Let's Help Marty Fleming - A Good Samaritan injured helping others

In April this year Marty went to help the occupants of a car accident outside his house.

While walking around the back of one of the vehicles, his leg was empailed by a shard of metal sticking out from where the bumper had been ripped off. Marty fell forward and as a result severed all three main arteries in his right leg just below the knee. Having severed the arteries he lost a huge amount of blood at the scene. Luckily there was an ambulance attending the accident and he was rushed to hospital. He is lucky not to have lost his life, let alone his leg. Also as luck would have it, one of NZ's top Vascular surgeons was in Nelson that weekend.

Over the next few days, the sole aim as to save Marty's leg and thankfully he did not lose it. He spent the next 7 weeks in hospital undergoing bolld transfusions and numerous operations on the arteries and tendons. To add insult to injury, after a few weeks in Nelson Hospital he was airvaced to Wellington Hospital to undergo the last skin graft. This was meant to be a 3-4 day excercise. He was held there for 2 weeks as everytime he was booked to go to theater, more urgent cases were put ahead of him. These included a drunk who fell into a fire, a prisioners who had been beaten up (that he had to share his room with) amoung other self inflicted cases.

During the various operations, a tendon was nicked by the surgeon that most likely will lead to permanent damage. The resulting is him having a drop foot, being unable to lift it now. He now has to permanently wear a carbon fibre foot brace which lifts his foot for him after he steps. To add an other saga to his plight, after waiting weeks to have these braces made, they made 2 left feet!! So there was another week or two to wait for the right leg brace to start to be able to the process of walking again.

Marty is a great guy and always helping others. He has now been off work and recovering for 5 months, he still can't walk without the use of a crutch but feels he is making good progress and hopes to be able to lose the crutch as he builds strength in his leg. His job as a factory manager, requires him to walk all day. Therefore getting back to work will be quite a long way off.

He gets ACC of 80% of his wage and his partner Michelle is working a number of jobs just to keep their heads above water. They have had to put their mortgage on hold and are now paying interest only as they can't afford the full repayments and it's still a real struggle. This runs out in October, so the full mortgage repayments have to start again. His car is a manual, which means he will never be able to drive it and at this stage it isn't know whether he will be able to even drive an automatic. He will most likely have to buy an automatic and convert the pedals or convert to hand controls. He can ill afford this.

It's tough and he was simply helping someone out. Please help this good samaratin he so derserves it. By helping others he is in this situation, I hope now that others can help him.

Thank you!

Below is the link to an article that the Nelson Times wrote while Marty was in hospital:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/68211490/Residents-fear-fatal-crash-at-notorious-Nelson-intersection