Phalen is dying / black nubs where roots should be.

[shadytrake]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here but not a complete novice to orchids. I have a phalen that was beautiful and big and wonderful...then I repotted it.

It hadn't been repotted in several years and I saw lots of little buggies crawling and the medium was smelling a little. So I tossed the medium out, bought new stuff specifically for phalens and repotted following what I thought were really good instructions in an orchid book.

Little by little from the bottom up, each leaf has soaked up water, turned a sick light brown and then started to smell. So I pulled it out of the pot dried it out and tried again. Same thing. That was 3 weeks ago. I am down to 5 leaves left on it after I gave it a last ditch effort today. I probably killed it, but I disinfected a pair of sharp scissors and cut all of the bottom leaves away exposing the root buds. They are black. See the pic. I peeled up until I felt like I had clean growth and lightly scrubbed them with some soapy water fungus stuff and am letting it air dry.

Did I cause this? I realize this one is probably on its last leg but if I can save it I'll give it one more try.

What do you think?