Doctors said that she only had a couple of weeks to live, so this pilot flew her to her adoptive family 400 miles away so that her final days would be filled with love.
Ashlyn was an elderly dog in a North Carolina shelter, and she wasn’t doing well. She’d lost a lot of weight and had sarcomas, which were malignant tumors beneath her skin. But it wasn’t too late for her to strike gold.
When the New England Humane Society (NEHS) identified a suitable home for Ashlyn to spend the last few weeks of her life, all she needed was a means to get there. So the founder of Flying Fur Animal Rescue (FFAR), Paul Steklenski, decided to fly her up on his plane.
Steklenski became sad as he piloted the plane with Ashlyn in the seat next him, thinking about how this may be her final flight anywhere.
Even though Steklenski is used to transporting needy puppies to rescues so they may find loving homes — he normally transports between 15 to 30 dogs each month — the elderly dogs particularly tug at his heartstrings. “Those are the ones where you really focus on what they’re going through,” Steklenski explained to The Dodo.
Ashlyn was nervous at the bit of the two-hour travel. “She seemed a touch distant at first,” Steklenski remarked. “Then she’d kind of open up a bit and get closer.”
He surely made her feel better by feeding her dog treats. “She then gave me one paw, then the other,” he explained.
“She then rested her head on my lap,” Steklenski explained. “That means a lot to me. That is all that is important. That is the prize in and of itself.”
Steklenski decided to take up flying as a hobby in 2013, at the same time he adopted a dog. These items were unconnected at the time, but they were irrevocably intertwined soon after.
“We went to pet stores, then to shelters, and began to discover the difference,” Steklenski told The Dodo last year. When he discovered how many needy animals are in shelters, he decided to put his new hobby to good use.
Ashlyn would not be where she is now if it weren’t for him. While everyone assumed they were transporting her to the hospital, her recovery has led rescuers to believe she may have more time than they imagined.
“Her condition crushed me when I brought her up from the airport,” Tracy Lander, who has three dogs of her own and has been fostering dogs for the NEHS for two years, told The Dodo. “She had lost 39 pounds and her optimum weight is between 65 and 70 pounds. She came to me wearing a sweater, and when I removed it, I could see every rib.”
Lander began feeding Ashlyn three times a day to help her gain weight. She also gave her vitamins to assist her deal with her numerous health issues, which ranged from skin problems (induced by chemical burns) to cancers.
Ashlyn gradually began to change. “She’s getting out more,” Lander observed. “She’s a fantastic eater… and she adores me.”
Ashlyn has even begun to cuddling with Angel, another of Lander’s dogs. Xander, Lander’s boxer mix, has also expressed an interest in connecting with Ashlyn. “He’ll simply walk up to Ashlyn and start licking her,” Lander said. “He believes that he can heal everyone with his mouth.”
Ashlyn moved in with the Landers in January, and no one knew how long she’d be there. Now that it’s April, they don’t think of her as the fospice dog, but rather as someone who reminds them to live in the now and cherish every day — which is always a wonderful lesson.
“She understands she is adored,” Lander added. “No matter what happens, she knows she is loved.”
No one expected Ashlyn to make such significant leaps the day she boarded Steklenski’s plane. She went from being a tired shelter dog to becoming a member of a loving family, which is precisely why Steklenski does what he does.
“I never envisioned discovering something so wonderful, so rewarding that it would eclipse practically everything else in my life,” Steklenski remarked.
Dad was left unrecognizable after losing his lips and four limbs to flesh-eating bacteria – This is what he looks like today
The life story of Alex Lewis is like no other. This man refused to give up on his life no matter what it took, and today, he’s thriving with the help of his loving wife Lucy Townsend, and their son.
Alex and Lucy always knew they were meant for each other. When they married and welcomed their son Sam into their life, they felt like the happiest couple on Earth. But then in 2013, around the time Sam turned two, this family’s life took a different turn.
Both Alex and Sam caught the flu, or at least they believed so. However, as the boy got better in a short period of time, Alex wasn’t feeling fine even days after he experienced the flu-like symptoms.
“Because we owned and lived in a pub and came into contact with lots of different people, I assumed it was a seasonal cold and thought it started off as man flu,” Alex told Metro.
Instead of improving, his condition worsened and he became feverish and noticed blood in his urine.
