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Extraordinary Care
Refusing to Give Up: Survival, Recovery, and Generosity at Harborview Medical Center

“There was no question in my mind that I was dying,” says Joel Spiegel.

One August evening in 2006, Spiegel went to bed with a mild rash on his thigh. Early the next morning, he was at the local emergency room in Kirkland. Doctors discovered that he had a case of necrotizing fasciitis — flesh-eating bacteria. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Spiegel was flown to Harborview Medical Center.

“One of the most critical things we do is to align reality and expectations,” says Matthew Klein, M.D., surgeon and associate director of the UW Burn Center. In patient Joel Spiegel’s case, reality and expectations are pretty closely aligned. After a near-death brush with flesh-eating bacteria, Spiegel, now recovered, has resumed many of his usual activities. Spiegel and Klein are shown here during a follow-up visit at Harborview.

Two weeks later, Spiegel says, he woke up with a huge, painful wound that reached from his thigh to his back — a wound that a nurse had just finished cleaning in a special scrub tank on Harborview’s eighth floor.

For Spiegel’s family and doctors, it had been a grueling two weeks.

“The surgeons wouldn’t give up,” remembers Karen Van Dusen, Spiegel’s wife. Spiegel had slipped into a coma, and his blood had turned toxic. His organs began to shut down. But over six surgeries, Associate Professor of Surgery Eileen Bulger, M.D., and her colleagues cut away the bacteria, along with damaged tissue from his leg, hip, and back. As a result, Spiegel’s life — and his leg — were saved.

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