September 2021 – Beyond Plastic MD

If a cold is a organ grinder monkey, influenza is King Kong, and Covid is King Kong on steroids.

R. T. Bosshardt

I have known Kurt for over 53 years. We have been best friends since high school, are now both physicians (he a family practitioner and I a plastic surgeon), and still maintain weekly contact. He is my workout partner at the gym. He is also my personal physician. I take his medical advice seriously.

Kurt and I sit down once a week for an hour to just talk about things- our lives, medicine, the craziness of the world around us. Recently, our conversation has focused a lot, of course, on Covid. Our takes are a bit different. He is a pragmatist and focuses on what works and what doesn’t. He calls me an idealist but, on reflection, I would qualify that by calling myself a cynical idealist. By that I mean that I see the world in ideal terms but also accept that it just isn’t that way, largely because people are imperfect and unpredictable.

Our conversation this morning turned on vaccines. He received his vaccination with the Pfizer product in December. I chose to wait for the Novavax vaccine and planned to treat myself using the FLCCC protocol in the event I became ill before it was available. I weighed my risks and elected to chance Covid given that my risk of dying was less than 1 %. He has not been ill all year despite repeated exposure to Covid patients. I came down with Covid in July. I followed the protocol and came through it, but it was a miserable experience, on par with a severe case of influenza for my wife and me. (go to page 2 below)

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Meet Dr. Rick Bosshardt

Dr. Bosshardt attended the Leonard Miller School of Medicine of the University of Miami, graduating in 1978. He completed a general surgery residency at the United States Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. His residency term was interrupted from 1979-80 when he served as medical officer aboard the USS Wabash and was deployed to the Western Pacific with an aircraft carrier task force. During that year, the Wabash was involved in the rescue of Vietnamese boat people and was part of operations to end the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980. The USS Wabash crew received several decorations for this deployment, including the Meritorious Unit Commendation. Upon completion of his training, Dr. Bosshardt served as a general surgeon at the United States Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan from 1984-87. During this time, he obtained his board certification from the American Board of Surgery. While in Okinawa, Dr. Bosshardt applied, and was accepted, for residency training in plastic surgery under world-renowned plastic surgeon, D. Ralph Millard, Jr., M.D., at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center in Miami, Florida. He was honorably discharged from the Navy with the rank of Commander in 1987 and completed his plastic surgery training in Miami from 1987-89. Dr. Bosshardt arrived in Lake County in July of 1989 as the first plastic surgeon in the county. He obtained lifetime certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgery in 1991. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Since starting in private practice, Dr. Bosshardt has participated regularly in overseas medical missions to provide reconstructive surgery to children with cleft lip, cleft palate. and other problems. His travels have taken him to the Philippines, Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, the West Bank, and Mexico. Dr. Bosshardt performs both cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery in his practice, which has grown to two surgeons working out of a modern facility that houses the only state licensed private surgical suite in Central Florida dedicated exclusively to plastic surgery. He has privileges at Advent Health Waterman and University of Florida Leesburg Hospital.