UPDATE as of April 21, 2023:

Thanks in part to the 216 generous and loving friends that donated a total of $15,992, I was able to pay down the hospital in Panama and fly Joe and myself, accompanied by Anthony Carpenter, a wonderful medic working for Air Ambulance One, to Los Angeles, where we checked Joe into Cedars Sinai Hospital.

Why Cedars Sinai? Because it includes the Smidt Heart Institute, the leader in providing mitral clip surgeries (aka MitraClip or Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement), having done over 5000 of these minimally invasive surgeries, more than any other hospital in the USA. So, he is in good hands now.

Huge thanks also to my lifelong friend, Benida Solow, at whose home in Los Angeles I am staying while Joe is hospitalized.

I am leaving our GoFundMe posted, because, even though we achieved our primary goal of getting Joe to the hospital that can provide the exact surgery he needs, and where Medicare is available to us, some expenses might not be covered by Medicare.

All prayers, good wishes, hugs and visualizations are gratefully received as well.

If you have not already, please read the original (slightly edited) post about our fundraiser:

Hello friends, I am Alicia Bay Laurel. Joe Gallivan and I have been domestic partners since late 1996. I am fundraising for medical care to save his life.

A composer, arranger, conductor, record and concert producer, and multi-instrumentalist (drums, percussion and analog synthesizer), Joe's entire life has been dedicated to creativity in music.

He has recorded and performed his original, mostly improvised, music around the world, collaborating with other creative music giants along the way, including Gil Evans, Larry Young, Eric Dolphy, Elvin Jones, Elton Dean, Evan Parker, Keith Tippett, Masabumi Kikuchi, Kenny Wheeler, Charles Austin, Gary Smith, Marcio Mattos, John Scofield, Kenny Kirkland, and Miraslav Vitous.

He was the test driver of - and the first performer using - Robert Moog's MoogDrum, the ancestor of today's electronic drum pads. He still uses the MoogDrum in performance. He is an official endorser for Moog as well as Zildjian Cymbals.

There was, for many decades an unspoken killer in the world of jazz improvisation - second-hand tobacco smoke. Joe never smoked, but he was constantly surrounded (even in childhood) by people chain smoking - in clubs, in the vans of bands on the road, backstage, and almost everywhere he went for the first sixty years of his life. This put a lethal strain on his heart, and, in 2015 he required open-heart surgery to repair his mitral valve. The operation was successful, and it was covered by Medicare.

In 2023, the valve began leaking again, but this time while Joe was outside the USA. On March 7, 2023, Joe was admitted to the emergency room at Clinica Hospital San Fernando in Panama City, Panama. He was quickly diagnosed with a leaking mitral valve. His existing valve was measured via tomography for a replacement valve, which we were told would be ordered from the USA via air courier.

(Note added 04/09/23: We waited for the replacement valve for two weeks before realizing it was never going to arrive. Then we learned from one of our donors about Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement surgery, a three-year-old minimally invasive procedure now offered at many hospitals around the USA, but not yet available in Central America, and realized this was the way to go. As soon as Joe's health improved to the point at which his doctor declared him able to fly, I began making arrangements for Joe to have this procedure in the USA, where Medicare would cover it.)

Other than the (0% to 15% sliding scale) fees paid to GoFundMe for their services, all funds sent to me here will be used to pay for Joe Gallivan's hospitalization in Panama and medically-escorted flight to Los Angeles. The funds will be transferred by GoFundMe to the personal checking account they already have on file, from which I pay a credit card that I use for foreign transactions and another credit card I use to pay businesses within the USA. I will send GoFundMe scans of my checking account and credit card statements showing the exact amounts recently paid to me by GoFundMe having been paid to Clinica Hospital San Fernando so that GoFundMe can verify that the funds have been properly used.

GoFundMe would like me to make sure that everyone understands that no raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to our GoFundMe campaign.