I'm an old school general surgeon that does trauma,

thoracic vascular oncology, and, other tumors and stuff.

But, and they're not trained like that anymore.

So I.

But I just didn't want to ever be caught in a situation where

I could not save someone's life.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to Seek Go Create Tim Winders here, your host.

I'm an executive coach and just a guy who lives in an rv.

This is the place where we challenge conventional definitions of success,

explore stories of transformation in leadership, business, and ministry

will definitely be doing that.

In our interview today, we have the privilege of interviewing.

Craig Thayer is a nickname called Tank.

We'll ask him about that.

He's a renowned surgeon, number one bestselling author.

I'm a portion of the way through his book, I think 66%.

So great book.

He's a radio show, co-host and motivational speaker.

We're gonna dive into his journey.

He's got a lot of things in his background We're gonna ask about, talk about

success and finding strength, hope, inspiration in the face of adversity.

Just a lot of cool things here.

Craig, welcome to Seek Go Create.

It's an honor.

Tim, it's an honor.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And you're coming from my old home state up in Georgia there, and

I'm out here in the Black Hills.

So good to, always good to talk to people that are in Georgia.

Hey, Craig, first question, let's get started.

you and I just bump into each other and we really did just meet just a few

minutes ago, and I ask you what you do when someone asked you that question.

What do you tell 'em?

depends on the environment.

I grew up in California and, talking about God is somewhat risky in there.

I have two slides if I'm presenting one, like my credentials,

which is, I'm a trauma surgeon.

I've been trauma medical director for 20 years.

chief of Staff surgical review chair, husband to my wife, father to my kids.

assistant scout master to both my youngest sons who became Eagles, water polo player.

got back in playing masters in 2001 and got to be invited Tofino Worlds, to

play against a bunch of other countries.

yeah, but I think the other side of that is I'm, I'm a son of God and, like I said,

husband of my wife, father of my kids, and a servant here to serve and not be served.

Yeah, that I agree with you.

It depends on the setting.

Like sometimes I'll say if you're on an airplane and someone

just says, Hey, what do you do?

and, but that's interesting that you said when you're in

California you have a different,

Yeah, it's a,

that's sad, isn't it?

It is.

the coming to Georgia two years ago, you notice a lot of things.

One is the people are incredibly nice.

It's like California was in the seventies.

the billboards talk about Jesus.

You'll never see that in California.

the people talk about, and they'll ask you, ask 'em how are they?

And they say blessed, so there's not, and there's, I don't see any

racial tension in this state at all.

So maybe in the bigger cities.

but even then, I've visited, had some friends that were going

to conferences in Atlanta now.

We went to breakfast somewhere, and it's multi-generational and multiethnic.

it's a great place to be.

The interesting thing about Georgia is I grew up in a

small town just outside of Atlanta.

My wife did also that then got swallowed up by Atlanta,

and so it, it's interesting.

there's the big cities, Atlanta, Charlotte, and maybe Nashville

and all, but then there's, you get outside, you're a little outside

of Atlanta and that's just kind of small town south, smaller town.

and it really is a good spot.

we're, I'm coming right now I'm in Rapid City, South Dakota, and

it's the same way, it's, 80,000 people or something like that.

and we've just found that it nourish our soul.

We enjoy those smaller.

Areas.

And, I think that's the, I think that's the dividing point in if we wanna look

at our country now as like urban and rural, not really by states and all that.

It's kinda like that.

so now let's talk first about, I, I think the, the lead in your

bio is that trauma surgeon role.

And I think many times when we look at identity and who we are, it's often

attached to, some kind of profession.

I picked this up in the book, we'll talk more about the book in just a little

while, but I picked this up in the book.

You feel as if you were called to go into that role before birth.

Did I read that right?

Yeah, I'm absolutely, it, the book's about the miracles

of my life and if I were to give a testimony on a medical mission trip

that I've done every year for the last, we skipped Covid about 12 years.

I would've started, I was adopted.

I was an orphan for nine months.

And I was manii, brought up Catholic.

That was the requirement.

but the reality is it began before that.

So my natural mother, who was in Michigan, began to show, was engaged.

he wasn't going through catechism fast enough.

So she, when she started a show back in the sixties, would've been shunned at

their church, so outta wedlock pregnancy.

So she ran to California to a friend of Monterey, had me for 10 days, baptized

me, tried to look up what my baptismal name was, but they didn't have the records

or they just never answered me back.

and so really it began in the womb.

God knitted me in the womb before and knew me and knows my purpose and then,

but the definitive, I think moments were, I knew I liked to help people cuz I was

tutoring two blind students in geometry.

You have to think outside the box cuz they can't see a circle, they

can't feel a, they feel it like a sphere would be a tennis ball.

and and then I took an anatomy physiology class and that was it.

The human body was incredible.

one of the interesting things about that was as I got 110% on the paper I

wrote, which was on the eye, which is a scientist, Darwin, when he wrote his book

on evolution had, was very apologetic.

It took him 20 years to write and he has three things that he can't explain.

One of those is the eye.

Is that a coincidence?

I also grew up in Providence Court, so you know, God was

providing for me long and far ago.

but you really, it's fascinating to me because one of the

things we really address here is just this word success and how in many

times our modern day culture, that word's kind of been messed up because

so many people look to other people to measure their success or, it's finding.

Or something, which, all of that, there's nothing wrong with it, but I

don't think it's the pureness of what we are designed and called to do.

yeah, I think you said this on one of your, recent podcasts.

