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"KEITH LILLY, NEEDS YOUR HELP."
THE FORMER HARLEM, DISTRICT LEADER, 68TH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT, LOST HIS LEG, HIS JOB AND HIS MEDICAL INSURANCE DUE TO DIABETES
Excerpted from BY NAYABA ARINDEOTP Editor-at-Large Our Times Press, Curated by Roz Shepard. To Support Keith Lilly Click Here
Keith Lilly, the popular former Harlem District Leader, 68th Assembly District, told Our Time Press that last July his lower left leg was amputated after 10 years of living with diabetes.
It all started, he said, with a small hole in his foot, which he did not feel because of his neuropathy. “I didn’t know where the hole came from, but I didn’t think anything of it. I cleaned it out, put a band-aid on, and a few days passed, and the hole started to get larger.”
A week later, he went to the hospital as the wound was not healing, “and my toes were swollen. So I went, they gave me antibiotics, and sent me home. But the hole got larger. But I had no symptoms of a fever, so I didn’t know I had an infection.
There was no numbness, no pain, just swelling and the hole getting larger.”
But then Mr. Lilly said he began losing balance. “I was finding it difficult to walk. I went back and that’s when they kept me and told me that I had an infection. I was in Mount Sinai. They cut a couple of toes off, to [stop] the infection from creeping up. Their claim was, ‘We think we are going to have to cut further because we don’t want the infection to get further up the leg.”
Then Mr. Lilly said medics returned and said that they would have to take his left foot.
