SHOULDER

SOME COSTS
The surgeon made more than 5000 bucks.
All told my fall cost 130,000 dollars in this backward country.

July 3, 2015
Annie,

I hope you have found someone to do the music for tomorrow. I was looking forward to playing so much that I worried I might catch a cold or something and wouldn't sing well!

I go in the 7th for shoulder replacement surgery so it will be some time before I will be able to get another chance to play. The new shoulder will take care of my right hand. Unfortunately, I have also injured my left hand and I hope that therapy can get it back to working again.

Anyway I just wanted you to know that I have not cancelled on you lightly. I look forward to having another chance to play for you sometime in the future and I thank you for hiring me for the 4th of July.

Yours,
Tom Cole

AQUÍ ESTÁ EL MALDITO CABESTRILLO. ME LO QUITÉ (¡POR FIN!)

¡Adiós muy buenas! Adiós y buen viaje! !Vete con viento fresco! ¡Adiós y hasta nunca! 8/26/2015

My Cane and arm exercisers.jpg

PULLEY SYSTEM FOR MY POOR ARM AND SHOULDER

More x-rays September 10, 2015. That sociopath's prayer bead or whatever it is-- is in these images too!

Suceso raro número seis

Ayer al repasar mis fotos en la computadora encontré un video de treinta minutos. No tenía título. Al verlo, sin embargo, inmediatamente me di cuenta de que era un video de mí en el hospital después de mi cirugía para reemplazar mi hombro que había sido desmenuzado en una caída. Aparentemente mi cámara estaba en la cama y yo había pulsado un botón sin querer y la cámara empezó a filmar sin que nadie lo supiera.
Se puede ver a mi hermano.
—¿Qué es esto? —le pregunté.
—¿Qué? —contestó.
—¿Es un bicho?
—¿Cómo que un bicho? —respondió él—. No hay bichos en los cuartos de recuperación.
—¡Es una cucaracha! —insistí.
—Te estás imaginando cosas —dijo y salió.
Me quedé dormido enseguida. Se puede oír el sonido de mi respiración por más de diez minutos. Entonces alguien golpea en la puerta y me despierta.
—Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh! —gimo aparentemente en agonía—. Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!
Se puede oír el sonido de la persona entrando en el cuarto y yo le pregunto:
—¿Hay refrescos? ¡Quisiera un refresco!
—No tengo —dice la enfermera—. He traído su desayuno.
—Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh! —gimo otra vez.
Entonces grito en español: "¡Tocino!" Y entonces en inglés: "Oh, happy day!"
Se puede ver mi mano sosteniendo una rebanada de tocino.

Strange Incident Number Six

Yesterday when I was going through my pictures on the computer, I found a thirty-minute video. It had no name. When I started watching it, however, I at once realized that it was a movie of me in the hospital after my surgery to replace my shoulder that had been shattered in a fall. Apparently, my camera was in the bed and I had inadvertently pushed a button and the camera began to film without anyone knowing it.
My brother can be seen.
"What's that?" I ask him.
"What?" he answered.
"Is it a bug?"
"What do you mean, a bug?" he answered. "There aren't any bugs in the recovery rooms."
"It's a cockroach!" I insisted.
"You're imagining things," he said and left.
I fell asleep at once. You can hear the sound of my breathing for more than ten minutes. Then someone knocks on the door and I wake up.
"Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!" I groan apparently in agony. "Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!"
You can hear the sound of the person entering the room and I ask, "Is there soda pop? I want a pop!"
"I don't have any," replied the nurse. "I've brought your breakfast."
"Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh!" I groan again. Then I shout in Spanish, "¡Tocino!" And then in English, "Oh, happy day!"
You can see my hand with a strip of bacon in it.

DIG THIS. NOTICE NATURALLY HANGING, RESTING LEFT ARM AND COMPARE IT TO THE ARM DISFIGURED, CRIPPLED, AND MESSED-UP BY THIS OPERATION.
MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE JUST, LIKE, REPAIRED THE SHOULDER?

