Picture of Health

The first hint that Gary Prettyman was back painting was in the Surfer’s Journal, a San Clemente-based publication catering to the surfing community.

Inside the magazine’s back pages was a picture of Prettyman’s latest piece--the late surfer Dewey Weber.

Three years ago, Prettyman was a premier surf and beach artist. Then, it struck, the so-called “flesh-eating disease,” a streptococcus bacteria that nearly took his life.

“I have been painting since I survived the illness, but I am back and enjoying life,” said Prettyman, 47, during a recent interview at his San Clemente home.

Before the disease struck, Prettyman’s art career was on a fast track, with jobs commissioned for corporations such as Ocean Pacific, Gotcha and other manufacturers in Orange County’s surfing industry.

He was among a growing group of local accomplished surf artists, including Ken Auster and Rick Rietveld, who have made careers out of depicting the California beach lifestyle in their paintings.

But the disease came in January 1994. Prettyman had been ill, suffering fatigue and other flu-like symptoms and complained of an “odd pain” in his left arm. His wife, Nina, took him to an emergency clinic.

Doctors there failed to diagnose the flesh-eating disease. His wife then took him to Columbia San Clemente Hospital and Medical Center, where an internist recognized the illness and immediately admitted him.

“The doctor told me in the hallway that Gary had a 50-50 chance of making it through the night,” Nina Prettyman said.

Severe Group A streptococcal infections eat away at the filmy tissue layer that surrounds muscles, said Hildy Myers, an Orange County Health Care Agency epidemiologist. She added that the disease is nothing new, although it remains rare, and is not particularly contagious.

Myers recommended good hygiene such as washing cuts with soap and water, and she urged people to “cover your mouth when you cough.”

There are about 10,000 to 15,000 cases across the country every year of invasive Group A streptococcal infections, and they turn into the gangrenous variety 10% to 15% of the time, Myers said, citing federal statistics.

According to the most recent figures available, there have been four deaths attributed to the disease in Orange County since 1994, Myers said.

Doctors and health officials say diagnosing the disease is difficult.

“The problem is,” Myers said, “you cannot see what is going on on the surface. When you examine the person, they don’t seem as sick as they really are. They’re complaining of pain and some redness on their skin [but] it doesn’t look that serious, and you end up sending them home and the infection can really take off.”

The illness can also be caused by a group of infectious organisms that can enter open cuts after surgery or delivering a baby, Myers said.

Doctors told Prettyman that the bacteria cocoons itself in dead tissue and releases toxins that shutdown the liver, kidneys and respiratory systems.

“Antibiotics can’t reach it because of the dead cells around it. So, doctors either amputate the whole area or in my case, they went in and fileted the arm and literally scraped it out to stop this and get it out,” Prettyman said.

“Then once it was removed, [doctors] had to worry about the other problems with my organs like the kidneys and liver,” said Prettyman, who recalled little of what happened because he was either unconscious or was under heavy medication.

*

Prettyman did not know why the bacteria attacked him, although doctors told him it might have been attributed to an open wound combined with a series of colds and flu that left him weak.

Nina Prettyman recalled that, when her husband was admitted to the hospital, his blood pressure was near zero, essentially “clinically dead,” she said.

Her husband was operated on five times, Nina Prettyman said, adding that she relied on prayer to help her husband’s recovery.

“He was in bad shape,” she recalled. “He spent three weeks in intensive care and, in all, was in the hospital for six weeks.”

When he got out of the hospital, Prettyman spent the next three months in therapy regaining use of his left arm where the bacteria had taken hold. Although he has regained full use of his left arm, he lost a third of the triceps muscle and experiences numbness in his left hand.

Six months after he got the disease, Prettyman went to the beach and got in the water. It turned out to be an emotional experience.

“I was going crazy. I love the beach, and here I was laid up for all this time,” Prettyman said. “I still remember that first time I got back in the water, because I cried. I couldn’t help it. And my brother-in-law who went with me sat on the sand crying too.”

About the same time, he was back at work viewing slides to be used as the backdrop for paintings.

Prettyman creates paintings from photographs. His technique is to layer water-based acrylic paints. First-time viewers often believe the art is a blown-up photograph rather than a painting, until closer inspection. His works range in price from $30 for reproductions to $8,000 and more for originals. His Weber painting is on display at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts.

“I think Gary’s work is unusual,” said Pat Kelly, a Laguna Beach artist who is on the festival’s board of directors. He said it’s very popular especially with people from outside the state because he captures the California coastal lifestyle.

The Weber painting took more than a month and includes painstaking detail. He begins with a clear coat, so the paint floats over the canvas and also allows light to pass through the later layers of color and reflect off the white.

It gives the paintings their glow, or as Prettyman put it, “It makes my paintings pop.”