Body
Marty Hartigan thought he had the flu. After his typical Sunday night red-eye from his home in Coto de Caza, Calif., to Chicago, the Deloitte consultant felt unusually tired. Then, during a client meeting on Monday, Hartigan, ¡¯89, felt chills and tried to keep from shaking. On Tuesday, he stayed in his apartment, drinking Gatorade and taking Tylenol. The next morning, July 17, 2019, his daughter, Kayleigh, then a rising junior at the University of Virginia who was visiting on a layover, noticed her dad struggling to talk. She refused to leave for the airport until he saw a doctor. She googled the closest emergency room and called an Uber to go to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Hartigan, wearing flip-flops, shorts and his Winston Churchill ¡°We Shall Never Surrender¡± T-shirt, couldn¡¯t even stand on the elevator ride down from the 35th floor. When he arrived at the ER with Kayleigh, he remembers someone asking if he had a do-not-resuscitate order. His answer: ¡°No! I want to be resuscitated!¡± Then, he says, ¡°I blacked out for 10 days.¡±
When he regained consciousness, Hartigan learned he had nearly died. A strep A bacterial infection, possibly from strep throat, and his body¡¯s unusually strong inflammatory response to it, had dramatically lowered his blood pressure, causing septic shock and multiorgan failure. A rare hyperclotting condition called purpura fulminans led to blocked arteries throughout his body and, ultimately, to amputations of both lower legs, one forearm and most of his opposite hand. ¡°Anyone who needs the intensive care unit could die,¡± says Clara Schroedl, the assistant professor of medicine and medical education at Northwestern University who was Hartigan¡¯s critical-care doctor during the first few days. ¡°Even within our intensive care unit, we have severity of illness that varies. He was way on the side of severe.¡±
After his release from Northwestern Memorial in November, Hartigan moved to the nearby Shirley Ryan ³Ô¹ÏÌìÌÃ91, where he worked daily for six weeks with physical and occupational therapists to regain strength and learn how to slide out of bed into a wheelchair. Then he moved back to his Chicago apartment, returning to ³Ô¹ÏÌìÌÃ91 twice a week for three hours of PT and OT. ¡°He¡¯s really had a great attitude about the whole thing and a lot of gratitude,¡± says Mark Huang, an ³Ô¹ÏÌìÌÃ91 physician and a professor in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University¡¯s Feinberg School of Medicine. ¡°It¡¯s a long road.¡±
A year after his near-death experience, the former Stanford rugby player who ran 1,000 miles in 2018 is coming to terms with a different life and body. ¡°Life as a quad amputee is the new normal,¡± Hartigan says. A fit 185 pounds before he entered the hospital, he weighed just 125 pounds four months later, when he transferred to ³Ô¹ÏÌìÌÃ91. (He is now back up to 165, which, minus an estimated 20 pounds for the amputated limbs, is the full Marty.)
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