State News
Email
Print
TRUST: No other doctor will do
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: June 21, 2009
FAYETTEVILLE
Charles Ball couldn't tell you how to get to downtown Fayetteville.
But Ball, 52, of Tazewell, Tenn., can tell you one thing about Fayetteville -- exactly where to find the office of Dr. F. Andrew Morfesis.
Ball has been going to the general surgeon for years, even though he lives nearly 400 miles away in the ridges and valleys of the Appalachian Mountains.
"I don't let nobody work on me but him," said Ball, who was in town on a recent Monday on a follow-up visit for a recent gall-bladder surgery the doctor performed.
Morfesis was Ball's doctor in Kentucky in 1989. Ball was a foreman in a coal mine and was always getting banged up, whether from falling rocks, beams or explosions.
The doctor was one of only two general surgeons at the hospital in Harlan County, and Ball began to trust and respect his treatment and advice.
"He always done me right," Ball said.
When Morfesis moved to North Carolina in the late 1990s, Ball planned to let local doctors take care of him.
It worked fine for a while, he said. Then, he got sick.
Ball started a trucking company and moved to Tennessee. One day in 2004, while mowing the lawn, his leg began to hurt. A large knot had formed at the back of his right knee, and the pain was severe.
A doctor at an emergency room in a nearby town told him it was a Baker's cyst caused by fluid from the knee joint.
"You'll just have to live with it," the doctor told him.
But Ball wasn't so sure. Soon after, he went to another doctor.
The results of an MRI were terrifying.
The "cyst" was actually a blood clot -- an aneurysm that could have burst and killed him. There was one in his left leg, too, the doctors said.
The surgeries were long and left Ball battling intense pain and gangrenous infections that began eating away at his legs. The doctors said that the only real solution was to amputate both legs at the knee.
The news didn't sit well with Ball -- an active man who prides himself on his strength and self-sufficiency.
"I told them, ‘I came in here 6-foot-4, and I'm not going out 4-foot-6," he said.
He also sensed something wasn't right.
"I felt as if they were almost trying to force me into it," Ball said.
Ball decided to take action. His first thought was of the doctor who took care of him in his coal-mining days.
"I thought, ‘I've got to find Dr. Morfesis,'" he said. "I knew he'd do what's best for me, not what's quickest and easiest for him."
Morfesis said he was surprised to find that Ball wanted to hire him again -- long distance.
The next day, Ball was on the road to Fayetteville. When he got here, the only question he had was: "Can you save my leg?" Morfesis said he thought that he could.
Surgery was performed the next day at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center.
Within three hours after waking up from surgery, Ball said he saw a noticeable change in his leg. It looked better. It felt better. The pain that had once felt like fire was gone.
Better still, Ball felt like he had someone he could trust.
"I feel like he saved my leg, and even my life," Ball said.
Email
Print
