It was a bombshell text message from my friend Thomas Markle which stopped me dead in my tracks.
I was at home in Los Angeles when the Duchess of Sussex’s father sent me a message at 6.30am on Wednesday his time saying: ‘Going to lose the leg today.’
Mr Markle, 81, who has been estranged from his youngest daughter since her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, had been admitted to a hospital in Cebu in the Philippines, after his left foot suddenly turned a terrible shade of blue-black and swelled up to the point where he was in agony and unable to walk.
I immediately rang his son Tom Jr – his father’s primary carer who lives with him in the Philippines – and his other daughter Samantha, who lives in Florida, to tell them of the shocking text.
Both were flabbergasted. He had chosen to break the news of the amputation to me before his own family.
Including, as it happens, his youngest daughter Meghan. She and Harry live in Montecito, two hours from me in LA, where she has been busy promoting the Christmas special of her Netflix show With Love, Meghan, which focuses on her love of family.
There have been reports that Meghan only learned of her father’s health crisis through news coverage after the Daily Mail broke the story last week.
There have also been reports that the Duchess has ‘reached out’ to him.
However, Mr Markle last night said he has not heard from Meghan ‘but would love to speak to her’.
He said: ‘Of course I want to speak to her but I am not sure if these are the right circumstances.
‘I’ve always said I am open to reconciling with my daughter. I have never stopped loving her. I don’t want to die estranged from Meghan. I want to meet my grandkids. It might be nice to meet her husband too.’
We have often spoken of the fact he has never met Prince Harry or Archie, six, and Lilibet, four, in the years since we first became friends, shortly after the Sussexes’ wedding.
Tom and I met initially through work, but instantly hit it off. He can be cantankerous at times but I admire his honesty.
We speak most days and I consider him something of a father figure. He is a rock-solid friend who helped me through the deaths of my mother and brother.
Yesterday, as I sat by his bed in the hospital, he smiled and said: ‘This is so surreal. We have been through a lot, you and I. What a crazy journey it has been.’
And indeed it has.
But back to the madness of this past week. After getting his dramatic text message, I embarked on a 22-hour dash from LA to the Philippines – via South Korea – and have spent the past two days at Mr Markle’s bedside in the intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in Cebu.
Last night, with his permission, I took a photograph of him in his hospital bed because he wanted to thank people who have been sending him prayers since his left leg was amputated below the knee during a three-hour operation on Wednesday evening.
He told me: ‘The nurses have told me that people around the world are praying for me and I want to say thank you for those well-wishes.
‘People are so kind. I’ve been out of it all week but am finally feeling more like myself and I would like to show people I’m OK.
‘I’m grateful to the wonderful medical team who saved my life.’
While Mr Markle is not out of the woods yet, his life hung in the balance earlier this week when his foot swelled to twice its normal size.
His son, Tom Jr, explained: ‘It looked terrible. It had been swollen and sore for some time but he kept refusing to go to the doctor, as many men of his generation do.
‘By Tuesday it was a blue-black colour and it looked like the flesh was dying. Dad can be very stubborn but he agreed to go to the small regional hospital where we live. He was in a great deal of pain. It came on suddenly.
‘They did an ultrasound and said there was a huge blood clot in his thigh which had cut off blood flow to his lower left leg. His foot was dying.’
Mr Markle has been in poor health for years. He suffered two heart attacks in the run-up to Meghan and Harry’s wedding at St George’s Chapel in Windsor in 2018 which prevented him from walking her down the aisle.
Meghan ended up entering the church on her own and was walked part-way down the aisle by the then Prince Charles, an act Mr Markle calls ‘the most gracious and generous gesture ever’.
In 2022 he suffered a massive stroke and had to learn to talk again. But last week’s health emergency was the most serious threat to his life yet.
Tom Jr told me: ‘I didn’t know the amputation was going ahead until you called me but I knew it was a real possibility.
