Dean Winters living in pain after multiple amputations

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

A dozen years ago, actor Dean Winters had surgery resulting in several amputations and he now says “I haven’t taken a step since 2009 without being in pain.”

“I’ve got neuropathy on, you know, on a whole different level where I can’t feel my hands and my feet,” he told Page Six. “But if I stepped on a pebble, it’s like I go through the roof.”

The “Law & Order: SVU” and “Oz” star almost died in 2009 after contracting a bacterial infection and going into cardiac arrest.

After multiple operations and suffering gangrene, doctors amputated two of his toes and half of a thumb.

That’s left him with discomfort.

“It’s a very weird dichotomy. It’s like, it’s very hard to figure out. Nothing you can do about it,” he said. “I’ve been sucking it up because, you know, the alternative is not a place where I want to be.”

He also said he almost passed up playing “Mayhem” in the Allstate commercials because he thought he’d be hospitalized with another surgery, but the insurance company was “relentless” in signing him to play the character

“It’s crazy if you look in the Webster dictionary, the Old English definition of the word ‘mayhem’ is ‘one with amputations,'” Winters said.

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