommate, who he hasn’t seen since 1968, saw a news broadcast in Mississippi and called him at the hospital. In addition, the Trauma Center is a teaching hospital. The med students came to his room to look at his wounds.
The Dunns returned home last week from Houston. He said the community prayers and help have been invaluable. People have brought the family food. A man mowed 30 acres around Dunn’s house. “For a while, people had me on prayer lists for the Baptists, Catholics, Mormons and Presbyterians, probably every prayer list in the world,” he said. But he ended up back in the Orange hospital this past weekend. He passed out while sitting outside with friends. A 9-1-1 call was made. “I think they said something like ‘The judge is down,’” he said. An ambulance, a tow truck, two sheriff’s patrol cars, the constable and a small fire truck arrived. His blood pressure had gone too low because of some of the strong medications. One of the medicines can cause kidney failure.
Dunn said he’s been a workaholic all his life and he’s having a hard time just lying in bed. He has a walker for the few times when he needs to get up. Clerks from his court brought him papers to sign and he hopes he can go back in three or four weeks to work for a few hours a day. The wound vacuum is supposed to stay on another eight to 10 weeks. One wound is healing well, the other is still red, he said. Going back to work depends full time will depend on his healing. But at least he’s getting better. He praises Dr. Maria Palafox and Dr. Victoria Gordon in Orange for saving his leg and life.
And he won’t give up on the beach. “I’ve been going to the beach every summer all my life,” he said. “My mother went, my father went. I will go back to the beach. I’m just not going into the water.”
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