David Gaydos thought he had already learned a lot about loss.
The retired Naperville Central High School teacher had been through much grief: the loss of his parents, multiple miscarriages with his wife, Frances, and her death in 2019 of ovarian cancer after 53 years of marriage.
But this spring, Gaydos lost the lower half of his left leg and left foot. And he said it taught him more than he realized. At 78, he is relearning kindness and gratitude.
Gaydos arrived at Northwestern Medicine’s Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton, Illinois, this spring after an infection led to the amputation. He’d had diabetes issues that led to infections and hospital stays and “another series of, ‘Can we save the foot?’” as he put it. “And it didn’t work.”
He knew amputation was a possibility. He had been given options, he said, but following surgeries where the infection came back, another possibly failed surgery wasn’t right for him.
He looked at losing the limb as saving his life. And now, he sees its absence as growth.
On May 22, he participated in a ceremony at Marianjoy called Ritual for Loss of the Limb. Created after the spiritual care team realized a need for acknowledging and processing the loss of a limb, it’s offered to patients as a way to grieve what was lost and enter into the new life awaiting them outside the rehabilitation center’s doors.
Most such patients have just begun rehabilitation therapy; they are adjusting to a new life without the full mobility they had recently lost. People arrive here after car accidents, after surgeries following illnesses, after many life experiences that suddenly left them with a starkly different future.
The ceremony takes place in the chapel, but it can be religious or not, depending on a patient’s preference. A lit candle, for example, can signify the presence of God or the presence of light within dark moments, said Dr. Arnold Hoskins, a reverend at Marianjoy.
Hoskins said the ceremony can help sooth anxiety and build confidence.
“The loss of a limb, in my view, is tantamount to the loss of a life because, after all, you have lost something,” he said. “And just as we have rituals for when people die, we have funerals, we have memorials, and it helps the mourner transition into a new life.”
Marianjoy has been doing the rituals for many years but had paused them during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The rituals were restarted in February and the center is averaging about three ceremonies per month.
At the May 22 ceremony, Gaydos said he had always taken a lot of pride in doing things for himself, not needing help.
This experience, he said, changed that.
Neighbors had brought him food. His son helped him make the decision about his amputation. He has been humbled and honored by the people in his life showing such kindness.
He found out about the ceremony when one of the Marianjoy chaplains came in to his hospital room to talk to him about what was going on his life, and how he ended up at the facility. He described becoming a widower. “I’ve been in a grieving process, but I’m adjusting to that,” he said. “I started to draw parallels to my whole body situation and separation. And I started talking to the chaplain about a movement that was taking place in me.”
He began to reflect on his Catholic upbringing, engaging in prayer and sharing stories with another amputee.
“I didn’t have grief for the loss of my foot,” he said. “(The amputation) brought me to an understanding of things being taken away … and what people do for you and what you’re capable of.”
At a February ceremony, patients were encouraged to give thanks for how their limbs carried them through life thus far, while thinking also about new life and new goals. Each person received a piece of a prickly aloe plant, while Marianjoy chaplain Catherine Lindsay told them, “Just as this aloe plant, though wounded, still provides a healing balm, may God grant you healing as a resource for yourself and others to show kindness and to do good.”
During his ceremony, Gaydos spoke about how he had been resistant to kindness because of his pride, and what he describes as a “false sense of masculinity,” or an idea that being a man is standing on your own two feet.
“Sometimes you just have to understand you can’t stand; some people can stand on two feet and can’t stand emotionally because of what takes place in their lives,” he said. “I have spent my whole life resistant to it in an odd sense of stubbornness.”
Losing a limb is a different type of challenge from other patients who arrive at Marianjoy after a stroke or recovering from COVID-19, said Dr. Noelia Donamaria, who leads the amputee program at Marianjoy.
“I think the more we’re able to normalize the experience ... yes, this is something that happened, something that’s unfortunate, but it’s something you can get through,” she said. “Patients who are able to accept it and grieve it and overcome it tend to do a lot better. … It’s just a bump in the road; it doesn’t need to define your whole life moving forward.”
After arriving at Marianjoy in April and finishing a month of rehab, Gaydos was ready to go home in May following dialysis and a wheelchair fitting — to start his new life, less able to stand, but more willing to open his arms.
