Defying the Odds: Conquering Rejection and Dyslexia to Become a Trauma Surgeon with Craig Thayer

Craig Thayer: 00:00:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:00:02

thoracic vascular oncology, and, other tumors and stuff.

Craig Thayer: 00:00:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:00:08

So I.

Craig Thayer: 00:00:10

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

Craig Thayer: 00:00:13

I could not save someone's life.

Tim Winders: 00:00:31

Hello everyone.

Tim Winders: 00:00:32

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

Tim Winders: 00:00:35

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

Tim Winders: 00:00:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:00:43

explore stories of transformation in leadership, business, and ministry

Tim Winders: 00:00:47

will definitely be doing that.

Tim Winders: 00:00:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:00:51

Craig Thayer is a nickname called Tank.

Tim Winders: 00:00:53

We'll ask him about that.

Tim Winders: 00:00:55

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

Tim Winders: 00:00:58

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:02

So great book.

Tim Winders: 00:01:03

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:07

We're gonna dive into his journey.

Tim Winders: 00:01:09

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:13

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:17

Just a lot of cool things here.

Tim Winders: 00:01:19

Craig, welcome to Seek Go Create.

Craig Thayer: 00:01:21

It's an honor.

Craig Thayer: 00:01:22

Tim, it's an honor.

Craig Thayer: 00:01:22

Thank you.

Tim Winders: 00:01:24

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:01:24

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:27

I'm out here in the Black Hills.

Tim Winders: 00:01:29

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:35

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:01:43

What do you tell 'em?

Craig Thayer: 00:01:46

depends on the environment.

Craig Thayer: 00:01:47

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

Craig Thayer: 00:01:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:01:54

which is, I'm a trauma surgeon.

Craig Thayer: 00:01:56

I've been trauma medical director for 20 years.

Craig Thayer: 00:01:59

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

Craig Thayer: 00:02:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:02:12

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

Craig Thayer: 00:02:19

play against a bunch of other countries.

Craig Thayer: 00:02:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:02:26

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

Tim Winders: 00:02:33

Yeah, that I agree with you.

Tim Winders: 00:02:34

It depends on the setting.

Tim Winders: 00:02:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:02:39

just says, Hey, what do you do?

Tim Winders: 00:02:40

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

Tim Winders: 00:02:43

California you have a different,

Craig Thayer: 00:02:46

Yeah, it's a,

Tim Winders: 00:02:47

that's sad, isn't it?

Craig Thayer: 00:02:49

It is.

Craig Thayer: 00:02:49

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

Craig Thayer: 00:02:53

One is the people are incredibly nice.

Craig Thayer: 00:02:56

It's like California was in the seventies.

Craig Thayer: 00:02:59

the billboards talk about Jesus.

Craig Thayer: 00:03:02

You'll never see that in California.

Craig Thayer: 00:03:05

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

Craig Thayer: 00:03:08

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

Craig Thayer: 00:03:12

racial tension in this state at all.

Craig Thayer: 00:03:14

So maybe in the bigger cities.

Craig Thayer: 00:03:17

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

Craig Thayer: 00:03:20

to conferences in Atlanta now.

Craig Thayer: 00:03:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:03:24

it's a great place to be.

Tim Winders: 00:03:26

The interesting thing about Georgia is I grew up in a

Tim Winders: 00:03:29

small town just outside of Atlanta.

Tim Winders: 00:03:32

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

Tim Winders: 00:03:37

and so it, it's interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:03:39

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

Tim Winders: 00:03:43

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

Tim Winders: 00:03:46

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

Tim Winders: 00:03:51

and it really is a good spot.

Tim Winders: 00:03:53

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

Tim Winders: 00:03:56

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:00

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:02

We enjoy those smaller.

Tim Winders: 00:04:06

Areas.

Tim Winders: 00:04:06

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:11

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:15

It's kinda like that.

Tim Winders: 00:04:16

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:21

bio is that trauma surgeon role.

Tim Winders: 00:04:26

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:30

attached to, some kind of profession.

Tim Winders: 00:04:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:36

while, but I picked this up in the book.

Tim Winders: 00:04:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:04:43

Did I read that right?

Craig Thayer: 00:04:44

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

Craig Thayer: 00:04:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:04:52

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

Craig Thayer: 00:04:57

I would've started, I was adopted.

Craig Thayer: 00:04:59

I was an orphan for nine months.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:01

And I was manii, brought up Catholic.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:04

That was the requirement.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:06

but the reality is it began before that.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:09

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:14

he wasn't going through catechism fast enough.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:16

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:19

their church, so outta wedlock pregnancy.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:27

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:32

or they just never answered me back.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:34

and so really it began in the womb.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:36

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:41

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:46

tutoring two blind students in geometry.