It's leading teamwork, and if you do it as a team, When someone fails

or makes an error, let's say it's football, they drop the ball, they come

back to the huddle and they apologize cuz they, they have skin in the game.

They want to perform for the team.

And so on the radio show, we interviewed a rear admiral of the u

s Reagan, who gave the flag to Mrs.

Reagan on one.

Ronald Reagan died.

And, he leads as a team.

he cruises around the boat, an aircraft carrier.

And, he knows people and he inspires em as a team member.

Right.

and my viewpoint is to be humble.

I think he was also mentioned when your podcast cast.

because the reality is if I'm the quarterback, I can get blindsided.

If someone, like Tarkin breaks his leg and a whole bunch of blindsides

that don't end well, If my receivers can't catch the ball or my running

backs can't carry it, I'm useless.

so that, that's my position in life and my position in surgery.

Yeah, the.

the fascinating thing about it though, this is where I was wanting to go, is

that, that, that's a difficult profession to get trained for and things like that.

It's not as if, you just graduate from high school and say, I'm gonna, become

a trauma surgeon or something like that.

and so it, it fascinates me too cuz you didn't really, it didn't sound

as if you came from a medical family.

None.

and I know, and I know one thing that most people do and

we've had a lot of conversations on the show and other things.

Most people, it's a journey that they go through of identifying

things that they don't want to do.

And maybe then they find things that they want to do.

But I'm really fascinated with this whole concept that you really

felt believed it was in your core.

from what I've read in the book, you really had a strong urging and almost.

burn the ships, didn't have other alternatives, wasn't like, you

know what, I'm gonna be a painter if this surgeon thing doesn't work

out, I'm gonna do something else.

You were on, on task with that.

So h tell me a little bit more about that feeling that you had growing up as a

five year old, 10 year old, 18 year old.

the times when you're in college, when we know that you are going

through challenging things.

We may discuss that in a little while.

So I'd like you to know more about it because that's fascinating to

I just, I think what I was lucky to do was, and I know my gifts

before, I knew that there were gifts, healing, empathy, serving, teaching.

and that became when I realized surgery, cuz all I worked with

my hands became a passion.

And once that passion is there, inspiration and motivation will

last seven days or so, but a passion will last for a lifetime.

so I knew that I wanted to do that so much that like my senior year, my

mom had sponsored two, a brother and sister to come over from England.

One lived in our trailer out front and the other one were

distributed throughout our house.

Kevin was in my room, cousin and, I played water polo that year, but I didn't

swim cuz I got a job for the family.

And my first W2 job was working at McDonald's.

and then I had scholarships to schools Stanford, for water polo, other ones.

And then, I didn't want to go to a school that I felt like I had to be obligated

to play and not have time to study.

So uc Davis was perfect.

It's, it was the only D one sport for that school was water polo.

And so I saw how I did freshman year and I did fine, then I could play.

and just you look through the adversity I went through in college.

I guess it's probably the stubbornness in me.

but I would never give up.

Never give up.

Yeah.

And and obviously you went through the adversity and we, and I think it might

be a good time to address some of that because, the college experience for most

people is that, this experience where they go, but you obviously had a focus,

you had to get undergraduate and then you had to go through the medical school,

and then you had to go through residency.

there's a long process there.

and most people would struggle with just the grades, the academic portions of it.

But, let's hit a few of the things that came at you during that time because

that, to me, it would've been a good opportunity to say, you know what,

maybe I need to rethink some things.

but yet you didn't.

So hit a few of those.

I read about 'em in your book

Yeah.

So

details there,

if.

Freshman year, third quarter.

So uc Davis is, order system.

It's 10 weeks.

Very quick.

You're taking a midterm a week and a half to two weeks into that quarter, and then a

midterm about three weeks after that, and then a cumulative final of the whole year.

you get behind very quickly if you don't stay up with things.

And one night dark room phone rings and my roommate is a two room dorm.

All male floor, answers the phone and I could tell something

was up one word answers.

and then it was your, it's your dad.

And so my dad, on the phone is just I don't know how to tell you this.

I don't know how to tell you this.

I dunno how to tell you this, but your mom's passed away.

And so I immediately said, I'll be right there.

My grandparents lived in Sacramento, so they got me to the airport.

I got picked up at the airport by my uncle.

And then, I was an, an all male floor and the guys said he'll never come back.

He won't finish cause he's, he is lost more than a week or about a week.

And then, but I did and I finished.

And if you get off series, like there's a chem one B, and chem one C.

If you get off series, so the first quarter's now one A instead it's

one A is now the second quarter.

You won't finish in four years.

Not the track I was on.

I was a biochem major.

and then sophomore year I'm coming back from a bacteriology class

on my bicycle come around the corner, wrong side of the road.

It's not dusk, but it's, early evening Earl pulls out in front of me.

I jack knife my wheel, so I won't hit her.

I go to the ground, got up, made sure she was fine.

She never got hit.

She stopped.

And the next thing I remember, I'm sitting there in front of an

ambulance, my god, blood coming from my, laceration in my ear.

They take me to the health center, they stitch up my ear.

I go home, back to the dorm.

sophomore year is an off-campus dorm.

And, I can't hear outta that ear and there's fluid coming out of it.

And I'm like, so I called the health center in the evening

and some grad student answers and I'm like, is this serious?

He goes, I don't know.

Is it, do you think it's serious?

I'm like, I don't know.

So we made an appointment after my midterm for bacteriology in the afternoon.

