The smell of rotting flesh fills the Toronto shelter room where Pat Gallagher lives in the city’s north end.
He unwraps bandages that cover his left foot. His toes look like lumps of black coal. The diagnosis: severe frostbite.
“I pretend that it doesn’t bother me, but when you look at your foot and you realize: ‘I’ve seen that at the Royal Ontario Museum, that was on a dead mummy,'” he says.
“It starts to crawl up into your stomach and you get a little panic in and you feel a little sick.”
Gallagher was set to have his toes and part of his foot amputated this week. The surgery was to be preceded by consultations with nurses,
