{alltv} Docs trying to avoid amputation for Zsa Zsa Gabor

Monday, January 3, 2011

{alltv} Docs trying to avoid amputation for Zsa Zsa Gabor

LOS ANGELES – Doctors are treating Zsa Zsa Gabor with powerful antibiotics in hopes of avoiding amputating part of her leg.

Her publicist, John Blanchette, said Monday that the 93-year-old actress would continue receiving treatment at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center over the next couple days. Her husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, brought her to the hospital Sunday night and doctors thought they might have to amputate part of her right leg below the knee because of the onset of gangrene.

"The lesion is apparently very deep. They're afraid it may be into the bone, which would not be good," Blanchette said. "Before taking that drastic measure, they want to give it one last chance with some really poweful antibiotics."

Blanchette added that the lesion has grown from about an inch a couple months ago to almost a foot now.

Gabor broke her hip and had replacement surgery in July, and has been hospitalized several times since for swelling in her legs and blood clots throughout her body. She was in critical condition and asked for a priest to read her last rites during a hospital visit in August, but she recovered and returned home.

Gabor has used a wheelchair since she was partially paralyzed in a 2002 car accident, and she had a stroke in 2005.

She retreated from the spotlight after the accident and stroke. She liked staying home and watching soap operas, game shows and old movies, von Anhalt told reporters in July. She detested having her picture taken by the paparazzi while she was in her wheelchair.

"She wants people to remember her as she was years ago," he said.

A Hungarian-born sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s, Gabor had a brief and unremarkable film career, appearing in films ranging from "Moulin Rouge" in 1952 to "Queen of Outer Space" in 1958, and she had no regular television role like her sister Eva had on "Green Acres."

Her primary role was herself — appearing on TV specials and game shows, as a guest on several television series, and in real-life dramas like her slapping of a Beverly Hills policeman in 1989 that led to a brief jail term.