The next day I get there an x-ray later, I've got a baso skull fracture.

So I've got air in my head and the risk for meningitis.

So they admit me.

I'm there for almost two weeks.

And I've got organic chem, physics, biochem, lab,

bacteriology lab, I think stats.

there was 18 units, I think I dropped two and finished the quarter again.

And all my friends were saying he'll never finish.

He'll be off series.

And then my junior year, my dad calls me from a ER and says, there's

a bunch of fluid around my lung.

They just drained it and it looks like it's, stage four lung cancer.

And, I got to, I offered to come home and he is no, I'll, I know you have a

bigger purpose and I know what it is cause it was not a secret to anybody.

and then my dad died, in between my junior and senior year.

and it was, I was doing, I actually became a certified nursing assistant

working at a skilled nursing facility.

And, And once that, once my dad passed away, I stopped and

just took care of the estate.

But, and then the miracle in that year though was when my dad was sick.

I was in a five person dorm off campus and there was a phone jack old school,

I don't know how many people know about long distance phone calls, but now with

the cell phones, we don't have those.

But, yeah, I, there was never built to our suite and there was never

built to the whole dorm system.

So it was a free line for the whole year.

I could talk to my dad for an hour or two every night and then my dad passes

away and I get through my senior year.

And, just getting into medical school is another miracle.

I think I applied to 20 schools and I had 18 thin letters,

which means it's, as you've been rejected or done, not accepted.

And then I get one from uc, Davis, which is thin.

And I'm like, oh no.

And it says, congratulations, you've not been accepted.

And I'm like, what?

But you're on a wait list.

and then the funny story about that was, it was during the summer,

I'm just waiting to be called.

And I was waiting for my roommate to call me to go pick him up.

So I answered the phone, Craig's taxi service, and this lady says,

oh, this is the uc, Davis Medical School calling for Craig Theor.

Is he there?

And I'm like, oh, just a second.

I literally covered the phone.

I don't change my voice.

I give five seconds and answer it.

And she's yeah, you're in.

but yeah.

and there's, like you said, interesting you said that, I just knew that course,

but not completely planned outta my head because when it came to, to med school, I.

When I interviewed for Georgetown, there's, this is in the book too.

that's the most expensive school.

and they gave me an interview and, I was asked in the financial aid

office, how do you plan for this?

And I had never even thought about that.

And the guy in front of me was this rich kid that leaned forward in his chair

and just said, cash, cold, hard cash.

And I'm like, I just figured I'm gonna get there.

So I think I said maybe the military, or get loans and, yeah.

So it's just amazing what I got through.

It is.

Yeah.

There's no doubt there are miracles there.

and one of the miracles to me was that you maintained that focus on the end goal.

Cuz like I said, I could see how someone could easily along

that way say, you know what?

I'm gonna take a quarter, semester off and, I'll catch back up.

take care of family things.

you lose both parents.

you have the injury.

And in, in the book, I'll let people check this out.

I have a background in real estate.

I love the stories of you, as a young person trying to take care of a house.

and, that's in the family.

And so all of those things, I think you had plenty of opportunity

to go down another path.

But either, either you just were so focused, God's hand was there,

you were stubborn, all three.

I don't know, it could have been all of those combination.

But one thing I do want to ask.

Is that, I read somewhere that you had a reading disorder.

You didn't discover that till you were 55 years old.

And I was gonna ask, how would you say you were as far as academics?

Because going through all of the things for undergrad and then med school,

the, just the academic portion of what you did is not easy for most people.

are you strong in academics?

Are you just a great studier?

you have to be the anxiety and I can see why, giving

students extra time on an exam if they've have, if they have dyslexia.

I just grew up first, second grade teachers, he is a slow reader.

He needs to read more.

And third grade, they actually tested your words per minute.

And, I skipped around, I jumped front lines.

I sweat when Star Wars comes on and there's that hole.

And I land far away.

Long time ago, I'm like, oh, I can't keep up, or I can't stand

watching titled, subtitled movies.

I miss 'em or I gotta pom and read it.

And then, so I just knew that, but I never really thought that

it was a disability or a problem.

and I've taken a million tests.

MCATs are eight hours long.

Your boards are eight hours long.

You're, I just, I have angst about those exams because I look at the

time and the number of questions and make sure I stay on pace.

And then I worry more about staying up, which is completely distracting.

But I do okay.

and then the dyslexia for processing speed.

Cuz when you read, you use your cortex normally, but

dyslexic use deeper gray matter.

So we have a higher speed to do that.

It's just not as organized.

So reading's hard.

But when it comes to algorithms or like in trauma, we have, a whole

course called Advanced Trauma Life Support, and they teach you A, B,

C, D, E, which is airway, breathing, circulation, defects, and, environment.

you go through those in your head.

So the first, if you don't have an air airway, you then you got

six minutes, or you're brain dead.

and then you gotta make sure once you have the airway that they're breathing,

so you can process algorithms more quickly and get things more quickly Done.

So second thing related to that time of your life, you'd mentioned.

Mentioned a bit of a Catholic upbringing and throughout the book, the title of

the book is Saved, which I think has some multiple meanings from what I read.

I mean any, any, anybody in the Christian circles, when someone says

saved, they attach it to something that I think when someone's a

trauma surgeon and other things like that, it has multiple meanings.

But tell me about where you were, where your faith was.

I believe you always had this belief in higher power and things like that,

would you say you had strong faith when you were going through that season?

Did it strengthen, did it weaken?

Did it change?

