WEBVTT

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A few years ago,

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my mom developed rheumatoid arthritis.

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Her wrists, knees and toes swelled up,
causing crippling, chronic pain.

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She had to file for disability.

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She stopped attending our local mosque.

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Some mornings it was too painful
for her to brush her teeth.

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I wanted to help.

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But I didn't know how.

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I'm not a doctor.

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So, what I am is a historian of medicine.

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So I started to research
the history of chronic pain.

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Turns out, UCLA has an entire
history of pain collection

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in their archives.

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And I found a story --
a fantastic story --

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of a man who saved -- rescued --
millions of people from pain;

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people like my mom.

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Yet, I had never heard of him.

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There were no biographies
of him, no Hollywood movies.

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His name was John J. Bonica.

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But when our story begins,

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he was better known as
Johnny "Bull" Walker.

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It was a summer day in 1941.

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The circus had just arrived
in the tiny town of Brookfield, New York.

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Spectators flocked to see
the wire-walkers, the tramp clowns --

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if they were lucky, the human cannonball.

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They also came to see the strongman,
Johnny "Bull" Walker,

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a brawny bully who'd pin you for a dollar.

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You know, on that particular day,
a voice rang out

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over the circus P.A. system.

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They needed a doctor urgently,
in the live animal tent.

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Something had gone wrong
with the lion tamer.

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The climax of his act had gone wrong,

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and his head was stuck
inside the lion's mouth.

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He was running out of air;

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the crowd watched in horror

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as he struggled and then passed out.

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When the lion finally did relax its jaws,

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the lion tamer just slumped
to the ground, motionless.

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When he came to a few minutes later,

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he saw a familiar figure hunched over him.

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It was Bull Walker.

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The strongman had given the lion tamer
mouth-to-mouth, and saved his life.

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Now, the strongman hadn't told anyone,

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but he was actually
a third-year medical student.

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He toured with the circus
during summers to pay tuition,

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but kept it a secret
to protect his persona.

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He was supposed to be
a brute, a villain --

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not a nerdy do-gooder.

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His medical colleagues didn't
know his secret, either.

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As he put it, "If you were
an athlete, you were a dumb dodo."

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So he didn't tell them about the circus,

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or about how he wrestled professionally
on evenings and weekends.

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He used a pseudonym like Bull Walker,

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or later, the Masked Marvel.

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He even kept it a secret that same year,

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when he was crowned
the Light Heavyweight Champion

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of the world.

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Over the years, John J. Bonica
lived these parallel lives.

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He was a wrestler;

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he was a doctor.

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He was a heel;

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he was a hero.

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He inflicted pain,

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and he treated it.

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And he didn’t know it at the time,
but over the next five decades,

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he'd draw on these dueling identities

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to forge a whole new way
to think about pain.

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It'd change modern medicine
so much so, that decades later,

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Time magazine would call him
pain relief's founding father.

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But that all happened later.

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In 1942, Bonica graduated
medical school and married Emma,

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his sweetheart, whom he had met
at one of his matches years before.

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He still wrestled in secret -- he had to.

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His internship at New York's
St. Vincent's Hospital paid nothing.

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With his championship belt,
he wrestled in big-ticket venues,

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like Madison Square Garden,

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against big-time opponents,

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like Everett "The Blonde Bear" Marshall,

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or three-time world champion,
Angelo Savoldi.

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The matches took a toll on his body;

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he tore hip joints, fractured ribs.

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One night, The Terrible Turk's big toe
scratched a scar like Capone's

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down the side of his face.

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The next morning at work,
he had to wear a surgical mask to hide it.

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Twice Bonica showed up to the O.R.
with one eye so bruised,

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he couldn't see out of it.

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But worst of all were
his mangled cauliflower ears.

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He said they felt like two baseballs
on the sides of his head.

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Pain just kept accumulating in his life.

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Next, he watched his wife go
into labor at his hospital.

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She heaved and pushed, clearly in anguish.

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Her obstetrician called
out to the intern on duty

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to give her a few drops of ether
to ease her pain.

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But the intern was a young guy,
just three weeks on the job --

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he was jittery, and in applying the ether,

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irritated Emma's throat.

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She vomited and choked,
and started to turn blue.

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Bonica, who was watching all this,
pushed the intern out of the way,

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cleared her airway,

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and saved his wife
and his unborn daughter.

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At that moment, he decided
to devote his life to anesthesiology.

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Later, he'd even go on to help develop
the epidural, for delivering mothers.

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But before he could focus on obstetrics,

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Bonica had to report for basic training.

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Right around D-Day,

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Bonica showed up
to Madigan Army Medical Center,

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near Tacoma.

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At 7,700 beds, it was one of the largest
army hospitals in America.

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Bonica was in charge
of all pain control there.

