James George works the kitchen at Zak's Café. George recently suffered a particularly acute episode of diverticulitis, leaving him and wife Katherine Byrd with an estimated $100,000 in medical bills. George had surgery in Juneau in late September, and will undergo an additional surgery in coming weeks.
When Zak's Café owner James George started to get sick, he knew the cause.
Since doctors diagnosed him with diverticulitis in 2005, he'd gone a few rounds with the chronic digestive condition.
"After you've had it for a while, you can tell if it's flaring up," he said.
The uninsured restaurateur went to the emergency room at Wrangell Medical Center in the last week of August. Doctors then sent him to Ketchikan Medical Center to stabilize him and perform surgery. Instead of surgery, doctors in Ketchikan decided to treat him with a standard course of antibiotics and a liquid diet, and sent him home. However, the symptoms returned within a week, so he returned to the Wrangell emergency room.
"They were amazed in the condition that I was in that I was released from the hospital in Ketchikan," he said. "It was so severe the surgeon from Juneau that was here visiting got on the medevac plane to fly back to Juneau with me so they could do surgery immediately."
The next few days are hard for George to remember. He has to rely on Katherine Byrd to recall some of the details.
"It's all a blur to me," he said. He was "medicated a lot."
Doctors eventually removed a mass the size of a person's fist from his intestine. The mass looked at first like even worse news, George said.
"When they removed it, they did a biopsy on it, and it came back negative," he said. The surgeon "was so sure that it was cancerous that they left me on the operating table and had them re-test that again to make sure that there was no cancer."
The mass – which was also negative on the second biopsy – is gone, but it has left a shadow behind. George returned home in early October to an estimated $100,000 in medical bills compounded by a temporary lapse in the insurance certification for Apollo MT – the company couldn't insure new customers from May to October - and a temporarily diminished capacity for restaurant work.
"I lost 30 pounds in a matter of two weeks," he said. "I can't lift anything over 10 pounds. I get tired very easy."
"If I drop something on the floor, she (Byrd) has to pick it up," he said.
That inability to do the work he loves is the most difficult part of the entire ordeal, George said.
"Not being able to open some days," he said. "Like, during the recovery, or some days I just really don't have enough energy to do it. The restaurant is our sole source of income, and the bills are still there to be paid whether we're open or not."
He's also found a community willing to demonstrate its charitable side.
"I think people in Wrangell are understanding," he said. "Different places I've lived, you always hear people like 'Oh, if there's anything I can do, then let me know.' You know they don't mean it, they're just being polite and making conversation. It is so different in Wrangell."
"People here come to you ... they say 'If you're busy, if you're tired, then don't hesitate to call me,' and it's a different feeling because you know they really mean it," George added.
Valery McCandless is among the people who have decided to help, along with a group of four students from Stikine Middle School. Caity Galla, Kayla Hay, Laura Helgeson and Kiara Meissner were busy making signs Monday for a silent auction to be held this week at First Bank, with the aim of helping defray some of the medical bills. Students will be checking on the auction results until Nov. 8, when bidding will close.
McCandless said she was moved to try and help in part because George and Byrd have often used their restaurant as a vehicle for charitable causes in the past.
"James and Katherine have for years, they've been raising money for lots of different organizations," she said. "They've done so much for so many people in this community."
Eighth grader Hay said it was good to help people.
"It sounded like a fun thing to do, and we had time to do it," she said.
Donations can also be made at First Bank.
Readers interested in obtaining or renewing medevac insurance can check a list of available policy providers at the Wrangell Medical Center.
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