Three years ago, U.S. Army veteran Frank Coursey, 50, of Bowling Green, was a successful contractor and a devoted family man dedicated to his wife, five children and 16 grandchildren.

Now, nearly three years after undergoing gastric sleeve surgery, he is unable to process solid food and has a host of other debilitating health problems that have left him unable to work. When his children and grandchildren visit now, they spend most of their time taking care of him and his wife neglected some of her own health needs to focus on his.

Coursey’s family is “the biggest part of his life,” said his good friend, Sam Reynolds of Bowling Green, who has helped Coursey and has seen firsthand the toll Coursey’s medical problems have taken on his family. 

“To see him not be able to participate in their lives for three years is sickening,” Reynolds said.

In 2011, Coursey, a Western Kentucky University graduate who served in the Army from 1982-86, was referred by doctors at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Nashville to the VA Medical Center in Huntington, W.Va., for gastric sleeve surgery to get his blood pressure under control, he said. At the time, he was taking 21 medications for high blood pressure and at risk for type 2 diabetes. He weighed 287 pounds, which was obese, but not morbidly so.

Since the surgery Sept. 1, 2011, at the VA Medical Center in Huntington, Coursey said his body has rejected solid food, leading to severe malnutrition, which has introduced a multitude of other problems, including causing many of his teeth to crack and fall out. He also developed stenosis and has undergone neck surgery this year to put pins and steel plates in his spine to strengthen his vertebrae.

Coursey said he’s made 16 trips to the emergency room because of weak spells that left him near comatose. 

Reynolds said that once while driving Coursey to the hospital during one of his weak spells, “a couple of times, I frankly thought he had died. When you see these crashes, it’s like a near-death experience.”

Coursey, who admits he developed a dependency on painkillers in the aftermath of the surgery, now weighs 122 pounds and is unable to work – he could unexpectedly become too weak to stand at any moment. 

“Now, I can’t plan on nothing because when I wake up in the morning, I don’t know if it’s going to be an up day or a down day,” he said.

Coursey has tried ever since the surgery to get answers from the VA system about why the procedure caused so many problems for him, but he said VA staff haven’t taken him seriously and insist nothing went wrong with the surgery.

“He’s got all the evidence in the world that something went wrong,” Reynolds said.

Coursey has brought his case to elected officials in hopes of finding an advocate at the federal level. He said U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., looked into his case recently, but the VA “found no errors or inappropriate care” in Coursey’s case during an internal investigation conducted after McConnell’s inquiry, according to a letter Coursey showed the Daily News that was sent to McConnell from the director of the VA Medical Center in Huntington. 

“Senator McConnell was contacted in mid-June about the case and reached out to the Huntington, WV VA Medical Center on June 19 on Mr. Coursey’s behalf,” McConnell spokesman Robert Steurer said in an email to the Daily News. “We have followed up with Mr. Coursey regarding the response we received from the VA and we continue to work with him regarding the case.” 

Because of a consultation with a doctor outside the VA system, Coursey is convinced the surgeon who performed his gastric sleeve surgery made a mistake during the procedure, which has led to his subsequent health problems. Coursey said he consulted a bariatric surgeon at TriStar Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, who told him that staples were put too close to his stomach’s curvature during the surgery, creating scar tissue and causing his body to not digest food properly.  

Coursey showed the Daily News an email from the office of the doctor he saw at Centennial stating the experienced surgeon Coursey was told had performed his surgery did not actually perform the procedure, but was instead replaced at the last minute by another surgeon whose name Coursey had never heard. 

“To this date, we don’t know who did the surgery,” Reynolds said.

Coursey said the doctor at Centennial recommended a procedure that would enlarge his stomach and allow food to be digested, but in preparing for the procedure, it was discovered Coursey had developed a hernia and could not undergo the surgery.

Because of the hernia, the doctor at Centennial is now recommending a complete gastric bypass surgery, which Coursey hopes to have next month, but he’s worried about the procedure after the problems the gastric sleeve caused him.

“My biggest fear is if the VA gets me on the table again, how easy is it going to be to make an oops?” Coursey said.

Still, he wants to try the gastric bypass surgery, because it seems like his only hope to stop his body from deteriorating further.

“I don’t even have a choice on that matter now,” Coursey said. 

He’s continuing to appeal to the VA, asking it to admit there was a mistake during surgery and to take financial responsibility for the care he needs to fix health problems caused by the surgery.

“For what he’s suffered, he’s owed something,” Reynolds said.

— Follow faith/general assignments reporter Laurel Wilson on Twitter at twitter.com/FaithinBG or visit bgdailynews.com.