HERE ARE SOME OTHER X-RAYS TAKEN OCTOBER 8, 2O15
shoulder x-ray Oct 8 2015a.jpg
shoulder x-ray Oct 8 2015b.jpg
shoulder x-ray Oct 8 2015c.jpg

shoulder x-ray Oct 8 2015d.jpg

19. La caída

Por regla general, la gente no tiene la capacidad de recordar mucho de lo que le ha pasado antes de la edad de cinco años. No obstante, me acuerdo muy bien de lo que me ocurrió un día cuando debía de tener unos cuatro años. Me caí de un carrito de compras y me pegué en la cabeza contra el piso duro de una tienda de abarrotes que se llamaba El Mercado Weiss.
No me acuerdo de la caída, ni del viaje al hospital. Sin embargo, recuerdo el sueño que tuve cuando estaba inconsciente. Había dos filas de hombres y mujeres vestidos en casacas blancas. Los de una de las filas me sostenían las manos y los de la otra los pies y me rebotaron de uno en uno por un pasillo largo hasta que, por fin, llegué a la oficina del médico que me frotó la rodilla con un polvo verde.
"Qué raro," me decía yo, "que haya puesto el polvo en la rodilla sabiendo muy bien que el accidente me hizo daño en la cabeza.”
Recobré conciencia y el médico me dio una linterna y me enseñó a prenderla y apagarla.

MI HOMBRO CÍBORG

En junio de 2015 hice una audición para una actuación en un bar que está a unos cuatro bloques de donde vivo. Toqué la guitarra y canté por dos horas y parecía que a ellos les gustaba porque después me contrataron para actuar durante la tarde del 4 de julio en la que iban a tener una fiesta especial.
No iba a poder asistir.
Al llegar a casa, puse mi equipo de sonido en la cocina. Yo no tenía ganas de guardarlo porque hacía un año y medio me había caído de mi bicicleta y me hice daño en el hombro. Todavía me dolía un poquito. Yo había tenido terapia, pero no me podían ayudar y al fin tenía que hacerme una resonancia magnética.
El procedimiento resultó increíblemente doloroso. Sabía que me iban a meter en un cilindro blanco que parecía de porcelana y había oído que los pacientes frecuentemente tenían una sensación terrible de claustrofobia al meterse dentro. No creía que eso me pasara a mí. Me equivoqué.
¡Era como ser cargado en un cañón de cabeza!
El técnico me mostró que los dos extremos del cilindro estaban abiertos y al saber esto me pude relajar un poquito.
Por supuesto la claustrofobia no era dolorosa. Era otra cosa. Si yo no movía el brazo, empezaría a dolerme y durante el procedimiento el técnico no me permitía moverme en absoluto.
El dolor aumentaba.
Había un altavoz en el cilindro y cuando el técnico me preguntó cómo estaba contesté:
—¡Me estoy muriendo!
—Solamente le faltan diez minutos. No se mueva.
Creía que iba a morir.
Después la médica me mostró el resultado que estaba en una pantalla aunque confieso que yo no podía entender lo que veía. Me dijo que se me había desgarrado un tendón y que estaba fuera del alcance de ningún cirujano arreglarlo.
—Las buenas noticias son que puede continuar andando en bicicleta —me dijo—. Porque en caso de que se caiga de ella otra vez no es posible hacerse más daño allí.
—¿No hay nada que se pueda hacer? —le pregunté.
—Bueno, se podría reemplazar el hombro entero.
Yo creía que se estaba refiriendo a un reemplazo de los huesos de un cadáver y no quería tener nada que ver con eso.
—Hay otra cosa —ella dijo—. Tiene dos tendones desgarrados, pero uno parece ser una herida vieja y los músculos alrededor de él están atrofiados.
No recordaba haberme hecho daño en ese hombro antes.
El hombro me dolía mucho, pero podía tocar la guitarra en un bar los miércoles y cuando pasó un año el hombro dejó de dolerme tanto como antes.
En aquel día de junio yo miraba el equipo en la cocina. Había dejado unos grandes altavoces y el amplificador y otras cosas en la parte central de la cocina por donde de costumbre pasaba y me dije, "Tom, vas a tropezar con ello".
Esa noche a las once y veinte, yo apagué las luces, pasé por la cocina, tropecé con el equipo y me rompí dos dedos y mi hombro.
En ese momento no sabía que me había roto el hombro. Me dolía, pero siempre lo hacía. Lo que me preocupaba eran los dedos, uno de los cuales se había dislocado y estaba apuntando a la izquierda. Era totalmente espantoso.
Llamé a mi hermano y me dijo que marcara el 911. Lo hice y los bomberos acudieron a mi casa. Llegaron con su camión de gancho y escalera y su ambulancia que yo siempre llamaba "El Taxi de Lagos del Sol".
Los bomberos me parecían un poquito aburridos con todo. Me sorprendió que no me hablaban mucho y no me ofrecían palabras de ánimo. En el pasado había sido muy impresionado al ver el profesionalismo de otros bomberos y la manera de la que aseguraban a personas heridas.
—¿Tiene dolor en otro sitio? —preguntó un bombero mirándome la mano.
—Bueno —contesté—. El hombro me duele un poquito.
Me llevaron al hospital donde me cortaron la camiseta favorita con tijeras y la doctora me preguntó:
—¿Me da permiso para colocarle el dedo?
Yo asentí con la cabeza y ella dijo que yo tenía que contestarle con palabras.
—¿Por qué? —le pregunté.
—De vez en cuando se quiebran.
—Sí, entonces —le dije—. Tiene permiso.
Ella se acercó a mí, agarró el dedo y empezó a tirar.
Yo empecé a gritar.
Mi hermano me dijo que desperté a cada paciente en ese piso del hospital.
—¡Ella tenía agallas! —dijo mi hermano más tarde.
El dedo no se quebró.
Usualmente cuando una persona se rompe un hueso, el médico se lo puede colocar y enviar al paciente a casa con su brazo o pierna en una escayola. Para mí no iba a ser así.
Tenían un aparato semejante a una máquina de resonancia magnética (No se exactamente lo que era). y me escanearon el cuerpo con él.
—Dicen que te has roto el hombro —me dijo mi hermano—. Es malo y tienes que tener un reemplazo.