Craig Thayer: 00:05:49

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:52

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

Craig Thayer: 00:05:57

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

Craig Thayer: 00:06:00

The human body was incredible.

Craig Thayer: 00:06:02

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

Craig Thayer: 00:06:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:06:12

on evolution had, was very apologetic.

Craig Thayer: 00:06:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:06:19

One of those is the eye.

Craig Thayer: 00:06:20

Is that a coincidence?

Craig Thayer: 00:06:22

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

Craig Thayer: 00:06:26

providing for me long and far ago.

Tim Winders: 00:06:29

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

Tim Winders: 00:06:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:06:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:06:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:06:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:06:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:06:56

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

Craig Thayer: 00:06:59

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:05

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:09

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:13

They want to perform for the team.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:15

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:18

s Reagan, who gave the flag to Mrs.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:21

Reagan on one.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:22

Ronald Reagan died.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:24

And, he leads as a team.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:25

he cruises around the boat, an aircraft carrier.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:28

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:31

Right.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:31

and my viewpoint is to be humble.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:35

I think he was also mentioned when your podcast cast.

Craig Thayer: 00:07:39

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:43

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:47

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:07:53

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

Tim Winders: 00:07:58

Yeah, the.

Tim Winders: 00:07:59

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:02

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:08

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:12

a trauma surgeon or something like that.

Tim Winders: 00:08:15

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:20

as if you came from a medical family.

Craig Thayer: 00:08:24

None.

Tim Winders: 00:08:25

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:28

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:32

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:35

things that they don't want to do.

Tim Winders: 00:08:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:39

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:43

felt believed it was in your core.

Tim Winders: 00:08:46

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:55

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:58

out, I'm gonna do something else.

Tim Winders: 00:08:59

You were on, on task with that.

Tim Winders: 00:09:02

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

Tim Winders: 00:09:08

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

Tim Winders: 00:09:10

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

Tim Winders: 00:09:13

through challenging things.

Tim Winders: 00:09:14

We may discuss that in a little while.

Tim Winders: 00:09:15

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:30

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:35

my hands became a passion.

Craig Thayer: 00:09:37

And once that passion is there, inspiration and motivation will

Craig Thayer: 00:09:40

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:44

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:49

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:54

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

Craig Thayer: 00:09:56

distributed throughout our house.

Craig Thayer: 00:09:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:10:03

swim cuz I got a job for the family.

Craig Thayer: 00:10:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:10:07

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

Craig Thayer: 00:10:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:10:19

to play and not have time to study.

Craig Thayer: 00:10:22

So uc Davis was perfect.

Craig Thayer: 00:10:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:10:28

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

Craig Thayer: 00:10:33

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

Craig Thayer: 00:10:37

I guess it's probably the stubbornness in me.

Craig Thayer: 00:10:39

but I would never give up.

Craig Thayer: 00:10:42

Never give up.

Tim Winders: 00:10:43

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:10:44

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

Tim Winders: 00:10:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:10:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:10:57

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

Tim Winders: 00:11:01

and then you had to go through residency.

Tim Winders: 00:11:02

there's a long process there.

Tim Winders: 00:11:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:11:12

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

Tim Winders: 00:11:17

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

Tim Winders: 00:11:22

maybe I need to rethink some things.

Tim Winders: 00:11:25

but yet you didn't.

Tim Winders: 00:11:26

So hit a few of those.

Tim Winders: 00:11:27

I read about 'em in your book

Craig Thayer: 00:11:28

Yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:11:29

So

Tim Winders: 00:11:30

details there,

Craig Thayer: 00:11:30

if.

Craig Thayer: 00:11:32

Freshman year, third quarter.

Craig Thayer: 00:11:34

So uc Davis is, order system.

Craig Thayer: 00:11:36

It's 10 weeks.

Craig Thayer: 00:11:38

Very quick.

Craig Thayer: 00:11:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:11:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:11:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:11:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:11:56

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

Craig Thayer: 00:11:59

was up one word answers.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:01

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:02

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:07

I don't know how to tell you this.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:09

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:12

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:18

I got picked up at the airport by my uncle.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:30

And then, but I did and I finished.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:33

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:42

one A is now the second quarter.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:44

You won't finish in four years.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:46

Not the track I was on.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:47

I was a biochem major.

