Hey, welcome back to Resilience Unravelled, and I'm delighted to welcome another guest, and this time in front of me, smiling gently into the breeze, is Craig Thayer. Good afternoon, Craig. How are you?
Craig:I'm great. Honoured to be here, sir.
Russell:Very good. And delighted to have you. And where in the world are you today?
Craig:I'm in Georgia. In the United States. Not the country of Georgia. I've been there, and I have a water polo ball from the national athletes. That when I was in Serbia with my two boys that play water polo. So, I've got a Georgia ball, but it's the country, Georgia, and I'm in the state in the United States.
Russell:Whereabouts in the state of Georgia, are you?
Craig:Northwest. I'm about 20 minutes from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Russell:All right. I was just out there quite recently, actually, just touring the area, so it's quite an interesting area.
Craig:Yeah, I grew up in California and then moved out here two years ago, so it's beautiful. Just different trees. There's a ton of pines and oaks in California, and that’s different I think.
Russell:We had the misfortune of being in Atlanta. So, there are better places in Georgia, I suspect.
Craig:Yes.
Russell:No comment. I think that's enough talk about Georgia. Well, it's a delight to meet you, and why don't you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do?
Craig:Well, for the last 30 something years, I've been an old school general surgeon. Back in the day, were trained like general contractors, where I do drywall and plumbing and electrical. So, I'll do vascular surgery. I do thoracic surgery. I do oncology oncologic surgery. Trauma is probably my biggest. I grew up in California, and that has the highest amount of blunt trauma in the United States because of all the freeways that join and cross. And then more recently, I wrote a book that my grandmother wanted me to write for 15 years to help inspire, motivate, and give hope, especially in today's society with everything being so kind of divided and people are passionate about their things. And she passed away August 7, two years ago. She got to read the rough drafts before it was done.
Russell:Very good. All right, well, let's start at the very beginning, shall we? So, tell me, what it's like being a surgeon? I think most people have obviously watched programs on television, such like they've seen the craggy and, handsome surgeons from George Clooney down to Gregory House and such like. But the reality is very different, isn't it? I mean, we had a back surgeon on a couple of months ago, and he was talking about the relentless nature of the job and the need for resilience in the job you do.
Craig:Correct. I mean, there are moments in your life that you go through that take a piece of you, is what I say so you think back, a lot of these stories are in the book because they're miracles. But one that always comes to mind for me is Rainy Day family, son, daughter. They're going to just a regular grocery store to get some food for dinner but it was raining and they lose traction in the rear. The car goes across the lane and is hit by a gigantic truck that swings the car around the other way. And the other side, the right side of the car, it's a tree. So, two kids are in the back and they're both smashed. One was dead at the scene, which was horrific for one of the sheriffs because it was the age of his daughter and the other was six.
Craig:And they came to my hospital and I’m just doing everything you can, opening a chest and doing open heart massage and then running them to the OR and exploring their belly to make sure that they're not dying from bleeding to death and nothing's there. And now, you know, they've got just a brain injury and that's what killed them. But then you've got to go talk to mom and dad. Dad' got a damaged lung from a broken rib. Mom's fine. But telling them what they need to know. And this is probably the only time that I ever went through this part, but I met with the first responders, with a chaplain for the county and got to tell them what? Happened because they come to the scene it's more real for them because it's a car that's smashed up and there's an eleven-year-old girl that's now passed and they drop these patients off and then they disappear and they don't really know what happens.
Craig:And I think it helped give them closure but yeah, I think that's why especially trauma, it's like you have to clear the mechanism. You focus on what you're going to do, and you have an algorithm in your head but once you pull the drape off of that young child it's all real again and it just takes a piece of you.
Russell:Yeah, you talk to surgeon’s, and we've had a few on here strangely enough, they all talk about the sort of stress of cutting into a human body and there's either people who take it very personally or those who have built up almost like a sociopathic compartmentalisation or dissociation in their ability to do that. So, I just wondered how you dealt with those sorts of things.
Craig:I think my biggest learning curve was probably my internship, because not only are you learning how to do physical exams and take histories, but you're operating. So, you're learning how to operate. You got to learn names of the instruments, and then you have all these responsibilities as you're attached to a pager to take care of and learn how to take care of. So, yeah, it's never bothered me, but it was interesting. One of my professors, who is a pancreatic international specialist, asked me because I told him I wanted to become a general surgeon. And he says what are you going to do when you've operated on a patient and they die? And I said, I'll know that I did the best job that I could do on that day.
Russell:Yeah, so what you can't do yeah, it's that thing about you do your best and if your best isn't good enough, then that's it, isn't it? Really?
Craig:Right.
