Charley, that's one hell of a story, but I sure wish it wasn't true.
Glad you had a good network of friends to help you travel and find good
medical care. Hope you're recovered well enough to make it to TCR. And
from now on, consider hiring a carpenter.
Logan
On 9/1/2018 8:48 AM, Charles Loving wrote:
So I guess it’s time to tell this story. Wednesday afternoon I was
happily finishing up on a shaper , think of big router, the last few
wooden pieces of the doors and windows for our home in Mexico and
looking forward to gluing them all up and being a big step towards
completing the house. A millisecond later I was unbelievably looking
at a ruined right hand. A few minutes later after doing my best to
staunch the blood flow I was at the clinic in Real. The doctor on duty
took one look and said hospital in Matehuala an hour away. I stopped
on the way out of town at a friends house. Luckily she was home and
her boyfriend and she drove me to the hospital. Basically they sewed
up a couple of arteries and assayed the damage, by the way with no
painkillers . I guess just trying to see how tough I am. The doctor
said I would need to go to a specialist in Saltillo or San Luis
Potosí. They gave me antibiotics, pain meds, and a tetanus shot. When
we left the hospital my friends boyfriend asked if I’d prefer to fly
back to Texas. He offered to fly me in his Fairchild turbo prop. My
response to this was, “You’ve got a plane?” Totally unassuming man and
now a saint . He arranged for an employee to meet us halfway to
Saltillo. This man drove me to a Holiday Inn where we had
reservations. I walked in the lobby looking like someone out of a
Quentin Tarentino movie. Complete with cartels and sicarios. The desk
clerk looked up and said NO ROOMS, I protested that I had a
reservation. NO ROOMS!! We got the same response across the street at
a Hampton. At the next one I gave Juan my wallet and said, “This time
you get the room and I’ll go in s side door.” I ended up having to go
to a hospital in Saltillo because I started hemorrhaging again during
the night. The next morning the driver picked me up and after a stop
at Walmart to buy clothes,of course they didn’t fit anyway, by 8:30 we
were airborne on the way to San Antonio. At SA the immigration guy
took one look, said “I don’t want to know”, and waved me through. Gale
in the meanwhile had found the top micro surgeon in the country with
the aid of our next door neighbor who is a friend of an associate of
the surgeon Dr. Fernando Levaro. Gale picked me up in SA and we drove
to Houston. Within 10 minutes of walking into his office we were
meeting with Dr. Levaro and within 1 hr I was in surgery. The surgery
lasted 6 hours. I can’t say enough good things about this guy. He’s by
the way one if those Mexicans they’re sending us. At the follow up
today he told me he expected me to get back to close to 90% function.
Skin grafts, nerve repair, tendons, bone fractures, vessel repair, and
evidently I learned Spanish because I was speaking it while I was
under anesthesia. I can’t begin to express the gratitude I have for
every person I came across in the last two days, both friends and
strangers. I’d post photo, but I’m not that cruel.
21 Comments
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--
Charlie Loving
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