A story about knots and surgeons
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0:04 - 0:07You know, we wake up in the morning,
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0:07 - 0:09you get dressed, put on your shoes,
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0:09 - 0:12you head out into the world.
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0:12 - 0:16You plan on coming back, getting undressed,
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0:16 - 0:18going to bed,
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0:18 - 0:20waking up, doing it again,
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0:20 - 0:23and that anticipation, that rhythm,
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0:23 - 0:25helps give us a structure
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0:25 - 0:29to how we organize ourselves and our lives,
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0:29 - 0:32and gives it a measure of predictability.
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0:32 - 0:35Living in New York City, as I do,
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0:35 - 0:42it's almost as if, with so many people doing so many things
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0:42 - 0:45at the same time in such close quarters,
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0:45 - 0:49it's almost like life is dealing you extra hands
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0:49 - 0:50out of that deck.
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0:50 - 0:55You're never, there's just, juxtapositions are possible
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0:55 - 1:00that just aren't, you don't think they're going to happen.
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1:00 - 1:02And you never think you're going to be the guy
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1:02 - 1:04who's walking down the street
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1:04 - 1:07and, because you choose to go down one side or the other,
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1:07 - 1:10the rest of your life is changed forever.
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1:10 - 1:16And one night, I'm riding the uptown local train.
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1:16 - 1:20I get on. I tend to be a little bit vigilant
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1:20 - 1:22when I get on the subway.
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1:22 - 1:25I'm not one of the people zoning out with headphones
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1:25 - 1:26or a book.
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1:26 - 1:29And I get on the car, and I look, and I
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1:29 - 1:31notice this couple,
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1:31 - 1:35college-aged, student-looking kids,
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1:35 - 1:37a guy and a girl, and they're sitting next to each other,
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1:37 - 1:39and she's got her leg draped over his knee,
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1:39 - 1:44and they're doing -- they have this little contraption,
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1:44 - 1:45and they're tying these knots,
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1:45 - 1:47and they're doing it with one hand,
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1:47 - 1:51they're doing it left-handed and right-handed very quickly,
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1:51 - 1:53and then she'll hand the thing to him and he'll do it.
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1:53 - 1:55I've never seen anything like this.
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1:55 - 1:58It's almost like they're practicing magic tricks.
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1:58 - 2:02And at the next stop, a guy gets on the car,
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2:02 - 2:06and he has this sort of visiting professor look to him.
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2:06 - 2:08He's got the overstuffed leather satchel
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2:08 - 2:12and the rectangular file case and a laptop bag
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2:12 - 2:14and the tweed jacket with the leather patches,
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2:14 - 2:16and — (Laughter) —
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2:16 - 2:19he looks at them, and then
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2:19 - 2:22in a blink of an eye, he kneels down in front of them,
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2:22 - 2:24and he starts to say,
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2:24 - 2:26"You know, listen, here's how you can do it. Look,
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2:26 - 2:28if you do this -- " and he takes the laces out of their hand,
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2:28 - 2:32and instantly, he starts tying these knots,
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2:32 - 2:36and even better than they were doing it, remarkably.
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2:36 - 2:39And it turns out they are medical students
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2:39 - 2:42on their way to a lecture about the latest
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2:42 - 2:45suturing techniques, and he's the guy giving the lecture.
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2:45 - 2:46(Laughter)
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2:46 - 2:49So he starts to tell them, and he's like,
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2:49 - 2:51"No, this is very important here. You know,
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2:51 - 2:54when you're needing these knots,
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2:54 - 2:55it's going to be, you know, everything's
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2:55 - 2:59going to be happening at the same time, it's going to be --
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2:59 - 3:03you're going to have all this information coming at you,
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3:03 - 3:04there's going to be organs getting in the way,
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3:04 - 3:06it's going to be slippery,
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3:06 - 3:07and
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3:07 - 3:10it's just very important that you be able to do these
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3:10 - 3:14beyond second nature, each hand, left hand, right hand,
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3:14 - 3:16you have to be able to do them without seeing your fingers."
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3:16 - 3:19And at that moment, when I heard that,
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3:19 - 3:26I just got catapulted out of the subway car into a night
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3:26 - 3:29when I had been getting a ride in an ambulance
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3:29 - 3:33from the sidewalk where I had been stabbed
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3:33 - 3:38to the trauma room of St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan,
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3:38 - 3:40and what had happened was
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3:40 - 3:43a gang had come in from Brooklyn.
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3:43 - 3:46As part of an initiation for three of their members,
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3:46 - 3:47they had to kill somebody,
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3:47 - 3:51and I happened to be the guy walking down Bleecker Street
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3:51 - 3:52that night,
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3:52 - 3:56and they jumped on me without a word.
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3:56 - 3:59One of the very lucky things,
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3:59 - 4:02when I was at Notre Dame, I was on the boxing team,
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4:02 - 4:06so I put my hands up right away, instinctively.
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4:06 - 4:10The guy on the right had a knife with a 10-inch blade,
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4:10 - 4:13and he went in under my elbow,
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4:13 - 4:18and it went up and cut my inferior vena cava.
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4:18 - 4:19If you know anything about anatomy,
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4:19 - 4:21that's not a good thing to get cut,
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4:21 - 4:24and everything, of course, on the way up,
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4:24 - 4:26and then — I still had my hands up —
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4:26 - 4:29he pulled it out and went for my neck,
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4:29 - 4:33and sunk it in up to the hilt in my neck,
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4:33 - 4:36and I got one straight right punch
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4:36 - 4:37and knocked the middle guy out.