Me pusieron la mano en una tablilla y el brazo en un cabestrillo y me enviaron a casa esa misma noche. Tenía que esperar diez días antes de la cirugía. Mientras tanto, fui a ver a un especialista de manos, un doctor que me dijo:
—Estos dedos te van a dar más problemas que el hombro mismo.
Me advirtió que lo que tenía era una herida que típicamente producía rigidez en la mano y que muy probablemente no iba a poder tocar la guitarra más.
Mi hermano habló con el cirujano ortopédico que le dio las directrices que yo tenía que tener antes de la cirugía. Escribió: 1. no medicamentos esa mañana 2. no desodorante...
Llegué al hospital bien preparado el día de la cirugía. Antes de la operación yo estaba en la cama y mi hermano estaba en el cuarto también. El anestesista me explicaba lo que iba a pasar. Luego dijo:
—Vamos a orar.
Nosotros nos enfadamos instantáneamente y gritamos a la vez:
—¡¡NO!!
En este instante, el anestesista se dio cuenta de que su egoísta intento de engañar y manipular había fracasado. Lo teníamos calado y bien lo sabía.
No me acordé de otra cosa.
Lo que escribí en mi libro Las misteriosas noches de antaño, ilustra la razón por la que nos enfadamos tanto. Trata de lo que pasó cuando mi madre estaba muriendo de cáncer.

Un pastor de no sé dónde se presentó. Era como los otros zopilotes de su tipo que siempre vienen para posarse en los árboles cuando alguien está enfermo.
Mi madre de cortesía dijo que él podría hablar con ella (a solas).
Después, yo hablé con mi madre que me dijo que le había dicho a ese pastor que no era cristiana, pero a él no le importaba. Ella estaba muy débil y ese clérigo sabía que podía aprovecharse de ella. Le tomó la mano y empezó a orar a Jesucristo.
Yo fui en busca de él y pensaba matarlo muy lentamente con mis propias manos. Afortunadamente para ese cerdo religioso, se había marchado saliéndose con la suya.

No quería que mi madre pasara su última día en el mundo siendo la víctima de tal predador y al despertar de la cirugía yo estaba empeñado en que ese anestesista jamás escapara de mi ira.
Pero tardé mucho en despertar. Puede ser que ese anestesista me hubiera dado una dosis doble de anestesia para que yo no recordara lo que intentó hacer.
Soñé con una enfermera. Era una hembra y morena versión de Brainiac V9 que se sentaba en un asiento girando delante de una pantalla que chispeaba. Yo tenía dolor, pero como ella me estaba leyendo los pensamientos ya lo sabía antes de que se lo pudiera decir y ella dijo que ya había enviado el analgésico. El azul de sus ojos chapoteó sobre la pantalla.
Pasaron horas.
Antes creía que alguien me iba a avisar: "Ya ha tenido la operación". como siempre se hace cuando alguien ha tenido pentotal de sodio y no ha tenido el sentido de que el tiempo haya pasado. Pensaba que tendría un despertar repentino.
Me dijeron que mi sobrino me visitó, pero no lo recuerdo. Me acuerdo de que el cirujano fue a verme, pero es un recuerdo borroso. ¿Fue entonces cuando me dijo que había usado el índice y el pulgar para sacar la cabeza de mi humero de la incisión con los restos de mi brazo? No, me dijo eso más tarde yo creo.
Durante la rehabilitación (en la que usábamos solamente español), siempre me decían cosas como:
—Quiero que levantes la pierna diez veces. ¡Cuéntalas!
No podía. Literalmente no podía contar de uno a diez por una semana y media.
Por dos semanas yo estuve internado en una facilidad de enfermería. Se negaban a dejarme ir a casa porque vivo solo y las enfermeras no querían que me cayera.

