COEUR d’ALENE — His right lower leg is gone now, sawed off below the knee.

It has only been a couple weeks since the surgery at Kootenai Health, so 71-year-old Bradford Bakie still gets an itch or sensations now and then from a foot that’s no longer there.

Bakie knew smoking wasn’t healthy, but he never had any idea he could lose a leg because of it.

“I’d rather have it amputated than have it sit there and rot off of me,” Bakie said Friday. He already had some toes rot and turn black.

Doctors told him before surgery, “‘It’s either your foot or your life,’” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, I want to live.’”

So it was amputated. The removal went smoothly, he said.

Doctors poked needles in his back — which was painful — to numb his legs. Then he breathed in some gas and fell asleep. When he woke up he was comfortable and surprised it was already over, he said.

Bakie now is at LaCrosse Health and Rehabilitation Center in Coeur d’Alene, waiting to get started on rehab with a prosthetic leg.

“When I’m laying in bed, sometimes it’ll itch, and I’ll say, ‘God there ain’t nothing to scratch,’” he said. “But it feels like it’s still there.”

Sometimes he gets a burning feeling like when his toes were rotting. A doctor told him that will happen for a month or so, Bakie said.

Looking ahead, he hopes to walk out of the center in a couple of months.

Bakie, a Coeur d’Alene resident, requested an interview with The Press to share his story. He hasn’t always been a perfect angel, and has had some run-ins with the law, but he hopes people can still learn from him about the dangers of smoking.

He started the habit in his early 20s, about the time he started tending bar. For 50 years, among the places he worked, Bakie tended bar and cooked at the old Fireside Lodge in Spirit Lake.

He smoked as much as two to three packs per day, “Because people about drove me nuts tending bar,” he said.

So is it a tale of woe for one man, or a cautionary tale for many?

According to Kootenai Clinic general surgeon Phil Kladar, there is a fourfold risk for vascular disease for those who smoke.

Cigarettes cause hardening of the arteries, plaque buildup, and vasoconstriction, which means tiny muscles in the arteries clamp down. The medical term for smoking’s damage to arteries is ‘peripheral vascular disease.’

“Whatever organ there is on the other side of that is going to see less blood flow,” said Kladar.

Tissue, in toes and feet, are starved of oxygen-rich blood. That causes the flesh to die.

“It’s basically rotting flesh attached to the patient,” Kladar said.

Infection in the blood, because of the rotting, can cost someone their life, he said.

Kladar said he sees 20 to 30 patients each week for a variety of smoking-related blockages.

“Limb loss is what we try to avoid,” he said.

Demand for such care is real and growing, he said.

“There are a lot of people who have these problems,” Kladar said.