Press Date: 07/23/2010

Reported by Ellie Merritt, WCMH-NBC4, on July 23, 2010

Click here to watch the story.

There is a health condition that truly is a ticking time bomb. It's called peripheral artery disease or PAD. If you get it, it's not uncommon to lose a limb and it can trigger a long list of other health problems. 

Tonight NBC 4's Ellie Merritt shows us how a high school basketball coach had to fight for his leg.

He expects nothing less than giving it their all. New Albany Basketball Coach Sam Davis is all about being strong and facing weakness head on. So when the day came when Sam had his own weakness to face, the pain in his leg was obvious.

"I would go a hundred or two hundred yards and my right leg would just have a lot of pain," said Davis.

It got worse and Sam learned he had Peripheral Artery Disease or PAD. Ten million Americans have it and many don't know it. It's one of the leading causes of death. Think of PAD as bad plumbing-bad blood vessels and your blood can't get through. 

This coach of 35 years was looking at bypass surgery that would have had him down and out for six to eight weeks.

"That just was something I really wasn't looking forward to," Davis said. "Plus, I coach basketball and it would have meant that I would have missed the majority of the season, but the other option was that if I didn't do it they were going to end up amputating the leg if I didn't get any blood to it."

Until Sam tried one more doctor.

"After he looked at the MRI he said cancel your surgery I can do this and thank the good Lord he could," said Davis.

Sam went to Cardiologist Dr. Gary Ansel of Riverside Methodist Hospital.

Sam had blockage in the blood vessels feeding his lower leg. So Dr. Ansel went in with a stint.

"The stint acts like scaffold in a mind shaft," Ansel said. It holds the blood vessel open and then it ends up getting incorporated into the blood vessel."

And the big difference-recovery.

"It'll keep him coaching his basketball team and get him into the playoffs," said Ansel.

And here's the amazing part-instead of being gone for six weeks, it was more like six days.

"In three days I was up walking around and within a week I was back with my kids coaching," said Davis.

It's been two years now. 

"It's been absolutely wonderful," Davis said. "I'm able to exercise, run, and walk. I do my activities with my team and none of that is a challenge at all for me any more. I'm pain free. It's my little miracle."

Sam's working hard with his team and is stronger than ever.