Brief Update

For all of you who follow the happenings of our retirement here in Panama, this will serve as a brief update.

When I last left you, Larry had been cleared of the pseudomona aeruginosa bacteria and released from the hospital. The infection had taken its toll on the surgical site, however, and no amount of cleansing and rebandaging--which required trips to David every other day for several weeks--showed any sign of its healing. It was just too deep, with exposed bone. The type of surgery required was not practiced by any of our existing retinue of doctors, but, luckily for us, a new doc had joined the staff fresh from an orthopedic residency in San Antonio, Texas. Enter Dr. Juan Carlos Pretto, a young, exuberant practitioner who confidently declared that he could remove skin and muscle from Larry's calf and sew it over the wound on the right side of his foot just below the ankle. Several of the doctors doubted it would work, and Dr. Pretto gave it a 60% chance. But he convinced us that he knew what he was doing and that it was the only alternative to avoid the risk of reinfection and to provide an environment for healing.

So Larry went back in the hospital for a few days and then had a long recovery at home, plus numerous trips back and forth to David for follow-up. Eventually, it looked as though the "flap," as Dr. Pretto called it, had taken, and x-rays revealed that the bones in the foot and ankle had substantially healed. Then another problem arose. The skin was not regrowing on the calf from which the flap had been taken. For a month we washed it with castille soap and rebandanged it three times a day, but a visit to Dr. Pretto last week showed no sign of new skin. So Larry was back in the operating room last Saturday for a skin graft. The leg is now to stay wrapped for ten days, after which will be the big reveal. The big wound and flap, which Dr. Pretto is very happy with, also has not completely closed. So we struggle on, after four surgeries and more than 45 days total in the hospital.

It goes without saying that all this has eaten up the majority of my time, but I did get away with my friend Charly for three days at a nice resort in Boca Chica, about two hours away on the Pacific coast. The package was a donation from the Seagull Cove Lodge to Bid 4 Boquete last December which I had bought and was about to expire. Doc and Larry stayed here so as not to miss any football or golf on television.

Chyna and Kitty Kitty are featured in the 2012 calendar Amigos de Animales de Boquete produces as a money raiser. They are the calendar girls for the month of September 2012 (see photo above). I bought in to it over a year ago with the idea of all four animals (Trudy, Chyna, Felipe, and Kitty Kitty) being preserved for posterity, but alas.

I'm also co-chair of Bid 4 Boquete again and therefore have been very busy with that. We've upped our goal and added some new activities, so there have been meetings upon meetings, all scheduled between trips to the hospital in David.

We're in the thick of the worst two months of the rainy season, and one of the bridges to our section of town is out. The other bridge, on a long loop into town, is marginal, having never been replaced but only shorn up since the big Palo Alto flood. So we're a little nervous about the possibility of being cut off from the world.

It's just one adventure after another.