Cuando por fin había regresado a casa, unas enfermeras iban todos los días para darme terapia. No podía mover el brazo ni siquiera un centímetro y no podía levantar el brazo.
Una enfermera me levantó el brazo hacia arriba. El brazo había estado atrapado en el cabestrillo por mucho tiempo y anhelaba zafarse de él y estirarse.
—¡Oh! ¡Se está muy a gusto! —le dije.
Ella me enseñó a usar la mano izquierda para levantar el brazo herido.
El día en él que regresé a casa compré un ukelele. El especialista de manos estaba de acuerdo conmigo que sería buena idea empezar a tocarlo en vez de una guitarra. Al principio, ni siquiera podía cerrar la mano, pero con mucha terapia empezaba a mejorarse y al fin recobré el uso de la mano e incluso toqué en el bar que me había contratado meses antes.

Había otra cosa pendiente, pero tenía que sacudirme las telas de araña un poquito antes de llevarla a cabo. Me refiero a la cita que tenía con un cierto anestesista. Por fin se me había recuperado el cerebro y podía escribir mi queja al hospital y al anestesista. No anduve con rodeos.
Envié al cirujano una carta avisándole lo que estaba pasando antes de sus cirugías: que el anestesista acechaba para dar proselitismo a los pacientes. En el mismo sobre envié la carta que había escrito al anestesista y media docena de los superiores del anestesista también iban a recibir copias incluyendo el jefe de los tres hospitales del área, Tim Bricker.

August 17, 2015

Dr. Scott Siebel
Chandler Anesthesia Consultants
PO Box 1847
Gilbert, AZ 85299

Querido Dr. Siebel:

Su práctica de pedir que pacientes participen en actividades religiosas es poco ética. Digo esto suponiendo que no soy el único al que ha tratado de hacer orar con usted.
No tenía ningún derecho de pedir que yo me uniera con usted para orar justo minutos antes de mi cirugía mayor. No sabe nada de mis creencias religiosas y no soy un miembro de su iglesia.
Conozco a muy poca gente que quisiera arrodillarse y orar con usted, un completo desconocido.
Sí, estoy seguro que ha habido otros pacientes que con mala gana y descontento han consentido sus raras e inquietantes peticiones sabiendo que al poco tiempo usted tendría las vidas en sus manos. Ha podido hacer eso solamente por la situación intimidante de la que Ud. como anestesista se puede aprovechar.
Yo estaba en el hospital para tener los servicios del Dr. Paterson y su anestesista no para ser su compañero de rezos.
Me negué a orar con usted aunque supiera que tendría un anestesista que estaba picado por mi represión y decepcionado por ser privado de su oración prequirúrgica de costumbre. Tal doctor podría estar un poquito despistado y por supuesto no quería esto. Solo por esa razón claramente era poco ético de usted de haberme metido en esta situación.
Mercy Gilbert Hospital y Chandler Anesthesia Consultants, sin querer, me han fallado.
Dr. Siebel, sus superiores necesitan saber que está aprovechándose de personas enfermas y dañadas (pacientes de cuyas afiliaciones religiosas usted no sabe absolutamente nada) por intentar de imponer sus propias prácticas religiosas sobre ellos.
Esta clase de comportamiento, este proselitismo deliberado claramente no se acepta en ninguna parte.
No quiero tener una respuesta suya. Sin embargo, quisiera tener respuestas de sus superiores, en el Mercy Gilbert Hospital, Chandler Regional Medical Center y Chandler Anesthesia Consultants.
Me gustaría saber que a otros no se les pedirá que participen en las actividades religiosas de su anestesista como yo y que se tomarán medidas correctivas y disciplinarias apropiadas para asegurar que tales prácticas poco éticas y egoístas cesen.

Atentamente,
Tom Cole

En vísperas de septiembre recibí una carta de su jefe.

Querido Sr. Cole:

He recibido y leído su queja respecto al Dr. Scott Siebel.
Habiendo conocido al Dr. Siebel por muchos años, estoy seguro que él no tiene la intención de hacer mal a nadie. Sin embargo, él ha sido informado de su descontento y ahora sabe que no todos derivan consuelo de oración. Me ha asegurado que esta práctica cesará inmediatamente.
Quisiera darle las gracias por informarme de esto.