Craig Thayer: 00:12:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:52

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

Craig Thayer: 00:12:57

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:01

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:03

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:06

She never got hit.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:07

She stopped.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:08

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:10

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:17

I go home, back to the dorm.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:19

sophomore year is an off-campus dorm.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:22

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:27

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:30

He goes, I don't know.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:31

Is it, do you think it's serious?

Craig Thayer: 00:13:33

I'm like, I don't know.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:45

So they admit me.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:46

I'm there for almost two weeks.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:13:52

bacteriology lab, I think stats.

Craig Thayer: 00:13:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:03

He'll be off series.

Craig Thayer: 00:14:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:09

a bunch of fluid around my lung.

Craig Thayer: 00:14:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:15

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:26

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:29

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:32

working at a skilled nursing facility.

Craig Thayer: 00:14:35

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:39

just took care of the estate.

Craig Thayer: 00:14:40

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:43

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:49

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:52

the cell phones, we don't have those.

Craig Thayer: 00:14:53

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

Craig Thayer: 00:14:57

built to the whole dorm system.

Craig Thayer: 00:14:59

So it was a free line for the whole year.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:01

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:06

away and I get through my senior year.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:08

And, just getting into medical school is another miracle.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:20

And I'm like, oh no.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:23

And I'm like, what?

Craig Thayer: 00:15:24

But you're on a wait list.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:26

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:29

I'm just waiting to be called.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:37

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:40

Is he there?

Craig Thayer: 00:15:41

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:43

I literally covered the phone.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:44

I don't change my voice.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:45

I give five seconds and answer it.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:47

And she's yeah, you're in.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:49

but yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:15:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:15:54

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

Craig Thayer: 00:16:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:16:04

that's the most expensive school.

Craig Thayer: 00:16:05

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

Craig Thayer: 00:16:10

office, how do you plan for this?

Craig Thayer: 00:16:11

And I had never even thought about that.

Craig Thayer: 00:16:13

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

Craig Thayer: 00:16:17

and just said, cash, cold, hard cash.

Craig Thayer: 00:16:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:16:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:16:28

So it's just amazing what I got through.

Tim Winders: 00:16:31

It is.

Tim Winders: 00:16:31

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:16:31

There's no doubt there are miracles there.

Tim Winders: 00:16:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:39

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:43

that way say, you know what?

Tim Winders: 00:16:44

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:47

take care of family things.

Tim Winders: 00:16:48

you lose both parents.

Tim Winders: 00:16:50

you have the injury.

Tim Winders: 00:16:51

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:54

I have a background in real estate.

Tim Winders: 00:16:56

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:01

and, that's in the family.

Tim Winders: 00:17:02

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:06

to go down another path.

Tim Winders: 00:17:08

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:14

you were stubborn, all three.

Tim Winders: 00:17:16

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:19

But one thing I do want to ask.

Tim Winders: 00:17:22

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:24

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:28

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:34

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:39

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

Tim Winders: 00:17:46

are you strong in academics?

Tim Winders: 00:17:49

Are you just a great studier?

Craig Thayer: 00:17:52

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

Craig Thayer: 00:17:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:03

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:06

He needs to read more.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:07

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:11

And, I skipped around, I jumped front lines.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:17

And I land far away.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:22

watching titled, subtitled movies.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:26

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:30

it was a disability or a problem.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:33

and I've taken a million tests.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:34

MCATs are eight hours long.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:36

Your boards are eight hours long.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:37

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:45

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:49

But I do okay.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:50

and then the dyslexia for processing speed.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:53

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

Craig Thayer: 00:18:55

dyslexic use deeper gray matter.

Craig Thayer: 00:18:57

So we have a higher speed to do that.

Craig Thayer: 00:19:00

It's just not as organized.

Craig Thayer: 00:19:01

So reading's hard.

Craig Thayer: 00:19:02

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

Craig Thayer: 00:19:08

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

Craig Thayer: 00:19:12

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

Craig Thayer: 00:19:17

you go through those in your head.

Craig Thayer: 00:19:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:19:22

six minutes, or you're brain dead.

Craig Thayer: 00:19:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:19:26

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:43

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:51

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:55

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:58

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

Tim Winders: 00:20:03

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

Tim Winders: 00:20:08

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

Tim Winders: 00:20:12

Did it strengthen, did it weaken?

Tim Winders: 00:20:14

Did it change?

Tim Winders: 00:20:14

Were you aware of it?

Tim Winders: 00:20:15

What, where was your faith?

Tim Winders: 00:20:17

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

Craig Thayer: 00:20:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:20:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:20:30

gave our teacher a nervous breakdown.

