A family trip took a terrifying turn for Christopher Won when he was diagnosed with a flesh-eating disease while in Hong Kong and now, after weeks of treatment abroad, the Vancouver firefighter is back home recovering.
Won told CTV Morning Live on Friday that it’s a relief to be back in the Lower Mainland, surrounded by friends and family.
“I feel physically much better than when I was in the hospital, but there is still a lot of work to do in terms of recovery,” he said.
Won began feeling symptoms on the way to the Singapore airport while his family flew back to Hong Kong. Won said her foot hurt a little when she put weight on it that morning.
“I didn’t think much of it. We had walked a lot during our vacation,” he said, adding that the pain was getting worse to the point that he couldn’t put any weight on his foot. “At that moment I realized there was something much more serious than I could handle on my own.”
Won was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, a rare bacterial infection commonly known as flesh-eating disease, which required his leg to be amputated above the knee on February 15.
Won’s partner, Marie Hui, said she had never heard of the disease before.
“I had to look it up. So, of course, after looking it up, it was a pretty serious and critical illness and we didn’t know if we were going to lose his leg or his life,” he told CTV. Tomorrow live. “So it was really scary not only for us, but of course we have two little kids and our whole family and our community back home were really scared.”
Won said his local community, including the fire department, has really come together to support his family.
“We always come together under conditions of adversity, we face adversity together,” Won said of his colleagues. “When I was in the hospital there was a constant wave of text messages and emails and people leaving messages.”
Won said that while he was in Hong Kong, a local firefighter who grew up in Vancouver took time during his days off to visit the couple in the hospital.
Looking ahead, Won’s recovery will continue with rehabilitation and, eventually, a prosthesis.
“We will try very hard to rehabilitate him with the prosthesis and get him back to doing everything he loves to do: motorcycling, cycling, snowboarding, resuming jiu-jitsu, you know, all the things we used to do and even just running. the park with our children, we can’t wait for that to happen,” Hui said.
But Won emphasized that his recovery involves much more than physical rehabilitation.
“I don’t think I’ve mentally or emotionally processed this whole experience, even though it’s been over two months since the surgery. All my doctors, everyone I’ve talked to in terms of mental health support says ‘It’s very , very early in the process and there is a lot to do there,” he said.
“My intention is to hopefully get to the point where I can go back to work full time and…just be active and healthy with our family and do the things we’ve always done before.”
With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Keri Adams