Were you aware of it?

What, where was your faith?

just talk a little bit about that during that season of your life.

Catholicism, probably to 90% of the kids is force fed, right?

So you go to Sunday school, I think our eighth or seventh grade class

gave our teacher a nervous breakdown.

And the guys were proud of that.

and then Soul, the assistant took over and I'm ultimate scholar

is the ultimate skeptic, right?

So I'm like, CS Lewis or the other newspaper or writer that would, I want to

disprove this and if I can then whatever.

And so I was a, I would call, I would say I was a believer strongly in Jesus, God

in the Holy Spirit, but not a follower.

I wasn't going to church.

I was going to church with my family, but on and off I competitively swam.

So we were at almost every junior college in college on

the weekends of the whole year.

so keeping up with catechism was tough.

and it, to be honest, I, I would.

Jokingly say with my first wife, who I had my first three kids with, and

two with now my second wife Stephanie.

And that I would drop them off at church and I'd go, I'm going to my

church, which is the hospital, right?

not a great follower.

I'm serving, but I'm not really serving, not, I'm not studying the

word, I'm not learning the truth.

I'm not a teacher of the word, by any means.

Definitely not by example.

But then when my oldest daughter who played volleyball, was on a club

team and the club team would meet several different high schools or

bible study, they would go, went to Rolling Hills Church and Chelsea

goes, you guys need to come see this.

There was a guy who was a professor outta Santa Clara who just was all

about the context of the Bible.

And I love that cuz it gives more meaning.

And we fell in love with that and that's where we started going on

medical mission trips and So that was probably fif, no, it'd be more than

15, probably like almost 20 years ago.

So yeah, so later in my life really, that I really became

a follower and was there, or.

Yeah, and you obviously acknowledge the miracles and

all that occurred along the way.

there, there's another thing in.

This question just popped in my head, so I'll just kinda ask you, we're in a, we're

in a world today, you brought up Darwin earlier and you were heavy immersed in

what I guess we would call the sciences.

And we're in a world today where a lot of people see conflict between those and, and

there's conflict that's built in, between believing in a higher power, believing

in God, being a follower of Christ, and studying biology and medical and all it,

what's your, when I bring that up now, obviously you may not have been thinking

as much then, but do you see, conflict, do you see, do you see them meshing together?

how do you tie in science and faith at this stage of your life?

So that, it's an interesting question because I, one of the first books

I started right, was Disproving Science

Your dis.

faith.

It and I wanted to publish it in nature, which is like the

leading journal of science.

and I just started with what's science?

what is science?

Science is the observation of nature, which is really God's creation, right?

So cuz it's, it is funny cuz a recovery room nurse asked me that,

how, as a doctor can you be of faith?

And I'm like, Hey, 99.99% of astrophysicists and cos cosmologists

believe in the Big Bang theory, which is Genesis Light from darkness,

the explosion, blah, blah, blah.

and even Hawking in his two books, brief History and Briefer History, when he gets

to that point, okay, so there's a time zero, which means there was a time before,

and his comment on that was, that's a philosophical question, we won't go there.

So that's hawing.

But he's absolute science.

And Einstein was a deist.

he felt like he could mathematically explain the universe, but he

couldn't because of two people, Heisenberg, who was a uncertainty guy.

you can't figure out where a Subtonic particle is in location

without losing its speed.

and that just freaked him out.

But, and then there, I think there's a bunch of debates that he had with, max

Bore one of the quantum mechanics guys.

But, Yeah.

So it's just the, we, that's what we do.

Look at X-ray, we just find something different that we can

characterize what nature is.

or we take a protein molecule and we put it in a gel and we see how fast

it sediments, so it determines what its size is by some sediment rate.

so it all fits.

and I'm currently reading this book called Switched On Your Brain, which

is about epigenetics where we can think positively and change the, our D N

A transcription, producing different chemicals that create a different mindset.

It's an interesting book, A lot of science.

but I'm, I love that stuff.

yeah, so I think, and it's just so obvious that, there's too many.

Chicken and eggs for us to have evolved.

let's just take d n a, we had one experiment, long Fargo, where they

tried to recreate the earth environment and all they got were amino acids.

And they said, maybe the acids could act like a protein and then create an r n a.

And then the next experiment all did was produce r n a, no dna, n a.

And this is just a molecule, so not the double strand, the, that

double strand unwinds and then prints and it prints itself.

which came first?

The strands, which is, or the printer to print the strand strands.

Yeah, it's fascinating to me because to

me, I'm an engineer by training.

I went to Georgia Tech just down the road from where you are

Oh.

and it's interesting.

I remember when I was in school in the early to mid eighties and I kept trying

to veer away from this bigger explanation of what goes on and come to define things.

And the more you try to do that, I think the more it's, a challenge.

I wanna hold that thought for just a second cuz I want to veer in a

direction and then we may come back to this bigger picture discussion.

People that go through medical training, there's a lot of different directions

they can go and we don't have to get into all of that here, but obviously

there's specialties and medicine.

There's, to me, I've always thought it was a special kind of

somebody that was wired to go into.

Trauma.

Trauma, surgery.

Surgery, emergency room, life or death.

It's, to me, it seems like an adrenal overload almost all the time.

when do you rest?

and then all of a sudden the lights start flashing and you're on.

Talk about how you progressed into being a trauma surgeon as opposed

to just, family doctor or, whatever.

I know that's, there's a lot to that, but just because this is actually gonna lead

to, I wanna have a conversation about life and death, and I think this is, you've

got an interesting perspective on this.