Craig Thayer: 00:20:32

And the guys were proud of that.

Craig Thayer: 00:20:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:20:38

is the ultimate skeptic, right?

Craig Thayer: 00:20:40

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

Craig Thayer: 00:20:45

disprove this and if I can then whatever.

Craig Thayer: 00:20:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:20:53

in the Holy Spirit, but not a follower.

Craig Thayer: 00:20:55

I wasn't going to church.

Craig Thayer: 00:20:56

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:00

So we were at almost every junior college in college on

Craig Thayer: 00:21:04

the weekends of the whole year.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:07

so keeping up with catechism was tough.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:10

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:13

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:18

two with now my second wife Stephanie.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:24

church, which is the hospital, right?

Craig Thayer: 00:21:25

not a great follower.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:26

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:30

word, I'm not learning the truth.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:32

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:36

Definitely not by example.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:46

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:51

goes, you guys need to come see this.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:52

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

Craig Thayer: 00:21:56

about the context of the Bible.

Craig Thayer: 00:21:58

And I love that cuz it gives more meaning.

Craig Thayer: 00:22:01

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

Craig Thayer: 00:22:03

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

Craig Thayer: 00:22:09

15, probably like almost 20 years ago.

Craig Thayer: 00:22:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:22:15

a follower and was there, or.

Tim Winders: 00:22:17

Yeah, and you obviously acknowledge the miracles and

Tim Winders: 00:22:19

all that occurred along the way.

Tim Winders: 00:22:22

there, there's another thing in.

Tim Winders: 00:22:23

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

Tim Winders: 00:22:26

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

Tim Winders: 00:22:34

what I guess we would call the sciences.

Tim Winders: 00:22:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:22:41

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

Tim Winders: 00:22:45

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

Tim Winders: 00:22:53

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

Tim Winders: 00:22:57

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

Tim Winders: 00:23:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:14

I started right, was Disproving Science

Tim Winders: 00:23:17

Your dis.

Craig Thayer: 00:23:18

faith.

Craig Thayer: 00:23:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:21

leading journal of science.

Craig Thayer: 00:23:24

and I just started with what's science?

Craig Thayer: 00:23:26

what is science?

Craig Thayer: 00:23:27

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:32

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:35

how, as a doctor can you be of faith?

Craig Thayer: 00:23:37

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:44

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:49

the explosion, blah, blah, blah.

Craig Thayer: 00:23:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:23:59

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:05

So that's hawing.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:06

But he's absolute science.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:07

And Einstein was a deist.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:09

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:13

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:21

without losing its speed.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:23

and that just freaked him out.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:27

Bore one of the quantum mechanics guys.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:30

But, Yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:33

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:36

characterize what nature is.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:46

so it all fits.

Craig Thayer: 00:24:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:24:59

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:05

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:08

but I'm, I love that stuff.

Craig Thayer: 00:25:10

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:14

Chicken and eggs for us to have evolved.

Craig Thayer: 00:25:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:22

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:26

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:30

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:25:38

double strand unwinds and then prints and it prints itself.

Craig Thayer: 00:25:43

which came first?

Craig Thayer: 00:25:45

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

Tim Winders: 00:25:54

Yeah, it's fascinating to me because to

Tim Winders: 00:25:56

me, I'm an engineer by training.

Tim Winders: 00:25:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:26:00

Oh.

Tim Winders: 00:26:01

and it's interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:26:03

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:08

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:17

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:21

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:24

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:28

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:37

there's specialties and medicine.

Tim Winders: 00:26:40

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

Tim Winders: 00:26:46

somebody that was wired to go into.

Tim Winders: 00:26:52

Trauma.

Tim Winders: 00:26:52

Trauma, surgery.

Tim Winders: 00:26:53

Surgery, emergency room, life or death.

Tim Winders: 00:26:57

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

Tim Winders: 00:27:03

when do you rest?

Tim Winders: 00:27:04

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

Tim Winders: 00:27:08

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

Tim Winders: 00:27:14

to just, family doctor or, whatever.

Tim Winders: 00:27:18

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

Tim Winders: 00:27:21

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

Tim Winders: 00:27:25

got an interesting perspective on this.

Tim Winders: 00:27:27

So how did you get into trauma surgery?

Craig Thayer: 00:27:30

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

Craig Thayer: 00:27:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:27:36

when I saw it in medical school.

Craig Thayer: 00:27:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:27:43

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

Craig Thayer: 00:27:47

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

Craig Thayer: 00:27:54

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

Craig Thayer: 00:27:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:01

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:10

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:18

And, the surgical resident was in the or.