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He was only 27.

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Treating so many patients,
Bonica started noticing cases

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that contradicted everything
he had learned.

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Pain was supposed to be
a kind of alarm bell -- in a good way --

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a body's way of signaling an injury,
like a broken arm.

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But in some cases,

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like after a patient had a leg amputated,

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that patient might still complain
of pain in that nonexistent leg.

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But if the injury had been treated, why
would the alarm bell keep ringing?

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There were other cases in which there
was no evidence of an injury whatsoever,

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and yet, still the patient hurt.

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Bonica tracked down all the specialists
at his hospital -- surgeons,

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neurologists, psychiatrists, others.

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And he tried to get
their opinions on his patients.

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It took too long, so he started organizing
group meetings over lunch.

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It would be like a tag team of specialists
going up against the patient's pain.

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No one had ever focused on pain
this way before.

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After that, he hit the books.

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He read every medical textbook
he could get his hands on,

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carefully noting every mention
of the word "pain."

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Out of the 14,000 pages he read,

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the word "pain" was
on 17 and a half of them.

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Seventeen and a half.

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For the most basic, most common,
most frustrating part of being a patient.

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Bonica was shocked -- I'm quoting him,

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he said, "What the hell kind of conclusion
can you come to there?

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The most important thing
from the patient's perspective,

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they don't talk about."

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So over the next eight years,
Bonica would talk about it.

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He'd write about it; he'd write
those missing pages.

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He wrote what would later be known
as the Bible of Pain.

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In it he proposed new strategies,

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new treatments using
nerve-block injections.

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He proposed a new institution,
the Pain Clinic,

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based on those lunchtime meetings.

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But the most important thing
about his book

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was that it was kind of an emotional
alarm bell for medicine.

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A desperate plea to doctors
to take pain seriously

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in patients' lives.

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He recast the very purpose of medicine.

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The goal wasn't to make patients better;

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it was to make patients feel better.

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He pushed his pain agenda for decades,

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before it finally took hold
in the mid-'70s.

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Hundreds of pain clinics sprung up
all over the world.

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But as they did -- a tragic twist.

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Bonica's years of wrestling
caught up to him.

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He had been out of the ring
for over 20 years,

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but those 1,500 professional bouts
had left a mark on his body.

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Still in his mid-50s, he suffered
severe osteoarthritis.

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Over the next 20 years
he'd have 22 surgeries,

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including four spine operations,

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and hip replacement after hip replacement.

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He could barely raise
his arm, turn his neck.

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He needed aluminum crutches to walk.

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His friends and former students
became his doctors.

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One recalled that he probably
had more nerve-block injections

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than anyone else on the planet.

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Already a workaholic,
he worked even more --

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15- to 18-hour days.

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Healing others became more
than just his job,

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it was his own most effective
form of relief.

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"If I wasn't as busy as I am,"
he told a reporter at the time,

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"I would be a completely disabled guy."

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On a business trip to Florida
in the early 1980s,

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Bonica got a former student to drive
him to the Hyde Park area in Tampa.

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They drove past palm trees
and pulled up to an old mansion,

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with giant silver howitzer cannons
hidden in the garage.

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The house belonged to the Zacchini family,

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who were something like
American circus royalty.

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Decades earlier, Bonica had watched them,

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clad in silver jumpsuits and goggles,

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doing the act they pioneered --
the Human Cannonball.

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But now they were like him: retired.

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That generation is all dead
now, including Bonica,

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so there's no way to know exactly
what they said that day.

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But still, I love imagining it.

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The strongman and the human
cannonballs reunited,

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showing off old scars, and new ones.

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Maybe Bonica gave them medical advice.

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Maybe he told them what he later
said in an oral history,

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which is that his time in the circus
and wrestling deeply molded his life.

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Bonica saw pain close up.

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He felt it. He lived it.

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And it made it impossible
for him to ignore in others.

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Out of that empathy, he spun
a whole new field,

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played a major role in getting
medicine to acknowledge pain

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in and of itself.

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In that same oral history,

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Bonica claimed that pain

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is the most complex human experience.

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That it involves your past life,
your current life,

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your interactions, your family.

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That was definitely true for Bonica.

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But it was also true for my mom.

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It's easy for doctors to see my mom

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as a kind of professional patient,

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a woman who just spends her days
in waiting rooms.

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Sometimes I get stuck seeing her
that same way.

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But as I saw Bonica's pain --

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a testament to his fully lived life --

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I started to remember all the things
that my mom's pain holds.

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Before they got swollen and arthritic,

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my mom's fingers clacked away

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in the hospital H.R. department
where she worked.

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They folded samosas for our entire mosque.

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When I was a kid, they cut my hair,

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wiped my nose,

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tied my shoes.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)