So how did you get into trauma surgery?

when I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be a

cardiothoracic or a neurosurgeon, and then immediately he ruled out neurosurgery

when I saw it in medical school.

And then cardiothoracic, I did my own internship with the Sutter guys.

So I set it up and designed it all myself to experience it.

And I realized it, the work ethic and the commitment is huge, but te and

they're great technicians, but there's not a lot of mental challenge to stuff.

they do valves and bypasses, and unless you go into peds.

Where you have a whole bunch of malformations then it's more interesting.

But so then the other experience was this patient at the VA hospital who

had lung cancer started to bleed into his trachea and the medicine team

didn't know how to put a tube into his trachea or to a tracheostomy.

And, the surgical resident was in the or.

So I was on the, it was my 12 weeks on the medicine service.

In med school you do 12 weeks of medicine surgery, 12 weeks of surgery, eight

weeks of ob, just different rotations.

And I go, I don't want to ever get caught in this position.

so technically, cuz now there's fellowships that make you trauma.

I was, I'm an old school general surgeon that does trauma, thoracic vascular

oncology, and, other tumors and stuff.

But, and they're not trained like that anymore.

So I.

But I just didn't want to ever be caught in a situation where

I could not save someone's life.

And that was general surgery.

So someone has a head bonk and they've got a hematoma.

I can drain that after you've been shot in the chest and there's a

hole in your heart, I can get to it, put my finger in it and get

you the upper, lemme get it close.

if you've got a ruptured aortic aneurysm and you're bleeding

into death, I can clamp that off, put so on a graft and yeah.

and as far as the anxiety, you have to learn to control your heart rate.

Cuz if you go about above about 180 or so, you get a tremor and that's not gonna

work really well in the operating room.

yeah, and like I said, I think the, you compartmentalize cuz I

can remember a case with a six year old boy and it's in the book.

Parents are going to like Safeway or somewhere for getting some food.

Rainy.

Day two kids are in the back, the, they lose traction and the car drifts to the

cross, the center line and a big truck hits 'em that end of the rear end of the

car that slams the car around into a tree.

So both rear ends on each side are just smashed The girls dead at the scene.

the six-year-old still has some signs of life, heartbeat.

So they get rushed to us, open his chest, do open heart massage.

There's no injury in his chest to account for his lack of blood pressure,

run into the operating room, open his belly, and there's nothing in there.

And so you just go through this, but when you pull that drape off and it's no longer

just a strip of skin, you crumble it.

Always these big ones take a piece of you and you memorialize 'em.

So when you compartmentalize 'em, bring 'em out every once in a while

and honor 'em, know that it's there.

Don't let it live in your psyche.

So it's a problem.

But, yeah, but you and closure.

that was one of the cases where I went back to the paramedics in the police

and had a big chaplain was there, just to let 'em know what happened.

Cuz they don't know.

They drop 'em off and they go back to their firehouse and,

but it gave them closure.

So one thing you brought up, you used a word the earlier when

you were describing the position you're in that you want to be in

a position to save someone's life.

Fascinating.

The name of the book is Saved and I just, the word savior popped in my

mind, and I do believe that a lot of people go in medicine and they want to

help people be healthy and all that, but I'm not sure it's as laser focused

as you said, that you want to save the life at the point of emergency,

something's going on and it's a very high.

Possibly high pressure situation.

Where did that come from?

Where did that savior, I don't wanna say kind, I don't wanna call it savior

complex, but that desire, that craving to be at the frontline, by the way,

we won't get into it here, but I love your, I love the chapter where

you and your son travel, the route of the, the band of brothers Yeah.

D-Day.

that's Normandy is one of the places that I've always wanted to visit.

I've been to Europe and haven't done that.

but you wanna be on the front lines.

It's like you seem to live for being right there at that point.

what's up with that?

I just knew and have to be, general surgery that I mean's.

The reason why I chose general surgery, a lot of, everybody going through

med school does that for 12 weeks.

They all say this is the most impactful medicine that you could do as it

seconds to the golden hour for trauma.

That you gotta do something right?

And I remember the, I'd gotten off the 12 weeks of medicine and I'm on surgical

rotation and I present this big long list of a differential diagnosis of 12 things.

Cause that's what medicine's like.

And Dr.

Fry, the surgeon professor, stops me and says, now Craig, if you want to think

like a surgeon, you need to list the most life-threatening thing first, and

then describe how you've ruled that out.

So I, I think it's just a desire to just be there at all costs.

a serv service above self.

just a calling.

it's just me.

I'm not sure how, probably part of that was just being raised in empath.

my mom was an alcoholic.

I learned that when I was 11 when we got home and my dad opened

the door and she was laying there naked with her back to us.

And like that, my sister didn't see it.

And then I went to my first aid meeting when I was 11 or 12.

So hearing people give their testimonies and, that we all suffer.

All of us we're all human.

So it's interesting.

I was playing pickleball yesterday morning and I mentioned, I was

reading through, this book and someone said, what do you have to do today?

I said, I've got a podcast interview and I'm gonna be

talking to a guy who's a surgeon.

and he used the term, he called himself an empath.

And these are both, I'll call them mature women.

they, they're not, they another way and they go, empath, what is that?

So when you use the term empath, what are you referring to?

I have the ability to put myself in other shoes.

my dad taught me when someone confronts you and they accuse you

or they attack you, the first thing you wanna do is throw a punch.

That's your first step.

The second step is to take a step back and go, why am I angry?