Craig Thayer: 00:28:20

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:28

weeks of ob, just different rotations.

Craig Thayer: 00:28:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:42

oncology, and, other tumors and stuff.

Craig Thayer: 00:28:45

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:47

So I.

Craig Thayer: 00:28:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:51

I could not save someone's life.

Craig Thayer: 00:28:53

And that was general surgery.

Craig Thayer: 00:28:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:28:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:04

you the upper, lemme get it close.

Craig Thayer: 00:29:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:08

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:13

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:17

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:21

work really well in the operating room.

Craig Thayer: 00:29:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:30

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:35

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:40

Rainy.

Craig Thayer: 00:29:40

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:46

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:50

car that slams the car around into a tree.

Craig Thayer: 00:29:53

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

Craig Thayer: 00:29:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:02

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:19

just a strip of skin, you crumble it.

Craig Thayer: 00:30:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:30

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:32

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:35

Don't let it live in your psyche.

Craig Thayer: 00:30:36

So it's a problem.

Craig Thayer: 00:30:38

But, yeah, but you and closure.

Craig Thayer: 00:30:41

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:45

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:49

Cuz they don't know.

Craig Thayer: 00:30:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:30:55

but it gave them closure.

Tim Winders: 00:30:57

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:02

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:07

a position to save someone's life.

Tim Winders: 00:31:11

Fascinating.

Tim Winders: 00:31:12

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:15

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:22

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:27

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:37

Possibly high pressure situation.

Tim Winders: 00:31:41

Where did that come from?

Tim Winders: 00:31:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:46

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:51

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:54

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:59

D-Day.

Tim Winders: 00:31:59

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

Tim Winders: 00:32:02

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

Tim Winders: 00:32:03

but you wanna be on the front lines.

Tim Winders: 00:32:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:32:12

what's up with that?

Craig Thayer: 00:32:15

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

Craig Thayer: 00:32:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:32:25

med school does that for 12 weeks.

Craig Thayer: 00:32:27

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

Craig Thayer: 00:32:33

seconds to the golden hour for trauma.

Craig Thayer: 00:32:36

That you gotta do something right?

Craig Thayer: 00:32:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:32:41

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

Craig Thayer: 00:32:47

Cause that's what medicine's like.

Craig Thayer: 00:32:49

And Dr.

Craig Thayer: 00:32:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:32:57

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:01

then describe how you've ruled that out.

Craig Thayer: 00:33:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:11

a serv service above self.

Craig Thayer: 00:33:13

just a calling.

Craig Thayer: 00:33:14

it's just me.

Craig Thayer: 00:33:15

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:19

my mom was an alcoholic.

Craig Thayer: 00:33:22

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:28

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:33:39

All of us we're all human.

Tim Winders: 00:33:43

So it's interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:33:45

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

Tim Winders: 00:33:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:33:50

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

Tim Winders: 00:33:53

talking to a guy who's a surgeon.

Tim Winders: 00:33:55

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

Tim Winders: 00:33:57

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:00

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:05

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:09

I have the ability to put myself in other shoes.

Craig Thayer: 00:34:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:22

That's your first step.

Craig Thayer: 00:34:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:27

Why am, why do I wanna punch this person?

Craig Thayer: 00:34:29

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:34

Put yourself in their shoes.

Craig Thayer: 00:34:36

And why did they just do that?

Craig Thayer: 00:34:38

I've had this very close relationship with death.

Craig Thayer: 00:34:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:45

passing away a week before that.

Craig Thayer: 00:34:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:53

would say that, no, I did say that.

Craig Thayer: 00:34:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:34:59

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

Craig Thayer: 00:35:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:35:06

I would only need to know 10%.

Craig Thayer: 00:35:08

I probably feel like an F B I agent.

Craig Thayer: 00:35:10

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

Craig Thayer: 00:35:14

and they, oh yeah, I really like Joe.

Craig Thayer: 00:35:16

He's a great guy.

Craig Thayer: 00:35:17

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

Craig Thayer: 00:35:21

I was a big brother, so I was safe,

Craig Thayer: 00:35:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:35:29

And yeah, it's interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:35:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:34

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:39

experience with death and family members.

Tim Winders: 00:35:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:53

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:56

like that, that are really close.

Tim Winders: 00:35:59

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:03

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:06

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:10

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:15

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:17

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:26

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:34

Because I really do.

Tim Winders: 00:36:35

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:39

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:43

So I find that interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:36:45

So any, that's a question.

