ORANGE PARK – Ricky Gosyne and his family have worked for more than a decade to coordinate medical teams and minister to less fortunate residents of the Trinidad and Tobago islands. Considering Gosyne has devoted his life to helping others, it shocked him to realize he might be the one who needs help this time.

Orange Park Medical Center, more than 1,800 miles away from the teacup sized island, stepped in recently and paid the bill for a costly spinal surgery to relieve Gosyne’s chronic back pain and quite literally get him back on his feet.

For more than a year, Gosyne has lived with a severe pain along his lower back and legs, causing him to limp from place to place. His legs would often numb while he walked, so Gosyne had to take frequent breaks from work to sit down. He frequently taught his sermons from a stool.

“My brain was telling my legs to go one direction, but my legs had a mind of its own so I had to sit for a while,” Gosyne said.

While on a mission trip to the island in the fall of 2015, OPMC physicians Michael Euwema and Richard Bultman noticed the limp and telltale forward arch in Gosyne’s back as symptoms of a lumbar stenosis. The condition causes the spine to narrow in certain places and choke the spinal cord.

“It slowly kept getting worse,” Bultman said. “He said, he couldn’t preach a whole sermon because he had to sit down on a bench or a stool so it was fairly significant pain.”

The two encouraged Gosyne to come to their hospital to get an MRI. Gosyne agreed after the physician’s weeklong stay in Trinidad was over.

Gosyne was unsuccessful in getting any treatment in Trinidad, so in April he called Bultman and asked for his help. Gosyne flew to America to have the MRI test completed, which showed Gosyne’s stenosis was dangerous enough to require a laminotomy.

Laminotomy’s are costly. Gosyne would have to be anesthetized throughout the operation.

Gosyne took the MRI back to Trinidad to have the operation, but he doubted Trinidad’s physicians could properly take care of the condition. He instead reached back out to Bultman to see if there was any way to fix the issue back in Orange Park.

There was just one issue – money. Gosyne didn’t earn a high enough salary and said he could have never paid for the operation.

Within three weeks, all the physicians involved agreed to complete the operation at no charge. The hospital’s chief executive officer gave his blessing to work the operation as a charity case and on Aug. 11, Gosyne’s pain was gone.

Neurosurgeon Mark Spatola of Orange Park would then remove a part of Gosyne’s vertebral arch in order to release some of the pressure choking his spinal cord.

“It was a one-hour procedure through a small cut through a small tube and drilled out the arthritis and unpinched his nerve,” Spatola said. “He actually left the hospital walking and I saw him about two weeks after the surgery before he went to Trinidad. His legs are better, his pain is better and he’s very happy.”

Gosyne stayed in the U.S. for a month to recover and is back in Trinidad continuing his life’s work, helping the less fortunate.

“It was almost miraculous for me,” Gosyne said. “I didn’t think that would ever happen, so I’m just very, very grateful for the hospitality, the generosity and the care I got from Orange Park [Medical Center] and all the people associated.”

Lumbar stenosis is a common condition for the elderly often caused from bending at the back and lifting heavy objects over long periods. Gosyne, 56, said he still can’t run a 100-meter race right now, but he can finally walk without assistance.

Gosyne’s work in Trinidad is strenuous. He starts his days at 6:30 a.m. with two cups of coffee and sometimes gets back home 16 hours later. Gosyne collaborates with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Defense and some other smaller agencies to bring healthcare to especially “high risk” parts of the 1,900 square mile island.

Trinidad has a public healthcare system based on priority. Understaffed and overtaxed hospitals mean long wait times. The work Gosyne does helps funnel physicians into the hospitals to help deal with the burden.

Gosyne described his time in OPMC as more of a five-star hotel than a hospital. Considering OPMC is the first hospital in which he’d ever had a major surgery, it might as well have been.

“I’m very grateful to be at the receiving end of the help this time,” Gosyne said. “I couldn’t ask for a better experience. I didn’t even realize that people could take such good care of you.”