Why am, why do I wanna punch this person?

And the third step is, why did they just do that?

Put yourself in their shoes.

And why did they just do that?

I've had this very close relationship with death.

My mom passing away, my dad passing away with my grandfather,

passing away a week before that.

That has uniquely, and I, back then, not being a follower as much

would say that, no, I did say that.

That's God just teaching me how to be a better doc.

yeah, I think it's just like body language.

I was the big brother to all the girls at the schools and

I would only need to know 10%.

I probably feel like an F B I agent.

That's all they probably need to get a witness to speak as if you know everything

and they, oh yeah, I really like Joe.

He's a great guy.

And don't tell him no, and they just revealed their whole life because

I was a big brother, so I was safe,

me how to read body language and know that I was right about that, feeling.

And yeah, it's interesting.

you brought it up and it was something that I wanted to discuss.

You mentioned that you, obviously when you were growing up, you had

experience with death and family members.

But being on the front lines where you are in the medical world, you

are around death and the possibility of death probably as much as anyone.

I'm sure there's some other professions and the EMTs and things

like that, that are really close.

I really do think at times, this is something I've said before and

I'll say it here in the, and I'll pose it in the form of a question.

I sometimes think that part of the issues we have in this world, in

this life is either a fear of death or not understanding it, or those

of us that are followers, not really understanding eternal life and

what that means, what have you and the role you're in learned about.

Life, death, the good, the bad, the ugly.

Any, anything that you may just have on your heart that you wanna share.

Because I really do.

I've been around a grandmother and a father right around the time that he

passed, but I haven't re been around a lot of people at the time that they passed.

So I find that interesting.

So any, that's a question.

It's just a topic.

What would you like to share about that

Yeah, I have two things that came to mind.

One was the, my dedication in the book, which was to my grandmother and

the miracles that she left behind.

So she was a Christian.

I knew she was going to heaven.

I was blessed.

It was a miracle that I could even be there for the last two weeks to

be in her house and help her out, be there to support, hold her hand.

and then the miracle of, she died at 10 31 and her awesome clock

that you have to wind ev probably every week or so stops at 10 31.

And then the stool in the guest bathroom with a book on it that's

got a bookmark on her glasses.

And she's clearly gonna come back as she's already started the book

and the title's gone missing.

But I think the most dramatic to me, which is what I think gives the most

hope from the book as the last chapter.

It's just title Ralph.

He was a great friend of mine who asked me about Christianity.

He was a Vietnam vet Atheist.

I brought him the truth project.

he developed after he retired this really horrible Parkinson's disease

that was really accelerated, had a stroke in his right side so

he couldn't move his right arm.

But, I'm not gonna give it all away, cuz if you are gonna read anything out

of the book, I'd say this is the one that's gonna give you the most hope in

life because he clearly came to Jesus.

he had slurred speech from this.

and I won't describe what happened, but God blessed me

with witnessing this person.

Make a choice.

I haven't now.

that's exciting.

Like I, I said my Kindle tells me I'm 66%

yeah.

haven't got that yet.

Don't spoil it.

Don't spoil the ending for me.

To me, it seems as if some people in the role you're in become.

I'll just say this could become like numb to humanity.

Could become numb to the value of life and, the way death occurs is that valid?

Do you see that in, I'm not ca asking you to call out some of your colleagues,

but do you see that I've, I've been around some health professionals that

I think I've, they're just numb to it.

and how does one prevent themselves from becoming that when you see so much of it?

Yeah.

I think definitely burnout.

And, burnout could be really quick if you don't deal with the loss, the thing.

And if you just become numb, eventually that goes to anger.

when you're called at two o'clock in the morning and you're just hard

and done and don't wanna do that.

And, I've seen it in almost, all the professions.

Ours is probably the most demanding.

Cardiothoracic is probably more demanding than ours is, but we have different

challenges cuz it's not necessarily the surgery, it's the care afterwards.

Like I do a ruptured aneurysm, but that's one of the stories in the book.

It's three months that this person's there and they actually didn't make it.

yeah.

So I think, yeah, definitely.

I think burnout is huge.

post-traumatic stress syndrome, if you test all the I C U nurses, they've got it.

I'm sure if I tested I probably have it, but I just use it for my good.

it's just guys put me in these positions to train me to You can't minister

until you've been ministered too, You can't, but it's, you're more effective

if you know what you're going through.

And you can tell other people, look, I've been through this too.

It, there's some credence in what you say.

yeah, so I just, I think I've just been blessed with being put in these

positions to later be used in the same position or similar to guide families.

I always start a conversation with families that don't know what's gone

on with, what do you know so far?

Because I don't know where they know where can I begin?

And and then go from there and be honest.

So one of the things I picked up on in reading in the book,

and it's interesting from talking to you because you have a very, I'll call it

measured possibly dry tone, but yet you talk about, you are a prankster at heart.

you even have a nick have a nickname called Tank.

I don't know if we want to hear that story or not, but you, is that kind

of a pressure release, is that a way to relieve pressure because of

the tenseness of the role you play?

Or is it just you're just a prankster and, happen to be a surgeon?

I learned, I was dys dyslexic from my youngest son, and so

he was getting in trouble at school.

He was the class clown.

he's very social, very charismatic, but he was ended up in the principal's office

and, so we pulled him out, we homeschooled him along with our second oldest, son.

and I think growing up I was the class clown.

sixth grade, Mr.

Hill was a.

