THE DOCTOR WHO MADE HOUSE CALLS TO CASA KIMBERLY
By Debra Firstbrook

Like most of my excursions in Puerto Vallarta, searching for a doctor turned out to be an unexpected adventure. I had been plagued by an extremely itchy scalp for two weeks, and it was driving me insane—not to mention the fact that I looked like an infested dog from the constant scratching. After looking up the name of a medical clinic in the Yellow Pages, I set off by bus for the address listed on Juarez, but it turned out that now there was a clothing store at that address. As I started walking in hopes of spotting the clinic’s new location, I noticed a sign for a doctor pointing up a narrow side street.

The doctor's waiting room was dark and deserted, except for an imposing
Mexican woman sitting behind a large wooden desk. Wondering what I had stumbled into, I reluctantly asked for a ‘consulta’. When the receptionist went to look for the doctor, several dogs started barking. Listening to the ongoing commotion, I thought I must be at a veterinarian's office by mistake. When she returned, I asked if the doctor saw ‘personas’ or just ‘peros’ and ‘gatos’. She laughed at my query, pointing upwards to the floor above, where evidently there was a vet's office.

I passed the time in the dark, cool waiting room attempting to read a poster on the wall. It seemed to be asking, “Are you worried about your job?” There was a pamphlet on the desk that may have been discussing depression and nervous disorders. Then, I began to worry that I had wandered into a psychiatrist's office, and that my complaint of constant scratching might be viewed as a symptom of a tourist having a nervous breakdown. Just as I was making for the door and a hasty exit to reconsider the whole enterprise, the no-nonsense receptionist returned, firmly motioning me back into a dark hallway that led to the doctor's office.
Dr. Sagahun was a slight man, appearing to be in his 70s. He was impeccably dressed in a crisp white shirt; with gray hair carefully combed straight back from his face. He sat very erect with his hands clasped on his large desk. I sat down and anxiously started jabbering on about knowing only "poco Español," and asked if he was a doctor for "personas with nerviosa disorders?" He calmly answered, in quite good English, that he was a general practitioner, and then inquired about my problem. Between my fractured Spanish and frantic simulated head scratching and his knowledge of English, he got the gist of my situation. After looking at my head with a magnifying glass and reassuring me that my condition was curable, he settled back behind his desk and the stories began.

He told me, with obvious pride, that he had in his possession an x-ray taken in 1963 of Richard Burton's left foot. During the filming here of “The Night of The Iguana,” Dr. Sagahun made house calls to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor at Casa Kimberly. One day Burton injured his foot and came to the office for an x-ray, since Dr. Sagahun had one of the only x-ray machines in Puerto Vallarta at that time.
Just the day before my visit to his office, I had visited Mismaloya, where the ruins of the movie set there still seemed to be smoldering with the passion and drama of that time. Looking at old photos of Burton, Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardener, and John Huston reminded me of the days when the Dick and Liz affair was the steamy story of 1963. The resulting media frenzy put Puerto Vallarta forever on the map. At the height of the world's curiosity about the famous couple, Dr. Sagahun was close enough to have an intimate glimpse into their lives. Even though I was curious about what he thought about them, I didn't ask. I could see from his demeanor that he meant to keep their confidences and guard their privacy, just as he would for any of his patients.

The subject of Burton’s x-ray led to the story about how he came to have one of the only x-ray machines in town at that time. He took me back to his waiting room and pointed to a large, faded photograph of a man prominently displayed on the wall. There may have been serious gaps in my understanding, but he seemed to be telling me that this man was the inventor of the x-ray machine and had become a close friend while he was under the doctor's care for a serious illness. When the man's plane crashed into the sea several years later, the widow insisted that only Dr. Sagahun was to take charge of her husband's body. In his will, the man left a substantial amount of money to a Puerto Vallarta hospital for x-ray equipment and other supplies, in gratitude for the care he had received from Dr. Sagahun.

It seemed that I had stepped off a hot and busy street back into a cool, dark sanctuary of Puerto Vallarta's early history. Dr. Sagahun is a keeper of many treasures, secrets, and irreplaceable oral history. An hour later, prescription in hand, I emerged from a place where time seemed to stand still and was swept along again by the crowd and the hustle and bustle of modern day life. You never know where your next adventure will take you in Puerto Vallarta or what fascinating people you may meet on your way to somewhere else.