Terry Ambus MD
Bueno, no podría haber esperado nada mejor. Me gustaba la palabra "inmediatamente".
Por otra parte, aunque entendía que Dr. Ambus tenía que defender a su empleado un poquito y decir que no tenía malas intenciones, no me gustaba la idea de que el anestesista fuera un inocentón que no sabía lo que estaba haciendo. No merecía tal pase. Scott Siebel nunca habría tratado de orar con un paciente si el cirujano hubiera estado allí. Habría sido pillado instantáneamente y él bien lo sabía. El modus operandi de tales mojigatos es quedarse a solas con el paciente. Esto es lo que hizo aquel pastor con mi madre hace años.
Personas de ese pelaje no son tan estúpidas e ingenuas como nos gusta creer. Mejor dicho, no son tan estúpidas e ingenuas como ellas mismas quieren que creamos.
Más vale que el Sr. Siebel sea retratado como un ingenuo que como el predador que es: un predador de poca monta tal vez, pero no obstante un predador.
Escribí corriendo esta carta:

Querido Dr. Ambus:

Nada más una nota para darle las gracias por su carta. Creo que entendía mi preocupación. Creo también que se enteró de que yo no había hecho mi queja a la ligera.
Quisiera decirle que agradezco mucho su oportuna y apropiada respuesta.

Tom Cole

No todo iba a marchar sobre rieles. Recibí una respuesta del hospital Mercy Gilbert. Vino en forma de una simplona carta de desprecio escrita por un idiota de primera llamado Philip Fracica. Me puso furioso y redacté una carta de cinco páginas destripándole a él y al hospital por haber contratado a tal retrasado. La consideraba mi obra maestra entre todas las cartas que había escrito en la vida y con un gran orgullo la envié a todas las partes involucradas.

A loathsome man named Fracica
Was known from Maine to Topeka
As an oblivious pulmonologist
A litigious ideologist
And a prodigious religious apologist!

Acusé al hospital de no tener la menor idea de lo que constaba una política de quejas y para gran sorpresa mía un día descubrí que al recibir mi carta el hospital abandonó esa llamada política completamente: el jefe de los tres hospitales, Tim Bricker me llamó para pedir perdón.
Dijo que estaba totalmente de acuerdo conmigo con cada cosa que había escrito (y yo había escrito muchas). Me dijo que era un judío a quien no le gustaba ningún proselitismo e incluso había llamado a Terry Ambus para decírselo.
No creo que me estuviera haciendo la pelota para nada. Hablamos por media hora muchas veces riéndonos.
Después, algo muy raro e interesante sucedió. Resultó que había un par de cosas que quisiera haberle dicho a Tim Bricker. No sé por qué pero esto me molestaba mucho y empecé a imaginarme que me hubiera topado con él en algún restaurante o bar y así tuviera la oportunidad de hablarle otra vez. Había visto su foto en la página web del hospital y por eso sabía que podría reconocerlo. Era una de esas imaginaciones que supongo que todo el mundo tiene de vez en cuando.
Un día me decidí a tomar una cerveza en una cervecería pequeña que se llama La Percha por sus muchas jaulas llenas de pájaros exóticos. Yo había actuado allí muchas veces.
Yo estaba gozando de una cerveza de la India cuando vi a un hombre chaparro vestido de vaqueros y una camiseta. Le pregunté:
—Es usted Tim Bricker?
—Eso depende de quién lo quiere saber — dijo sonriendo.
Fue él. Estaba esperando a su esposa así que charlamos un rato.
Al terminar mi cerveza me levanté para irme y pasé por la mesa donde ellos estaban sentados. Él me señaló y me presentó a su esposa.
—Su esposo leyó cinco páginas de mi sermón más fino —le dije.
Tim Bricker le miró a su esposa y asintió con la cabeza.
—Fue un buen sermón —dijo.

19. The Fall

      As a general rule, people aren't able to remember much of what happened to them before the age of five. Just the same, I remember quite well what happened to me one day when I must have been four or so. I fell out of a shopping cart and hit my head against the hard floor of a grocery store named Weiss's Market.

      I don't remember the fall, nor the trip to the hospital. I do, however, remember the dream I had when I was unconscious. There were two lines of men and women dressed in white coats. Those in one of the lines held my hands and those in the other my feet, and they threw me to one another through a long hallway until, at last, I arrived in the doctor's office where he rubbed a green powder on my knee.