X Green Beret, he would bring films from Stanford for World War II and

show the concentration camps and stuff.

And I'm not sure how our parents consented to that, but they

must have, or maybe they didn't.

He just showed 'em.

But he had this long bopper of, wooden stick with a rubber

black tip on the end of it.

And it was named the Benson Bopper from the last clown the year before.

And we knew how many bobs he had.

So I went for the record and I got crushed it by a hundred something.

but yeah, so I think for me, absolutely humor is, one of my vents.

It's a pressure reliever.

Because I'm always curious someone who works with

like leaders of organizations.

I think that our life, most things in our life, we're kinda like these

old pressure cookers and there's gotta be something over time that

we p, relieve some of that pressure.

And I just picked up on, on that.

somewhere along the way, this is an odd little shift, but you decided to write

this book and title, I'll give the full title here, saved One, trauma Surgeon's,

true Accounts of the Miracles in His Life.

what's up with that?

Why?

why'd you decide to write a book?

So my grandmother for 15 years, I would take her to 68 Sacramento

basketball Kings games, and she'd just, every time we'd go to dinner before then,

go to the game, and then I'd drive her home and just during dinner, car rides,

she'd be, you need to write this book.

It's gonna inspire and motivate other people.

And they needed her.

the doctors are human.

They're raised on artificial pedestals.

We all bleed the same.

And, it's gonna inspire them.

so she kept, and she got to read the drafts, I was at a Grant

Cardone 10 x leadership conference and a bunch of people were saying,

you need to be on the stage.

You need to be on the stage.

You need to talk to people and inspire them and give 'em hope and unite.

So there's a picture in the book of me standing in Haiti in

front of a UN helicopter, and I noticed the background of things.

So in the background, this helicopter my head's blocking some of the letters.

So it just says in the fur very far left you, the end's kind of worn off.

And then it says unite and then t i o n, which makes it, you need to unite people.

So action is taking act and making it more of a verb, so to speak.

and I'm like, wow, okay.

and I'm listening, right?

Is God speaking to me and or I'm just in my head.

But then all these other things that were happening, I was at a, in, West Virginia

at this gigantic Boy Scout camp and.

Some lady that was teaching us how to, the adults got to do

what's called bows and barrels.

So you shoot bows and you get to shoot these rifles.

And, she was one of the bow people.

And, I said something to her, she says, you should put that in your book.

I'm like, how do you know I'm writing a book?

She goes, I don't know.

Just seems like you would.

coincidence, luck, lucky, rare, impossible, weird, put God in

there and he's speaking to me.

and then my grandma motivated me to do it.

and then once she passed away August 7th, 2021.

So just recently, but, year and a half ago or so.

Yeah.

So I needed to do it.

What was the writing process like for you?

it's a se the portion I'm at now, it's a series of stories.

You're quite the storyteller and it inspires and does those things.

But what was it like sitting down and writing for you?

So I got to cheat.

another miracle we're in Vegas at the Grant Cardone thing and, a musician's

on stage, he come over overs and chit chats with us and he says,

Hey, why don't you guys come join my wife and our friends at this bar.

We're in Vegas for this conference.

So we did.

And, one of the people there was a realtor writing a book, and he had this

editor that hooked him up with this app on your phone called Rev, r e v,

and you could just dictate into it and then it would print it in five minutes.

You could make that award document.

And then I realized how horrible I sound when I just speak.

And then would, I'd also realized I left stuff out and then reword it and stuff.

And then, Hillary Jsm, great editor would, she didn't, she wouldn't

change what, but she'd wanted put, I forget what document she used,

but hey, clarified this, especially if it's a procedure or something.

Okay, what's this, what do you mean by insufflator or, described as better?

or the chapter about LeBron James.

It's who's he?

I'm like, what?

You don't know who this person is?

And then I looked him up and Wikipedia and I'm like, oh my gosh, he's still

married to his high school sweetheart.

He's got these kids, he's been in these films and this is his basketball record.

And yeah, I got to add, so it took a year and a half, so it was a process,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Writing is fun and, but even though you mentioned you cheated, it's

still you taking your thoughts, your stories, and then getting them with

cool technology that we have now.

and what were you, what do you think or what do you hope, or what do you,

obviously you're speaking and doing other things now, but what is the message

you're attempting to get out there?

You mentioned Unity earlier.

We could circle back to that, but what is it that you're trying to get across?

Yeah, I just feel a second calling, So it's still using my hands,

my empathy, my teaching and service.

but just in a different way.

And that's just getting on in front of people, businesses, societies, whatever.

The bigger, the better.

and just give them a message of hope and inspiration and, help them find

their gifts and look at the miracles in their life and that God still does

exist and still here right behind you.

yeah.

are you still practicing medicine?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Are you still in the same role?

Are you a still

Still doing the same thing.

yeah.

interesting.

Right there in, in the Georgia area.

good.

so you're doing this as like an, I don't wanna say an extra calling, but it's on

top of that other calling that you've got.

Tell, tell me about, you mentioned you, you did some medical missions trips.

I think some people might be familiar that some people aren't.

tell us a little bit more about that.

We've got a few minutes left here.

I'm curious about what goes on there.

Yeah.

we would go to Honduras and we went to Kopan in that area For most of them,

one we did Della, which has got the probably the biggest miracle in the book.

which is a rural hospital.

The other one's like an outpatient center, almost like what PLAs plastic surgeons do.

they'll have a, operating room suite in their office.

This couple bought it.

It's at the end of an ob, center where Bill Gates actually built a building

next to it so the May woman could come a week early and live there.

