Fire investigator’s amputation latest in line of challenges

Dreams of marrying his fiancée, having more kids and, one day, investigating another fire help keep Josh Macdonald ticking.

After enduring nine surgeries over more than a year fighting to heal his left knee from an excruciatingly painful injury and infection, Macdonald, 33, had his leg amputated above the knee Dec. 5.

That operation was the latest step in a saga that began March 25, 2016, when Macdonald, a Berthoud Fire Protection District fire investigator, hopped into the back of an ambulance and tried to save 75-year-old Cecil Ann Dunfee’s life. Despite Macdonald’s and others’ best efforts, Dunfee ultimately died after she was pulled from her burning mobile home in east Berthoud.

When Macdonald returned to the home later that day to start his investigation, he fell through the home’s floor when it gave out, injuring his knee.

It got worse. Months later, in November 2016, Macdonald noticed a skin irritation on and around his scars from the surgery to repair his ligaments, and doctors misdiagnosed it as an allergic reaction to a skin cream.

When he passed out on Thanksgiving Day, Macdonald realized his doctors had made a mistake. He was taken to a hospital and then rushed to UCHealth in Denver, where doctors determined that a staph infection in his leg contracted from contaminated metal used to repair his knee developed into a serious case of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

Despite emergency surgeries to fight the infection, loads of antibiotics, including some that made Macdonald sick, the MRSA in his left leg remained too dangerous.