SIMS: Rick DeJager’s still ‘golfing, working, breathing’ – and ever so grateful

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Rick DeJager doesn’t call himself lucky.

“I’ve been very fortunate. I have good care,” the 65-year-old lifelong Londoner said as we sat in the sunshine with his wife Colleen on his backyard deck.

DeJager and his landmark south London restaurant Tiger Jack’s has been a fixture of the city’s restaurant scene since it opened in 1989, and has become a destination for families, sports teams and regulars who want a good meal and a cozy, friendly atmosphere.

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With success, he has paid back. He has been a proud supporter of various London charities, with a soft spot for the Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre.

“The city knows me,” he said.

What happened to him in May 2023 reinforced his duty of philanthropy for the medical community and London Health Sciences Centre. They saved his life. Now, the love and gratitude for his hometown is even more personal.

In the first week of May 2023, he and his wife were supposed to be heading to Napa, Calif., together for a trip. But the restaurant was short a manager and DeJager had to stay home to fill in the gaps until they could hire someone.

So, his wife headed west with a friend, while DeJager helped his daughter Meaghan at Tiger Jack’s. On Thursday that week, “I started to feel unwell. I felt different,” he said.

He was no better Friday “and something was happening down there,” he said pointing to his groin area. On Saturday, “I didn’t know what it was and I knew there was something wrong and it happened really fast.”

By Sunday, he was “a bit incoherent.” He drove himself to the Victoria Hospital emergency department.

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Medical staff took one look and rushed him in for treatment. The diagnosis was Fournier’s gangrene, a rare and sometimes deadly necrotizing infection, bacterial in nature, that usually affects men, and moves fast without medical intervention. Without help, it can lead to amputation or worse.

There was no reason as to why DeJager got it.

Alp Sener, LHSC’s division head of urology, had only seen a case like DeJager’s once before. He was called in to do the emergency surgery to cut out the necrotizing tissue.

“An unbelievable man,” DeJager said of Sener.

Colleen said her husband called her in California at about 11:30 p.m., just before he was wheeled into the operating room. “I don’t know. They told me they’re going to save my life. I’m going into surgery. Bye,” is what he told her.

Four hours later, while she was scrambling to get a flight home, Sener called her to say: “I did what I could . . . I don’t know if he will make it through the night.”

DeJager remembers lying on the operating table as the doctor told him what he was about to do. Sener asked DeJager if there was anything else he wanted.

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“I said, ‘Yeah, how about some opera music and a pina colada?’ I was trying to be as light-hearted as he was.”

There was no fancy cocktail, but the medical team put on some opera.

To stop the infection from spreading, every invading cell has to be eliminated. DeJager remembers being wheeled into an MRI machine after the first surgery and wheeled back to the operating room to remove more tissue.

By the time he finished, Sener had removed a tissue equal to the size of a laptop.  DeJager’s wife came home to find her husband alive, but unconscious, on a ventilator in intensive care with his hands taped down so as not to rip off the equipment if he woke up.

He was in ICU for two days and in the hospital for two weeks. Sener and his team had put DeJager back together so well “the plastic surgeon said I don’t have to touch you. He saved everything.”

He had a state-of-the-art vacuum attached to his wound and he welcomed scores of medical students who did rounds to see it. The urology team was amazed at his recovery. The nurses were both extraordinary caregivers and advocates.

“The care I got was unbelievable. And the talent around there . . . they’re not going to let me slip through the cracks,” he said. As he has recovered, with a couple less serious trips to the hospital during the past year, Sener has kept an eye on DeJager.

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It was while he was sitting in Sener’s waiting room for a checkup that he spotted a poster on the wall for the Keith and Leanne Levergne chair in urology that goes toward ongoing research and enhancing care. The DeJagers have pledged $25,000 to the cause. And their gratitude for his care probably won’t stop there.

DeJager said theirs is just one donation in a community of generosity that funds the extras that make London’s medical facilities some of the best in the world.

“We need more of that,” he said. “People don’t realize it until something happens. It’s a game-changing thing in your life and why wouldn’t you give back if you can?”

DeJager’s brush with death has given him pause. What if he had gone to California as planned? What if there wasn’t a manager shortage at work? What if he hadn’t gone to the hospital when he did?

DeJager says he’s now “semi-retired” but he’s still at the restaurant almost daily, because it’s been his pride and joy for so long. He has leaned into his faith and “it gives me peace and it gives me strength and the will to survive and live.”

And he’s made a friend in Sener, “truly an amazing doctor,” who has become a golfing buddy.

“I’m golfing. I’m working. I’m breathing,” DeJager said.

jsims@postmedia.com

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