Tim Winders: 00:36:47

It's just a topic.

Tim Winders: 00:36:48

What would you like to share about that

Craig Thayer: 00:36:50

Yeah, I have two things that came to mind.

Craig Thayer: 00:36:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:36:55

the miracles that she left behind.

Craig Thayer: 00:36:56

So she was a Christian.

Craig Thayer: 00:36:58

I knew she was going to heaven.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:00

I was blessed.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:02

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:05

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:09

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:13

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:23

got a bookmark on her glasses.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:28

and the title's gone missing.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:30

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:35

hope from the book as the last chapter.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:38

It's just title Ralph.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:39

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:42

He was a Vietnam vet Atheist.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:45

I brought him the truth project.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:46

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:37:54

he couldn't move his right arm.

Craig Thayer: 00:37:56

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

Craig Thayer: 00:38:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:38:02

life because he clearly came to Jesus.

Craig Thayer: 00:38:06

he had slurred speech from this.

Craig Thayer: 00:38:09

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

Craig Thayer: 00:38:12

with witnessing this person.

Craig Thayer: 00:38:15

Make a choice.

Tim Winders: 00:38:17

I haven't now.

Tim Winders: 00:38:18

that's exciting.

Tim Winders: 00:38:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:38:22

yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:38:22

haven't got that yet.

Tim Winders: 00:38:23

Don't spoil it.

Tim Winders: 00:38:23

Don't spoil the ending for me.

Tim Winders: 00:38:25

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

Tim Winders: 00:38:34

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

Tim Winders: 00:38:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:38:45

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

Tim Winders: 00:38:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:38:53

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

Tim Winders: 00:38:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:01

Yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:39:02

I think definitely burnout.

Craig Thayer: 00:39:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:09

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:12

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:15

and done and don't wanna do that.

Craig Thayer: 00:39:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:21

Ours is probably the most demanding.

Craig Thayer: 00:39:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:27

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:35

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:38

yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:39:39

So I think, yeah, definitely.

Craig Thayer: 00:39:40

I think burnout is huge.

Craig Thayer: 00:39:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:53

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

Craig Thayer: 00:39:59

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

Craig Thayer: 00:40:02

if you know what you're going through.

Craig Thayer: 00:40:03

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

Craig Thayer: 00:40:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:40:08

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

Craig Thayer: 00:40:13

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

Craig Thayer: 00:40:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:40:21

on with, what do you know so far?

Craig Thayer: 00:40:22

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

Craig Thayer: 00:40:26

And and then go from there and be honest.

Tim Winders: 00:40:30

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

Tim Winders: 00:40:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:40:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:40:46

you even have a nick have a nickname called Tank.

Tim Winders: 00:40:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:40:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:40:55

the tenseness of the role you play?

Tim Winders: 00:40:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:03

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:08

he was getting in trouble at school.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:09

He was the class clown.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:15

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:19

and I think growing up I was the class clown.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:22

sixth grade, Mr.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:24

Hill was a.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:30

show the concentration camps and stuff.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:32

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:35

must have, or maybe they didn't.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:36

He just showed 'em.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:37

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:41

black tip on the end of it.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:46

And we knew how many bobs he had.

Craig Thayer: 00:41:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:41:58

It's a pressure reliever.

Tim Winders: 00:42:01

Because I'm always curious someone who works with

Tim Winders: 00:42:03

like leaders of organizations.

Tim Winders: 00:42:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:42:08

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

Tim Winders: 00:42:12

we p, relieve some of that pressure.

Tim Winders: 00:42:14

And I just picked up on, on that.

Tim Winders: 00:42:17

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

Tim Winders: 00:42:23

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

Tim Winders: 00:42:28

true Accounts of the Miracles in His Life.

Tim Winders: 00:42:31

what's up with that?

Tim Winders: 00:42:32

Why?

Tim Winders: 00:42:32

why'd you decide to write a book?

Craig Thayer: 00:42:35

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

Craig Thayer: 00:42:39

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

Craig Thayer: 00:42:44

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

Craig Thayer: 00:42:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:42:49

It's gonna inspire and motivate other people.

Craig Thayer: 00:42:51

And they needed her.

Craig Thayer: 00:42:52

the doctors are human.

Craig Thayer: 00:42:55

They're raised on artificial pedestals.

Craig Thayer: 00:42:57

We all bleed the same.

Craig Thayer: 00:42:59

And, it's gonna inspire them.

Craig Thayer: 00:43:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:03

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:08

you need to be on the stage.

