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.
Lorenzo Lamas from ‘Falcon Crest’: Age, height, family, children, net worth
You could say Lorenzo Lamas was always destined to become an actor. His parents worked in the industry, and it didn’t take long before he entered it himself.
Lamas has starred in classics such as the television series Falcon Crest and the legendary film Grease. Still to this day, the California native is working as an actor – and at 65, he looks terrific!
However, Lamas’s life has had its ups and downs, and he’s gone through some rather tough times. Here’s all you need to know about Lorenzo and the many struggles he’s overcome.
One was getting over the fact that his son had an affair with his ex-wife.
Even as a young kid, Lorenzo Lamas’s stars had aligned where acting was concerned.
Born Lorenzo Fernando Lamas on January 20, 1958, in Santa Monica, California, he was raised by his mother Arlene Dahl, an American actress of Norwegian descent, and his father Fernando Lamas, an Argentinian who worked as an actor and director.
Lorenzo Lamas – early life
Lorenzo grew up in the fashionable area of Pacific Palisades, California. At age two, his parents divorced, and eight years later, he moved to New York with his father.
Lorenzo has often drawn upon the fact that his family comes from different parts of the world. He once starred as Dracula in a Halloween production of the famous Bram Stoker novel and had no problem at all adopting a different accent.
“I grew up with a man who had a voice like Dracula and every other bigger-than-life character you could ever think of in my father,” he told the New York Times in 2007. “I take a little bit from him to do the accent. I’ve also done four movies in Bulgaria.”
While Lorenzo was transitioning from a kid into a young man, his father had a pretty wild lifestyle. According to Lorenzo, his father had “been with every woman.” Yet as a child, he adored him.
“I idolized my father, especially as a young boy. He was bigger than life. He commanded the room. He’d done everything, seen everything,” he told Fox. “It’s pretty heady stuff to grow up with.”
“He was Latin, he was very judgmental, he thought a woman’s place was in the kitchen. He just happened to marry a woman who was a top ten box office star of the ’50s, and she retired to serve him!”
First work in acting
Lorenzo’s father married actress Esther Williams in 1969, a year after their move to “The Big Apple,” and life for Lorenzo got tough at times. For example, when Esther’s children visited, Lorenzo wasn’t even allowed to sleep in the house!
“He was many things, but he was also fair, so if he wasn’t going to allow another man’s children in his house, then he couldn’t allow me in the house,” he recalled.
“So my roommate was a Rolls Royce. I had a key that let me in the backdoor where there was a guest bathroom. But I came from military school, so living in a garage in Beverly Hills was plush to me. I had shared a urinal with 30 guys for the last four years. Looking back, I know that’s not normal. I know that I would never do that to my kids. I run my three teenage daughters around like a chauffeur.”
Lorenzo Lamas attended private school and graduated from the Admiral Farragut Academy in 1975. Instead of staying on the East Coast, he decided to leave for his home state of California.
Though his father could be a strict man, he always encouraged his son to follow his dreams and backed him wholeheartedly in pursuing his dreams of becoming an actor. Lorenzo enrolled at Tony Barr’s Film Actors Workshop. In 1977, he got his first minor role in television, starring in two episodes of the show Switch.
While cultivating his acting talent, Lorenzo also found that he had a tremendous interest in martial arts. He got in shape – and later on, earned black belts in both taekwondo and karate.
Lorenzo Lamas in ‘Grease’
Now, getting roles in bigger productions often takes time for most actors. Some have to try out at hundreds of auditions to get one part; others have to wait years, maybe even decades, to land their first role in a more significant Hollywood production.
For Lorenzo Lamas, however, this wasn’t the case. In 1978, he was cast as the good-looking stud “Tom Chisum” in the legendary film Grease, featuring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. He played the boyfriend of Olivia Newton-John’s character, “Sandy”. That said, he initially wasn’t chosen for the part.
Steven Ford – son of former President Gerald Ford – was considered for the role, but was reportedly too nervous to play “Tom”. The part had no dialogue, but that didn’t bother Lorenzo when he got the gig.
People probably knew that the film had potential at the time, but even so, it’s safe to say that Lamas secured himself an extraordinary place in film history with his relatively small credit in Grease.
“I’m amazed by the longevity. It keeps finding new generations of people,” he told Studio 10.
Lorenzo had dark hair at the time, but the producers thought he looked too much like a “T-Bird” to star as Sandy’s boyfriend. As a result, they dyed his hair lighter – something that he didn’t mind at all.
“I would have dyed it green, fuchsia, anything,” he told People.
At the time, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were already stars. For Lorenzo Lamas, it was a dream come true just to meet them. What made the whole thing even better, was that Olivia Newton-Jon had been Lorenzo’s childhood crush.
Became a star on ‘Falcon Crest’
“I was 19. It was only the third thing I’ve ever done. And I was at the Paramount lot, meeting my childhood crush, Olivia Newton-John, and Mr. Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta. So I was kind of in a complete zombie state, to begin with,” Lorenzo recalled.
He explained that he had all her albums, and in high school, he and his friends even had routines dancing to her albums. When they finally met, Lorenzo was almost knocked off his heels.
“I couldn’t take my eyes off her,” he told Studio 10.
Grease was, of course, a big deal for Lorenzo and a fantastic opportunity when looking back. Naturally, though, it wasn’t quite a breakthrough since he only appeared in a few scenes.
In 1981, he got the role of Lance Cumson on Falcon Crest. The nighttime soap became a huge success, with Lamas starring alongside Oscar-winning actress Jane Wyman for 228 episodes.
Wyman portrayed Lamas’ grandmother on the show – at that time, she was a massive Hollywood star. Lamas had problems with illegal substances at this point in his career, until one day on set, Wyman had enough of his behavior
Became a star on ‘Falcon Crest’
“I was 19. It was only the third thing I’ve ever done. And I was at the Paramount lot, meeting my childhood crush, Olivia Newton-John, and Mr. Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta. So I was kind of in a complete zombie state, to begin with,” Lorenzo recalled.
He explained that he had all her albums, and in high school, he and his friends even had routines dancing to her albums. When they finally met, Lorenzo was almost knocked off his heels.
“I couldn’t take my eyes off her,” he told Studio 10.
Grease was, of course, a big deal for Lorenzo and a fantastic opportunity when looking back. Naturally, though, it wasn’t quite a breakthrough since he only appeared in a few scenes.
In 1981, he got the role of Lance Cumson on Falcon Crest. The nighttime soap became a huge success, with Lamas starring alongside Oscar-winning actress Jane Wyman for 228 episodes.
Wyman portrayed Lamas’ grandmother on the show – at that time, she was a massive Hollywood star. Lamas had problems with illegal substances at this point in his career, until one day on set, Wyman had enough of his behavior
Leave a Reply