Editor’s note: This was a letter submitted by a reader in response to an Oct. 25 article, “Need help, follow farmer’s advice.”

Excellent article.

My wife and I bought this fruit and dairy farm in 1962. We've been married since 1959 and have five children.

We switched to all dairy when the fruit markets dried up here in Niagara County in the early 1970s. We had over 60 acres of fruit, including sour and sweet cherries, grapes, and apples. The dairy treated us very good and our co-op's 13th check paid for the farm. We got out of dairy in the 1990s but continued raising heifers and steers.

Fast-forward to last year. I wasn't feeling up to snuff and ended up taking my first ambulance ride to the vascular emergency room in Buffalo where I ended up with a quintuple bypass surgery. But that was just the beginning,

I ended up contracting Clostridioides difficile, or C-diff, at the hospital. I'll try to shorten this up, but I ended up taking two more ambulance rides back to Buffalo General Medical Center before they diagnosed the C-diff, sending me home in a taxi 35 miles.

They wanted me out of there very quickly because I was contagious, and I isolated myself upstairs for 10 days until the antibiotics were used up.

But this is where it all began. No one addressed the side effects of the strong antibiotics, pain meds, the anesthesia and the trauma of the major operation. During all this, our children were trying to keep the farm going and taking care of my wife, who has had two strokes and three bouts with cancer over the past 18 years.

All our children are well-educated and are out on their own, but they were awesome. Today, we have mobile primary care here at home.

I've never been suicidal, but I've come close to snapping a few times. I told the mobile nurse all the side effects of what I've experienced and are not really addressed by our medical people. It affects every cell in our bodies, and they should have ways to alert the patient and their families. She knew right away what I was saying and asked if I needed someone to talk to.

I told her that I pray 24 hours a day, and she asked if that helps. I told her that it's the only thing that helps me.

All three things change — not only our “physical” body, but also the “mental” and “emotional” parts of our body. That's why when I read this article I could identify 100% with it.

Thank you for doing it. It encourages me that we are not the only ones.

William C. Wilson Sr., Appleton, N.Y.