‘They moved dad from the small hospital to a bigger one in the centre of town in an ambulance with all the bells and whistles going.’
One of Mr Markle’s surgery team, Dr Alexander Kaw – speaking to The Mail on Sunday with his patient’s express permission – said: ‘There was no chance of saving the leg.
‘The blood clot was at least 14 inches long and ran the length of his thigh.
‘If we had tried to clear the blockage the necrosis from the dying tissue in the foot – which was gravely infected – could have moved through his bloodstream and caused sepsis which, with his multiple health conditions, could have killed him. The biggest threat was an infection spreading throughout his body.
‘We did emergency surgery to amputate the leg below the knee and then we removed the blood clot. There was no option but to amputate.
‘It was major surgery but Mr Markle is doing well and we are satisfied with his progress. We are taking it a day at a time.
‘When you have an elderly patient with comorbidities there is always a danger. He is stable and doing well. There is no infection in the leg.’
The doctor lifted up Mr Markle’s bedding to ‘smell’ the dressing on his amputated leg and declared: ‘His leg is healing well. If infection sets in, you can smell it.’
Mr Markle remains in intensive care because he suffered atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat, on the night of the surgery. Late yesterday, a member of his surgical team came to check the dressing on his amputated leg and Mr Markle looked at the wound for the first time.
Peeking under the brown hospital blanket, he resorted to gallows humour to joke about his condition.
He said: ‘I wanted to lose weight but this wasn’t quite the way I imagined it! I guess my tap-dancing days are over.’
Later he quipped: ‘I’m not hurting, but if anyone wanted to do anything to me, I don’t have a leg to stand on.’
His recovery and rehabilitation are likely to take months. If his recovery continues apace he is likely to be moved out of intensive care and on to a regular ward, perhaps as early as tomorrow.
He said: ‘They’ve told me I will be in hospital for at least another week or two and then I have to go to a rehab centre to learn to walk again. I am not sure how I feel about that.’
While Mr Markle has been putting on a brave face about his catastrophic surgery, his mask has occasionally slipped.
He told me: ‘They say you can feel a phantom limb when you lose a leg and I can feel it. I don’t know if I will be able to cope with this.
‘I have always been a very independent man. I don’t like the idea of spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair.
‘I have been waking up in the middle of the night and worrying about it. I’m grateful to be alive. But living without a leg is a tough prospect. I’m worried.’
Mr Markle said he was ‘confused’ by reports that Meghan had reached out to him.
With his permission, The Mail on Sunday spoke to the hospital administrators, front desk, telephone operators and the nurses and staff in the intensive care unit on the third floor.
They all confirmed there had been no calls from the Duchess of Sussex or any members of her staff or team to the best of their knowledge.
Mr Markle’s phone has no messages or voicemail from her. He has never changed his number because he ‘always wanted Meg to be able to call me’.
A spokesman for the Sussexes said Meghan had sent her father an email on Friday but, the MoS understands, it was to an address that Mr Markle hasn’t used for at least five years. Other family members and close friends also say he never uses email.
Mr Markle is being treated as something of a celebrity in the hospital. He has been given a private room in the intensive care ward at the end of a hallway.
But it is a long way from the grandeur of Buckingham Palace or even Meghan and Harry’s nine-bedroom, 16-bathroom Montecito mansion.
As nurses monitor who is allowed in, you enter through a locked door which has a small Christmas plastic wreath decoration on it. The air is icy cold. A permanent guard is stationed outside Mr Markle’s door in case the paparazzi try to infiltrate the hospital to snatch an illicit picture.
As of last night, things remained calm. Mr Markle said: ‘I’m grateful to still be alive.
‘But I wanted to say a big thank you to the well-wishers and also to the fantastic medical staff. I really want to say ‘thank you’ to the people of the UK who have been so kind to me.
‘I’m an old man now but my life has been saved and I’m grateful for that. I have a long road ahead.’