As he could feel something was very wrong, he went to the hospital where doctors told him he contracted a streptococcal infection (type A). Unfortunately, at that point, the infection penetrated deep into the tissue and the organs and caused sepsis. Alex had contracted shock syndrome, septicemia, and necrotizing fascitis – and his body was attacking itself from the inside out.
“I called an ambulance, and within eight minutes, they were there. At the hospital, we went straight into resuscitation, and I was told to say goodbye. His kidneys were shutting down, and they were going to put him on life support,” his wife Lucy told The Guardian.
Doctors’ prognoses were dull. They told the family there was just a three percent chance that Alex would survive as his face and body turned black.
“They were going to turn my life support off, but they wanted to give me one more night to see if I improved, and they wanted to give my family a chance to say goodbye,” Alex told Metro.
“I cannot imagine what Lucy and my mum were going through.
“Having spoken to them since it happened, I think they were more in shock as they couldn’t believe something so incredibly invasive was happening so quickly,” he added.
“I don’t remember being in excruciating pain at this point, but my family remembers seeing me in absolute agony.”
It was determined that a flesh-eating bacteria was poisoning his body so doctors had to amputate his left arm up to the elbow. Sadly, as months passed by, Alex lost all of his limbs, and doctors were also forced to cut parts of his face in order to save his life.
“I can remember seeing my legs in hospital and how they were getting blacker and blacker,” Alex told The Guardian. “The blackness was creeping up towards my waist. I don’t remember seeing my left arm in that condition, but I can remember my legs vividly.”
As Alex lost his lips, plastic surgeon Alexandra Crick took skin from his shoulder in an attempt to fix his mouth.
“It would take me about an hour to eat a sandwich at night, and that was with the help of the nurse,” he told the Daily Mail.
“The last available skin for surgery was on my shoulder,” he explained. “So they replaced the temporary flap with that. All my other skin had to be used for grafts or was scarred.”
“Having my bottom and top lip done at the same time like this was a world first. It’s one piece of skin, and it was like if you imagine placing a bag in your mouth and then sewing around the edges. After the original operation, I had to have them every three or four months.”
Looking at his father, and how different he was, Sam was afraid to approach closer to him, but Lucy found a way to explain to him why his dad looked like that, which wasn’t easy as Sam was just two years old at the time.
After spending months at the hospital Alex could finally go home. The good thing was that doctors managed to save the elbow of his right arm which allowed him to have a prosthetic and be able to use his arm. Eventually, he could speak again as his lip surgery was a huge success.
“That one elbow is his whole independence,” Lucy said.
“I had to relearn everything,” Alex added. “From learning to eat, drink, put my clothes on, to learn to use a prosthesis, and to self propel a manual wheelchair.”
Today, Alex is involved in a number of tech projects which help ease the lives of disabled people. Among the rest, he has tested solar-powered, battery-assisted four-wheeled handles which have been designed by masters students at Southampton University.
Despite his condition, he’s living a quality life and is doing a lot of things, such as kayaking and climbing. In 2019, he climbed one of Africa’s tallest mountains using a specially adapted buggy.
“Since becoming an amputee, I’ve been fortunate enough to try out a number of training methods to keep my fitness up, working with physios and visiting the Help for Heroes training facilities,” he shared with Sports Management.
“I’ve had first-rate guidance, but nothing has been as effective as EMS training, especially in such a short space of time.
“It’s amazing how the machine helps me to engage muscles I haven’t felt since I lost my arms and legs,” he added.
“I feel stronger in training, daily life tasks are easier, and I’ve gained greater confidence that I can take on these challenges.”
His Wild Wheelchairs Project, besides helping improve the lives of disabled people, raises money to finance the construction and operation of a wheelchair manufacturing facility in Ethiopia.
Alex is also a motivational speaker who is happy with his life.
“I’ve lived more of a life in the past four years than I did in the previous 33, and it’s made me realize how much I love Lucy and Sam,” he told Metro.
“There was so much I regretted not doing when I had arms and legs, but I am not letting that happen again. I would not change anything, not in a heartbeat.”
Sam also learned to love his dad for who he is and is proud of him.
We truly admire this brave man’s resilience. His story is proof that no matter the curveballs life throws at us, we should always do our best to end up winners.
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