Russell:It's like the sports analogy. And of course, the thing is, with medical care, there's the surgery bit, which I suppose is the remedial thing, but then there's what comes after, is the aftercare the intensive care, the treatment that goes on at the general awards. There's such a number of different linkages to getting someone who's badly damaged through to someone who's healed and leaves the hospital. Yours is the beginning bit, really, isn't it? More than anything else, yeah.
Craig:Just to be in the same chapter as that six-year-old is the judge. He was a judge in the county, and he had a ruptured aneurysm, and I took him to the operating room. It was like a three-hour surgery, but he was there for three months, and he didn't make it. And he was on a ventilator the whole time. He was aware of what was going on. He could write on a clipboard and communicate. But, yeah, I mean, the first week I'm probably being called every 15 minutes to manage something. The amount of work during the surgery is easy. It's the work afterwards that's really time consuming.
Russell:What made you go into surgery?
Craig:I was teaching blind student’s geometry and I'm like, wow, okay, I got to put myself in their shoes. They can't see a circle and they can’t feel it so I would trace it for them. Or I bring a tennis ball in for a sphere or a pyramid for a pyramid. So, I loved helping people, and I love working with my hands. And this is high school. And then my junior year, I took anatomy physiology class. And that was it. I knew I had to go into medicine. I had to be a surgeon. I was cocky, so I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon or a neurosurgeon because they seemed like they were the most dramatic and intense. But then in med school, I did an internship with some cardiothoracic guys that were at the university where I was training in Sacramento. And, I mean, those guys are so dedicated, it's crazy, but they do bypasses and valves unless you go into cardiology, where you have a lot of interesting things to do, but then you got to live in a big city.
Craig:So it seemed like they were highly technical, but the life-saving things. And then I was at a veteran’s hospital in Martinez, California, and this guy who had a lung cancer, it started to bleed, and he was drowning in his own blood. And the internist didn't know how to put in a tracheal tube into his trachea to breathe for him or push down further so the balloon would put pressure on what was bleeding, and then you could breathe on the other good lung. And the surgical resident was in an operating room so I said to myself, I never want to be in a position I can't do something to save someone. And that was general surgery back then. So, if someone had a big head bang and a hematoma in their skull, I could drill a hole and drain that and save their life.
Craig:Or if they've got a drop lung, I can put a needle in it initially and then a tube to reinflate the lung. If they've been shot, I can open the chest of the pericardium and put a finger in the hole and then get them in the hour to get that closed. And then just the breadth of general surgery. So, like I said, it's breast cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer. It just was like the family medicine of surgery. So that's what got me interested in general surgery.
Craig:So it seems a shame to condense 30 odd years of general practice into a very short conversation because, no doubt there's endless development challenges, advances in medicine, differences in the way that things are handled, the rise of technology. It's an ever-changing world, but at the same time, the sort of basic principles are the same as 300 years ago, where you're cutting, you're manipulating, you're removing, you're stitching, you're inserting. I mean, those fundamental processes are the same. Whether you're doing it the fancy way or with something with a completely different sort of material property. You're still doing the same sort of processing, I guess.
Craig:And it's interesting because certain techniques will recycle about every 20 years.
Russell 12.08
Really?
Craig 12.10
Yeah, like with chest stuff, the mesotheliomas that generally are from asbestosis exposure. And we tried to strip the whole lining of the chest wall and what was ever on the lungs and then give chemo and radiation if there was some focal area that could be radiated. And then that had no outcome that was worthwhile. So, we stopped doing that. But then something comes along now. Now it's the monoclonal antibodies. So, we've had really no advance in melanoma until probably four or five years ago, which is like a miracle in my life. That's not in the book, but one of my friends who was in a Bible study with me, and he had a melanoma on his scalp, which is a bad spot, had metastasis in a lot of other places, underwent chemo, and then they were gone.
Craig:And one night we're sitting together, and he says, I had this dream. I also knew that he had a CT scan coming up to see if anything was recurring. And I look it up and it's the first monoclonal antibody. And then I look up more, I say they’ve got monoclonals that will attack melanoma and get rid of it. I call them back, and I get good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm afraid of what your CT scan is going to show you if you've really kind of prophesied through this because we do have something to fight metastasis in your lungs and everywhere else. And that's what he had. And then he went on the current monoclonal antibody and he's disease free.
Russell:Brilliant. So, one of the things I find interesting in talking to you is because there are a lot of people who come on here and talk about not needing surgery, not needing cancer treatments because of spiritual beliefs or things like that. Where do you stand on that?
