For those of you that follow my Instagram account, you’ll know that bit by bit our little farm is expanding. Our latest project is to have a pig. Since our house is not equipped to have a pig live inside with us, as we have seen many times here in Nicaragua, we are having to construct a sty…or rather Tim is constructing the sty, and I’m helping with the decor!

The neighbours think it’s funny that a pig should have a house constructed of stone, with a roof, but we want to know that he is secure at night. There have been a spate of robberies in the lane; in one they stole the toilet and wash hand basin, at night, out of the neighbour’s bathroom. If they’ve got the nerve to do that, we thought, a pig would be easy pickings. Hence The Pig Palace.

All has been going well with the building until a couple of days ago when Tim was using his cutting disk and sliced a nasty gash in his shin (not with the disk itself, thankfully!) Deep enough and long enough to require stitches and the ministrations of someone who knows more than first aid.

I patched him up and Tim contacted a surgeon we know who works in the private hospital in the capital. The Doctor said he wasn’t happy working from the hospital, for the problem with Covid 19, so could we call by his house instead…what a mistake that proved to be!

We arrived before dark and found our way to an expensive part of town but were dismayed to see that the worst house in the neighbourhood was where we were expected. The Doctor set us up in the garden for the consultation and while two kittens played around us he proceeded to faff around looking for his equipment (he’d already had over an hour to prepare since the phone call.)

By this time it was dark, and I used the light off my phone to shine up the damaged leg so that the Doctor could at least see something. It was apparent he was woefully unprepared, no needle and thread, kitchen scissors that hardly cut, and almost empty tubes of antibiotic cream.

He managed to do a job, only marginally better than my initial patching up and sent us off with instructions to return in a couple of days (that’s not going to happen!) and a prescription for a spray that would have cost over $90.00 had we bought it.

On the way home Tim suggested we invest in some surgical needles and thread and I do the job next time, I don’t think he was joking. My sister tells me surgeons practice on orange skins…or was it banana skins, or maybe pork? I’m thinking I need to do some research and get some practice in!!

So, thank you to those who have shown concern. Tim is up and about, but being careful and I am acting nurse and keeping the wound clean and infection-free, ever grateful to a Great-Aunt who was a matron in her time and taught me what butterfly stiches are.