      How strange, I said to myself, that he put the powder on my knee knowing full well that that accident had injured my head.

      I regained consciousness, and the doctor gave me a flashlight and taught me how to turn it on and off.

MY CYBORG SHOULDER

In June of 2015 I auditioned for a gig in a bar some four blocks from where I live. I played the guitar and sang for two hours and it seemed that they liked me because afterwards they hired me to play during the afternoon of the fourth of July when they were having a special party.
I wouldn't be able to make it.
Upon arriving home, I put my sound equipment in the kitchen. I didn't feel like putting it away because a year and a half before I had fallen off my bicycle and hurt my shoulder. It still hurt a little. I had had therapy, but they weren't able to help me and finally I had to have a cat scan.
The procedure turned out to be incredibly painful. I knew that they were going to stick me in a white, porcelain-like cylinder and I had heard that patients frequently had a terrible sensation of claustrophobia when put inside. I didn't think this this would happen to me. I was wrong.
It was like being loaded head first into a cannon!
The technician showed me that the two ends of the cylinder were open and when I knew that, I was able to relax a little.
Of course, the claustrophobia wasn't painful. It was something else. If I didn't move my arm, it would begin to hurt and during the procedure the technician didn't allow me to move at all.
The pain grew.
There was a speaker in the cylinder and when the technician asked me how I was, I answered, "I'm dying!"
"You've only got ten minutes left. Don't move."
I thought I was going to die.
Afterwards, the doctor showed me the results that were on a screen although I must confess that I couldn't understand what I was looking at. She told me that I had torn off a tendon and that it was beyond the ability of any surgeon to repair it.
"The good news is that you can keep riding your bike because if you ever fall off it again you won't be able to hurt your shoulder any more than it already is.
"Isn't there anything you can do?" I asked.
"Well, you could have a complete shoulder replacement."
I thought that she was talking about a replacement using the bones of a cadaver and I didn't want to have anything to do with that.
"There's something else," she said. "You have torn off two tendons, but one appears to be an old injury and the muscles around it are atrophied.
I couldn't remember having hurt my shoulder before.
My shoulder hurt a lot but I could still play guitar at a bar Wednesdays and when a year had gone by, my shoulder stopped hurting as much as before.
On that day in June, I looked at the equipment in the kitchen. I had left some big speakers, the sound system amplifier, and other things in the central part of the room through which I was used to walking and I said to myself, "Tom, you're gonna trip over that."
That night at 11:20, I turned out the lights, walked through the kitchen, tripped over my sound system, and broke two fingers and my shoulder.
At the time I didn't know that I had broken my shoulder. It hurt, but it always did. What concerned me most were the fingers, one of which had been dislocated and was pointing to the left. It was absolutely ghastly.
I called my brother and he told me to call 911. I did and the firemen rushed to my house. They arrived with their hook and ladder truck and their ambulance, which I always used to call "The Sun Lakes Taxi."
The firemen seemed a little bored with it all. It surprised me a lot that they didn't talk to me much and didn't offer words of encouragement. In the past, I had always been quite impressed to see the professionalism of other firemen and the way that they reassured injured people.
"Do you have pain anywhere else?" a fireman asked, looking at my hand.
"Well," I answered. "My shoulder hurts a little."
They took me to the hospital where they cut off my favorite T-shirt with scissors and the doctor asked me, "Do I have your permission to set your finger?"
I nodded and she said that I had to answer her in words.
"Why?" I asked.
"Sometimes they break."
"All right, then," I told her. "You've got my permission."
She came up, grabbed my finger, and started yanking.
And I started screaming.
My brother told me that I woke up every patient on that floor of the hospital.
"She had guts!" my brother told me later.
The finger didn't break.
Usually when a person breaks a bone, the doctor can set it and send the patient home with their arm or leg in a cast. It wouldn't be that way for me.
They had a piece of equipment like an MRI machine. (I don't know exactly what it was.) And they scanned my body with it.
"They say you've broken your shoulder," my brother told me. "It's bad and you have to have a replacement."
They put my hand in a splint and my arm in a sling and sent me home that very night. I had to wait ten days before the surgery. In the meantime, I went to see a hand specialist, a doctor that told me, "These fingers are going to give you more trouble than the whole shoulder."
He warned me that I had an injury that typically resulted in stiffness in the hand and that quite possibly I would not be able to play the guitar again.
My brother talked to the orthopedic surgeon who gave him instructions that I had to follow before the surgery. He wrote: "1. no medication that morning 2. no deodorant..."
I arrived at the hospital well prepared on the day of the surgery. Before the operation, I was in a bed and my brother was in the room too. The anesthesiologist explained to me what was going to happen. Then he said, "Let's say a short prayer."
We both became furious instantly and yelled at the same time.
"No!!"
In that moment, the anesthesiologist realized that his selfish attempt to deceive and manipulate had failed. He had been caught and he knew it.
That's the last thing I remember.
What I write in my book, The Mysterious Nights of Yesteryear, illustrates the reason why we got so mad. It has to do with what happened when my mom was dying of cancer.