Craig:Well, I go to science. I go to Bay's theorems. So Bay was a French statistician, and he has this one algorithm where if you were in prison and you were given a deck of cards and you were to pull an ace out, say the ace of spades, and then you put it back in and they shuffle it. And you had to pull out the ace of spades and you'd be set free instead of executed. It has a statistical outcome. I forget what it is, but let's alter the reality. Let's say someone in the card shop knew you were going to pull an ace of spades out, so you make two decks or a deck that was only ace of spades. What's the odds of that happening? So, there is a chance that a miracle could happen if you know the odds/. If you're spiritual and you believe in God and you believe that he can heal like Jesus did, then that faith gives you a better outcome than if you didn't believe that it's a chance at hope, and it does.
Craig:Sometimes people do miraculously have a brain tumour that goes away, or one time recovery room nurse asked me you're a scientist? And I say, yeah, I am. I can't just go off of what I think everything needs to be evidence based for me, and how can you believe in Jesus and God and Holy Spirit? And I say, why not? I mean, even Hawking’s had a problem with that. His two books, Brief History and Briefer History, when he gets to that point where the big bang is what everybody believes, so there's a time zero what existed before, and then light was separated from darkness. His answer to that was, well, that's a philosophical question that we won't address. So, I just say, look, we just study what God created. I mean, that's all we do.
Craig:Science is observational. So, sight, sound, smell. We will look at X rays. And we'll come up with something that changes the character of what something may do. The denser, the more the X ray gets blocked. So, it's white on X ray film gels. You put a protein in there and see how fast it settles sedimentation rate. So, yeah, we just observe what God created surgically. Like, you asked the question about an incision. I hurt people by cutting them, but then I sew things together, muscle to muscle, skin to skin, fat to fat, and the body miraculously heals. If I scratch a car, it doesn't heal itself, so God intervenes in getting people to heal. My job is not of the spirit. It's more of the flesh. And if the flesh isn't doing what it's supposed to do, then if there's an infection or say I've removed a part of the intestine and there's a leak, I need to recognise that and go back and fix it.
Russell:Good. Okay, so the book you said you wrote was inspired by your grandmother.
Craig:My grandmother? Yeah. She was there for my life. My mom died when I was a freshman in college. My dad died between my junior and senior year. She was there for my high school graduation all the way through undergrad med school and my six-year residency. And then I would take her to Sacramento Kings games, basketball, like to six to eight games a year. And we would eat dinner, go to the game. She loved to watch the game, but for 15 years, she's telling me that I need to write about my life just to let people know what I’ve been through. I mean, I was an orphan for nine months. I was adopted but I my grandfather was the attorney that did the adoption, so I had names and birthdates, and my wife found them and so I know what my genetics are.
Craig:I grew up thinking that I was French. And then it turns out when found my natural family, that I'm Belgian and Irish and English, and I'm like, wow. So somehow those people met from being Baltic and Iberian, which is Portugal and Spain. So, yeah, it's amazing.
Russell:Very good. So, tell us about the book. What's in it? Who's it written for?
Craig:So it's written for anybody, really. I mean, kids could read it. And I think the biggest picture is that it gives me a door that opens so that I can go through and speak to large companies or anybody, to help and bring hope. The last chapter was about a friend of mine who was a scrub nurse and came down with Parkinson's. It was very rapid, and I was there but he was an atheist and I brought over the Truth Project, which is like a DVD collection of eight things from evolution to a lot of stuff. And he didn't want to hear. Five minutes into the first episode, he said, I think this is for someone who believes.
Craig:But I saw him the last five days unequivocally walk through the door, and I won't give it away. So, if someone reads if you just don't want to read the book, just read the last chapter. It's meant to motivate and inspire and bring hope and then hopefully allow me to do that in person.
Russell:Very good. And where can we get hold of it?
Craig:It's on Amazon. If you just Google Amazon or my website, craigthayer.net it has a link, but if you just put Craig Thayer and Saved, that should pull up the book and then you can buy it. And the audible should be coming out in probably the next three weeks or so.
Russell:I think you were saying you were busy recording at the moment, is that right?
Craig:Yeah, I did the final eight little clip edits. And it's funny because the analogy I use is if I had polio and I had a thin leg, I'm fine just every day, but not if I had to run, no, I am not disabled, but I'm disadvantaged. And it turns out eight years ago or so, I found out that my youngest son has dyslexia, but all the symptoms he has are the same ones I have. I'm a huge test taker because I have to for what I do every year, I have to take tests to get continuing medical education credits, and I've always known I was a slow reader. And that's a brief part of a chapter in the book about third grade and standing in front of a prompter where all the other students are reading at 100 something words per minute and I'm fumbling and all over the place.
Craig:Amazon is the main spot that you can get the book from. Again, my website.
Russell:So Craig's been lovely to talk, and it sounds like there's tons to read, and I'm going online now and having a look myself. So, thank you for spending time with us today.
Craig:Thank you for having me. Again, honoured to be here.
Russell:Great. And you take care.
Craig:I will.