All of you who are friends with Gary Gorczyca know him as a kind and generous gentle giant who loves his music festivals, his Fisheries job and Cape Ann.

Unfortunately, Gary could really use hand right now.

This fall he suffered a serious injury. His doctors didn’t understand the extent of his injuries until last week when he was taken by ambulance to the ER. He finally got the proper care and diagnosis and had emergency surgery within hours of being admitted. Long story short, he has 4 herniated disks (which is terrible enough) but the delay in figuring out what was wrong allowed infection to set into his spinal cord and bloodstream. He is on round the clock IV antibiotics and under constant supervision because if the infection spreads to his compromised heart it will be fatal. We are hoping that he will start showing signs of improvement soon and will be stable enough to be released to rehab where they expect him to be for close to two months before heading home for further recovery.

Like so many Cape Ann folks, Gary cobbles together a living with a seasonal job as a fisheries program supervisor and several part time and odd jobs. He has already been out of work for over a month and it will be a good 5-6 months before he is fully able to get around and go back to work. This is going to be a long, hard recovery for Gary and we’d like him to focus only on getting better.

Many of his friends have reached out asking to help so we’ve set up a GoFundMe to assist with rent, utilities and medical bills for the next several months.

Any little bit helps.

I will keep you posted on how he’s doing.

Thank you all