Craig Thayer: 00:43:10

You need to be on the stage.

Craig Thayer: 00:43:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:27

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:32

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:37

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:43

and I'm like, wow, okay.

Craig Thayer: 00:43:44

and I'm listening, right?

Craig Thayer: 00:43:45

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:48

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:52

at this gigantic Boy Scout camp and.

Craig Thayer: 00:43:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:43:58

what's called bows and barrels.

Craig Thayer: 00:43:59

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:02

And, she was one of the bow people.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:07

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:10

She goes, I don't know.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:10

Just seems like you would.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:17

there and he's speaking to me.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:19

and then my grandma motivated me to do it.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:21

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:27

Yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:28

So I needed to do it.

Tim Winders: 00:44:30

What was the writing process like for you?

Tim Winders: 00:44:32

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

Tim Winders: 00:44:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:44:40

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:44

So I got to cheat.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:45

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:53

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

Craig Thayer: 00:44:57

We're in Vegas for this conference.

Craig Thayer: 00:44:59

So we did.

Craig Thayer: 00:45:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:04

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:08

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:13

You could make that award document.

Craig Thayer: 00:45:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:28

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:39

or the chapter about LeBron James.

Craig Thayer: 00:45:41

It's who's he?

Craig Thayer: 00:45:42

I'm like, what?

Craig Thayer: 00:45:42

You don't know who this person is?

Craig Thayer: 00:45:44

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:47

married to his high school sweetheart.

Craig Thayer: 00:45:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:45:54

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

Tim Winders: 00:46:00

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:46:01

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:46:01

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

Tim Winders: 00:46:04

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

Tim Winders: 00:46:09

cool technology that we have now.

Tim Winders: 00:46:11

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

Tim Winders: 00:46:16

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

Tim Winders: 00:46:20

you're attempting to get out there?

Tim Winders: 00:46:22

You mentioned Unity earlier.

Tim Winders: 00:46:24

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

Craig Thayer: 00:46:27

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

Craig Thayer: 00:46:33

my empathy, my teaching and service.

Craig Thayer: 00:46:37

but just in a different way.

Craig Thayer: 00:46:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:46:44

The bigger, the better.

Craig Thayer: 00:46:46

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

Craig Thayer: 00:46:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:46:55

exist and still here right behind you.

Craig Thayer: 00:46:57

yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:46:59

are you still practicing medicine?

Craig Thayer: 00:47:00

Yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:47:01

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:47:02

Oh, okay.

Tim Winders: 00:47:03

Are you still in the same role?

Tim Winders: 00:47:04

Are you a still

Craig Thayer: 00:47:05

Still doing the same thing.

Craig Thayer: 00:47:06

yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:47:07

interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:47:07

Right there in, in the Georgia area.

Tim Winders: 00:47:09

good.

Tim Winders: 00:47:09

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

Tim Winders: 00:47:14

top of that other calling that you've got.

Tim Winders: 00:47:16

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

Tim Winders: 00:47:20

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

Tim Winders: 00:47:23

tell us a little bit more about that.

Tim Winders: 00:47:24

We've got a few minutes left here.

Tim Winders: 00:47:25

I'm curious about what goes on there.

Craig Thayer: 00:47:28

Yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:47:28

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

Craig Thayer: 00:47:34

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

Craig Thayer: 00:47:38

which is a rural hospital.

Craig Thayer: 00:47:40

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

Craig Thayer: 00:47:45

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

Craig Thayer: 00:47:47

This couple bought it.

Craig Thayer: 00:47:49

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

Craig Thayer: 00:47:54

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

Craig Thayer: 00:47:58

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:01

they do 800, births in six months.

Craig Thayer: 00:48:04

It's very busy.

Craig Thayer: 00:48:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:13

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:18

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:23

Or my having a friend set up.

Craig Thayer: 00:48:26

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:29

Housed.

Craig Thayer: 00:48:30

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:35

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:39

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:45

in four and a half days, no paperwork.

Craig Thayer: 00:48:48

so it makes it a lot easier.

Craig Thayer: 00:48:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:54

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

Craig Thayer: 00:48:56

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:00

a lot of joy while you're doing it.

Craig Thayer: 00:49:01

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:05

but yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:49:06

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:10

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:15

down to keep the weed from growing up.

Craig Thayer: 00:49:18

And then a three-legged table.

Craig Thayer: 00:49:20

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:25

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:28

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:37

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:44

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:46

can explain where they came from.

Craig Thayer: 00:49:49

So you see these things on these strips.