A pastor from where I don't know showed up. He was like the other buzzards of his kind that always come to roost in the trees when somebody's sick...Out of courtesy, my mother said that he could talk to her...
I talked to my mother, who told me that she had told this pastor that she wasn't a Christian, but he didn't care. She was very weak and this cleric knew that he could take advantage of her. He took her hand and began to pray to Jesus Christ.
I went looking for him, and I aimed to kill him very slowly with my bare hands. Fortunately for this religious swine, he had left, getting away Scott free.

I didn't want my mother to spend her last day on earth being the victim of such a predator and upon awakening after the operation I was bound and determined that this anesthesiologist would never escape my wrath.
But I took a long time waking up. Perhaps this anesthesiologist had given me a double dose of anesthesia so I wouldn't remember what he tried to pull.
I dreamed about a nurse. She was a brunette, female version of Brainiac V that was sitting on a whirling chair in front of a screen that sparked and glittered. I felt pain, but since she was reading my mind, she already knew before I could tell her about it and said she had already sent the pain killers on the way. The blue of her eyes splashed across the screen. Hours crawled by.
I had thought that someone would see me wake and say, "You've already had your operation." as they do when someone has had sodium pentothal and hasn't had any sense of the passing of time. I thought I would have a sudden awakening.
They told me that my nephew visited me, but I don't remember that. I remember that the surgeon came to see me, but it's a blurry recollection. Was it then that he told me that he had used his thumb and index finger to lift out the head of my humerus along with the remains of my arm? No, he said that later I think.
During rehab (in which we used only Spanish), they always said things like, "I want you to lift your leg ten times. Count them off!"
But I couldn't. I literally could not count from one to ten for a week and a half.
For two weeks I was stuck in a rehabilitation facility. They refused to let me go home because I live alone and the nurses didn't want me to fall.When I had at last gone home, nurses came every day to give me therapy. I couldn't move my arm a single inch and I couldn't lift my arm.
A nurse lifted my arm up for me. The arm had been trapped in the sling for a long time, and it longed to be free and to stretch.
"Oh, that feels great!" I told her.
She showed me how to use my left hand to lift my injured arm.
The very day I went home I bought a ukulele. The hand specialist agreed with me that it would be a good idea to start playing it instead of a guitar. At first, I couldn't even close my hand, but with a lot of therapy it began to get better and finally I recovered the use of my hand and even played in the bar that had hired me months before.There was something else pending that I couldn't carry out until I had shaken the cobwebs from my mind. I'm talking about the date that I had with a certain anesthesiologist. At last my cerebrum recuperated and I was able to compose my complaint to the hospital and the anesthesiologist. I didn't beat around the bush.
I mailed the surgeon a letter advising him of what was going on just before surgery: that his anesthesiologist was lying in wait to proselytize with the patients. In the same envelope, I enclosed the letter that I had written to the anesthesiologist and a half dozen of his superiors were also to receive copies, including the president and CEO of the three hospitals in the area, Tim Bricker.

August 17, 2015

Dr. Scott Siebel
Chandler Anesthesia Consultants
Re: ACCT #C14.41813 and Surgery
July 10, 2015 at Mercy Gilbert Hospital
PO Box 1847
Gilbert, AZ 85299

Dear Dr. Siebel:

Your practice of asking patients to participate in religious activity is unethical. I say this assuming that I'm not the only one you have attempted to get to pray with you.You had no right to ask me to join you in "a short prayer" just minutes before my major surgery. You know nothing of my religious affiliation and I am not a member of your church.
I know precious few people who would want to bow down and pray with you, a total stranger.
Yes, I'm sure some of your patients may reluctantly and unhappily acquiesce to your strange and unsettling prayer requests knowing that in only minutes you will literally have their lives in your hands. But their acquiescence is due only to the clear coerciveness of the situation which you as an anesthesiologist can take advantage of.
I was there as a patient to receive services from a surgeon, Dr. William Paterson, and his anesthesiologist--not to be your prayer partner.
I refused to pray with you even though I risked having an anesthesiologist that was miffed by my rebuke or crestfallen at being denied his customary pre-surgery prayer. Such a doctor might be just a little off his game and I certainly didn't want that. For that reason alone, it was clearly unethical of you to put me in that position.
Mercy Gilbert and Chandler Anesthesia Consultants I feel have inadvertently let me down.Dr. Siebel, your superiors need to know that you are taking advantage of sick and injured patients (whose religious affiliations you know absolutely nothing about) by attempting to impose your own personal devotional practices upon them. Such conduct, such willful proselytizing, is simply unacceptable anywhere.
I do not wish to have a reply from you. I do, however, wish to hear from your employers, Mercy Gilbert Hospital, Chandler Regional Medical Center, and Chandler Anesthesia Consultants. I would like to know that others will not be asked to participate in their anesthesiologist's religious activities as I was and that proper remedial and disciplinary measures will be taken to ensure that such unethical, self-serving practices will cease.

Sincerely,

Tom Cole

cc: William Paterson, Tim Bricker, Karen Byrnes, Marcia Bolks, Terry Ambus, Arizona Medical Board

In the beginning of September, I received a letter from his boss.

Dear Mr. Cole:

I have received and read your complaint regarding Dr. Scott Siebel.
Knowing Dr. Siebel for many years, I am sure he does not intend malice towards anyone. Nevertheless, your dissatisfaction has been brought to his attention, and he now realizes that not everyone is comforted by prayer prior to surgery. He gave me assurance that this practice will cease immediately.

I want to thank you for bringing this forward.

Terry Ambus MD

Well, I couldn't have expected anything better. I liked the word "immediately."
On the other hand, although I understood that Dr. Ambus had to defend his employee a little and say that he didn't have bad intentions, I didn't like the idea that the anesthesiologist was an innocent who didn't understand what he was doing. He didn't deserve that pass. Scott Siebel would never have tried to pray with a patient if the surgeon had been there. He would have be caught at once and he knew that very well. The modus operandi of such holy rollers is to get the patient alone. That's what that pastor did with my mother years ago.
People of this lowly sort are not as stupid and naive as they would like us to believe. For Scott Siebel, it's better to be scolded as an naive child than as the predator that he is: a penny ante predator perhaps but a predator nonetheless.
I dashed off this letter.

Dear Dr. Ambus:

Just a note to thank you for your reply to my letter. I feel that you understood my concern. I also feel that you were aware of the fact that I did not make this, my first such complaint, lightly. I want you to know how much I appreciate your timely and appropriate response.

Tom Cole

Not everything was to go smoothly. I received an answer from Mercy Gilbert Hospital. It came in the form of a simplistic brush-off letter written by an first class idiot named Philip Fracica. I was furious and wrote a five-page letter disemboweling him and the hospital as well for hiring a such a simpleton. I considered it my masterpiece among all of the letters that I had written in my life and it was with great pride that I mailed it to all concerned.

A loathsome man named Fracica
Was known from Maine to Topeka
As an oblivious pulmonologist
A litigious ideologist
And a prodigious religious apologist!

I accused the hospital of not having the slightest idea of what a grievance procedure was and much to my surprise one day I found that upon receiving my letter the hospital abandoned this so-called grievance procedure entirely: the CEO of the three hospitals Tim Bricker called me to apologize.

He said that he was in total agreement with me on each issue about which I had written (and I had written quite a lot). He told me that he was Jewish and didn't like any kind of proselytizing and had even called Terry Ambus to tell him so.

I don't think he was just mollifying me at all. We talked for a half hour laughing a lot of the time.
Afterwards, something quite strange and interesting happened. It just so happened that there were a couple of things that I wished I had said to Tim Bricker. I don't know why but this bothered me a lot and I began to imagine having run into him at a restaurant or bar and that I had the opportunity to talk to him again. I had seen his picture on the hospital's web page and so I knew I could recognize him. It was just one of those imaginings that I suppose all of us have from time to time.
One day, I decided to have a beer at a brewery called The Perch because of its manybird cages filled with exotic birds. I had played guitar there many times.
I was having an India pale ale when I spotted a short man dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt.
"Are you Tim Bricker?" I asked him.
"That depends on who wants to know," he said smiling.
It was him. He was waiting for his wife and so we chatted for a while.
After I finished my beer, I got up to go and walked by the table where they were sitting. He waved me over and introduced me to his wife.
"Your husband read five pages of my finest rant," I told her.
Tim Bricker looked at his wife and nodded.
"It was a good rant," he said.