So they didn't give birth on the trail coming to the birthing center.

they do 800, births in six months.

It's very busy.

And, just the things, from six people looking for in the shelves.

some liquid Tylenol for one of the kids I'd operate on and no one finding it.

And then someone going, let me just take one last look and then boom, there it is.

Or my having a friend set up.

Cause what will happen is we get there, we get.

Housed.

And then the next day we start setting up the clinic and where I'm gonna see

80 to a hundred patients in a half a day, and then operate that next half.

And then the next four days, I'll operate the whole day and I'll do 48 surgeries

in four and a half days, no paperwork.

so it makes it a lot easier.

but it's just, it, I'm not, it, there's a difference between happiness and joy.

I'm not happy when I'm doing it.

I'm very tired and it's a lot of work physically and mentally, but there's

a lot of joy while you're doing it.

it's pleasurable to help people and then, and fix them and help them heal.

but yeah.

And and like I said, in one of these trips, my, my friend just set up this

little, he made a room out of black plastic, landscaping stuff he put

down to keep the weed from growing up.

And then a three-legged table.

And on a, there was a windowsill that we were in a courtyard of the school.

I could hear like the 80 people lining up out there.

My blood pressure's going up and I'm getting nervous and anxious.

And then I forgot to ask for these Ziploc bags for medications that have a rising

sun, a me son day, and then a setting sun to tell you when to take your pain meds.

And I go, oh, I don't have those.

And I look over in the windowsill and there's a roll there, and no one

can explain where they came from.

So you see these things on these strips.

And

the

then again, I won't, the other one was the one intel,

and I won't go through that other than when I finished the lap, the

laparoscopic gall bladder surgery.

And when I turned around to see how much time it took, the clock was seven after

seven on the seventh day of the month.

Yeah, that's, it's fascinating.

I picked up, I th I think one of the things you're, you shared well,

or just the way miracles pile up.

And I think it's really cool to document.

I think many times we're experiencing miracles all the time and we just

don't necessarily acknowledge them.

Craig, one thing that was fascinating to me, I was just looking at the cover

of the book and I recognized something and then I went back and I checked my

notes and went back and checked the notes that we'd originally gotten from you.

You are Craig Thayer.

You sometimes add tank in there, but I do not see.

The typical thing that we would see with someone in your field,

which is doctor, in front of that,

right.

why is that?

Why do you not?

Because that is something that becomes an identity to many people

that have gone through all that they have gone through to get that, that,

title, why is Doctor not there?

That was very purposeful because this book is not about

me, it's about God through me.

And so putting the MD up there, like I said, as an artificial

pedestal, and I'm writing this book as if it were anybody else.

That's fascinating because that title means a lot

to a lot of people, doesn't it?

No, I've seen surveys where that's the most trusted thing.

If you're an M D O, they, we have the highest trust level,

but that's not my point.

My point is this book is not about me being an m d e.

It's about, I'm blessed to do that, but it's really God through

me and allowed the beginning.

I could not have been here, but I am.

Craig, one thing that's fascinating with all that you've done

and all that I've got listed out here, there's a word that we have that gets

thrown around, the word legacy and you know what people are remembered for.

Do you have a thought?

what do you wanna be remembered for?

What is, if, when people look up a Wikipedia page on, Craig Thayer 20, 30, 50

years from now, what is it that you want that to have in it that you're known for?

I think, if, I wanna be cremated, so I don't wanna be

buried so I wouldn't have a tombstone.

But, if I had a tombstone, I would love it to say, a Christian who

served and did not want to be served.

That's good.

and I think that's a great little, exclamation point here on the end

of our conversation to have a couple things for people that want to find

the book or get in touch with you or connect or anything like that.

Where do you want people to go?

Yeah, I think the simplest thing is just the website.

So it's Craig Thayer, c r a i g t h, C as in Tom, h a y e r.

I was always wondering why my dad said that, and then when

I got old enough to start.

Oh, is that fair?

No, it's Thayer with the t dot net, so craigthayer.net, and it'll have

a link to the, site and then, all the other things that's going on.

this podcast will be in there too.

Excellent.

And I know that people can get the book everywhere cuz I

think we got it off the Amazon.

It popped in my Kindle.

So anyway, and a great read.

Hey, we are seek, go create here, Craig, those three words, let me give you

one of those words over the other two.

Just that resonates with you or means more right now.

Whatever, not too deep here, but, seek, go or create.

Which one do you choose and why?

Yeah.

they're all good.

but I think seek is the one I would choose.

Cause I think you've hit the nail on the head that we're not stopping and looking.

I do these crazy backpack trips every year that are off trail and so you

don't stop and look how much you climbed in the lake that you are above now.

And we don't stop and look with the miracles in our life, right?

We're just too busy.

So I think we need to seek more, seek God, seek the miracles.

Just seek kindness.

And, we'll have a much better life.

Excellent.

Thank you, Craig.

Enjoyed this conversation, and, I was excited to talk to a

trauma surgeon that wrote a book titled, saved what a great book.

So I recommend, listen, if you've been listening in, go grab a copy of the book.

I always ask this, but I bet there's someone that you're thinking of as you

listen to this that needs to hear this.

And so take a screenshot or share it.

If you're watching this on YouTube or in one of the podcast players, just share it.

That's one of the best ways that people get exposed to podcast

and YouTube and things like that, so make sure you do that.

I appreciate the conversation.

We do have new episodes every Monday.

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.