Craig Thayer: 00:49:52

And

Tim Winders: 00:49:52

the

Craig Thayer: 00:49:53

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:49:59

laparoscopic gall bladder surgery.

Craig Thayer: 00:50:01

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

Craig Thayer: 00:50:06

seven on the seventh day of the month.

Tim Winders: 00:50:10

Yeah, that's, it's fascinating.

Tim Winders: 00:50:11

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:14

or just the way miracles pile up.

Tim Winders: 00:50:16

And I think it's really cool to document.

Tim Winders: 00:50:18

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:23

don't necessarily acknowledge them.

Tim Winders: 00:50:26

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:30

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:38

You are Craig Thayer.

Tim Winders: 00:50:41

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:51

which is doctor, in front of that,

Craig Thayer: 00:50:53

right.

Tim Winders: 00:50:54

why is that?

Tim Winders: 00:50:55

Why do you not?

Tim Winders: 00:50:56

Because that is something that becomes an identity to many people

Tim Winders: 00:51:01

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:04

title, why is Doctor not there?

Craig Thayer: 00:51:08

That was very purposeful because this book is not about

Craig Thayer: 00:51:11

me, it's about God through me.

Craig Thayer: 00:51:14

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

Craig Thayer: 00:51:17

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:23

That's fascinating because that title means a lot

Tim Winders: 00:51:26

to a lot of people, doesn't it?

Craig Thayer: 00:51:28

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

Craig Thayer: 00:51:31

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

Craig Thayer: 00:51:35

but that's not my point.

Craig Thayer: 00:51:36

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

Craig Thayer: 00:51:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:51:42

me and allowed the beginning.

Craig Thayer: 00:51:45

I could not have been here, but I am.

Tim Winders: 00:51:49

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:58

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

Tim Winders: 00:52:02

Do you have a thought?

Tim Winders: 00:52:03

what do you wanna be remembered for?

Tim Winders: 00:52:04

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

Tim Winders: 00:52:11

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

Craig Thayer: 00:52:19

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

Craig Thayer: 00:52:22

buried so I wouldn't have a tombstone.

Craig Thayer: 00:52:23

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

Craig Thayer: 00:52:28

served and did not want to be served.

Tim Winders: 00:52:32

That's good.

Tim Winders: 00:52:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:52:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:52:40

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

Tim Winders: 00:52:44

Where do you want people to go?

Craig Thayer: 00:52:47

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

Craig Thayer: 00:52:50

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

Craig Thayer: 00:52:56

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

Craig Thayer: 00:52:58

I got old enough to start.

Craig Thayer: 00:52:59

Oh, is that fair?

Craig Thayer: 00:53:00

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

Craig Thayer: 00:53:05

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

Craig Thayer: 00:53:09

this podcast will be in there too.

Tim Winders: 00:53:11

Excellent.

Tim Winders: 00:53:12

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

Tim Winders: 00:53:15

think we got it off the Amazon.

Tim Winders: 00:53:17

It popped in my Kindle.

Tim Winders: 00:53:18

So anyway, and a great read.

Tim Winders: 00:53:20

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

Tim Winders: 00:53:25

one of those words over the other two.

Tim Winders: 00:53:27

Just that resonates with you or means more right now.

Tim Winders: 00:53:29

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

Tim Winders: 00:53:33

Which one do you choose and why?

Craig Thayer: 00:53:34

Yeah.

Craig Thayer: 00:53:34

they're all good.

Craig Thayer: 00:53:35

but I think seek is the one I would choose.

Craig Thayer: 00:53:38

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

Craig Thayer: 00:53:42

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

Craig Thayer: 00:53:47

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

Craig Thayer: 00:53:51

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

Craig Thayer: 00:53:54

We're just too busy.

Craig Thayer: 00:53:55

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

Craig Thayer: 00:54:01

Just seek kindness.

Craig Thayer: 00:54:03

And, we'll have a much better life.

Tim Winders: 00:54:05

Excellent.

Tim Winders: 00:54:06

Thank you, Craig.

Tim Winders: 00:54:07

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

Tim Winders: 00:54:11

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

Tim Winders: 00:54:16

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

Tim Winders: 00:54:20

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

Tim Winders: 00:54:27

listen to this that needs to hear this.

Tim Winders: 00:54:29

And so take a screenshot or share it.

Tim Winders: 00:54:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:54:34

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

Tim Winders: 00:54:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:54:41

I appreciate the conversation.

Tim Winders: 00:54:43

We do have new episodes every Monday.

Tim Winders: 00:54:45

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