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4:37 - 4:40The other guy was still working on me,
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4:40 - 4:41collapsing my other lung,
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4:41 - 4:47and I managed to, by hitting that guy, to get a minute.
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4:47 - 4:50I ran down the street and collapsed,
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4:50 - 4:53and the ambulance guys intubated me on the sidewalk
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4:53 - 4:55and let the trauma room know
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4:55 - 4:57they had an incoming.
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4:57 - 5:00And one of the
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5:00 - 5:04side effects of having major massive blood loss
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5:04 - 5:05is you get tunnel vision,
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5:05 - 5:07so I remember being on the stretcher
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5:07 - 5:11and having a little nickel-sized cone of vision,
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5:11 - 5:13and I was moving my head around
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5:13 - 5:14and we got to St. Vincent's,
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5:14 - 5:16and we're racing down this hallway,
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5:16 - 5:18and I see the lights going,
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5:18 - 5:25and it's a peculiar effect of memories like that.
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5:25 - 5:29They don't really go to the usual place that memories go.
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5:29 - 5:34They kind of have this vault where they're stored in high-def,
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5:34 - 5:39and George Lucas did all the sound effects. (Laughter)
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5:39 - 5:43So sometimes, remembering them, it's like,
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5:43 - 5:47it's not like any other kind of memories.
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5:47 - 5:50And I get into the trauma room,
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5:50 - 5:53and they're waiting for me, and the lights are there,
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5:53 - 5:58and I'd been able to breathe a little more now,
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5:58 - 6:01because the blood has left, had been filling up my lungs
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6:01 - 6:03and I was having a very hard time breathing,
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6:03 - 6:06but now it's kind of gone into the stretcher.
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6:06 - 6:10And I said, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
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6:10 - 6:11and — (Laughter) —
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6:11 - 6:15the nurse kind of had a hysterical laugh, and
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6:15 - 6:17I'm turning my head trying to see everybody,
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6:17 - 6:21and I had this weird memory of being in college
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6:21 - 6:24and raising,
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6:24 - 6:28raising money for the flood victims of Bangladesh,
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6:28 - 6:30and then I look over and my anesthesiologist
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6:30 - 6:32is clamping the mask on me, and I think,
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6:32 - 6:34"He looks Bangladeshi," — (Laughter) —
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6:34 - 6:37and I just have those two facts, and I just think,
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6:37 - 6:41"This could work somehow." (Laughter)
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6:41 - 6:43And then I go out, and
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6:43 - 6:45they work on me for the rest of the night,
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6:45 - 6:50and I needed about 40 units of blood to keep me there
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6:50 - 6:53while they did their work,
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6:53 - 6:57and the surgeon took out about a third of my intestines,
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6:57 - 7:01my cecum, organs I didn't know that I had,
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7:01 - 7:03and he later told me one of the last things he did
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7:03 - 7:06while he was in there was to remove my appendix for me,
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7:06 - 7:09which I thought was great, you know,
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7:09 - 7:12just a little tidy thing there at the end. (Laughter)
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7:12 - 7:16And I came to in the morning.
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7:16 - 7:18Out of anesthetic, he had let them know
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7:18 - 7:22that he wanted to be there, and he had given me
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7:22 - 7:25about a two percent chance of living.
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7:25 - 7:27So he was there when I woke up,
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7:27 - 7:29and it was, waking up was like
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7:29 - 7:35breaking through the ice into a frozen lake of pain.
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7:35 - 7:37It was that enveloping,
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7:37 - 7:41and there was only one spot that didn't hurt
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7:41 - 7:43worse than anything I'd ever felt,
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7:43 - 7:44and it was my instep,
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7:44 - 7:48and he was holding the arch of my foot
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7:48 - 7:52and rubbing the instep with his thumb.
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7:52 - 7:55And I looked up, and he's like,
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7:55 - 7:56"Good to see you,"
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7:56 - 8:00and I was trying to remember what had happened
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8:00 - 8:01and trying to get my head around everything,
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8:01 - 8:06and the pain was just overwhelming, and he said,
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8:06 - 8:09"You know, we didn't cut your hair. I thought
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8:09 - 8:13you might have gotten strength from your hair like Samson,
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8:13 - 8:16and you're going to need all the strength you can get."
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8:16 - 8:20And in those days, my hair was down to my waist,
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8:20 - 8:23I drove a motorcycle, I was unmarried,
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8:23 - 8:28I owned a bar, so those were different times. (Laughter)
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8:28 - 8:30But
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8:30 - 8:33I had three days of life support,
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8:33 - 8:37and everybody was expecting,
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8:37 - 8:41due to just the massive amount of what they had had to do
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8:41 - 8:43that I wasn't going to make it,
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8:43 - 8:45so it was three days of
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8:45 - 8:48everybody was either waiting for me to die or poop,
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8:48 - 8:50and — (Laughter) —
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8:50 - 8:53when I finally pooped, then that somehow,
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8:53 - 8:56surgically speaking, that's like you crossed some good line,
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8:56 - 8:57and, um — (Laughter) —
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8:57 - 9:00on that day, the surgeon came in
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9:00 - 9:04and whipped the sheet off of me.
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9:04 - 9:05He had three or four friends with him,
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9:05 - 9:08and he does that, and they all look,
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9:08 - 9:10and there was no infection,
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9:10 - 9:12and they bend over me and they're poking and prodding,
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9:12 - 9:15and they're like, "There's no hematomas, blah blah,
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9:15 - 9:17look at the color," and they're talking amongst themselves
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9:17 - 9:20and I'm, like, this restored automobile
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9:20 - 9:24that he's just going, "Yeah, I did that." (Laughter)
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9:24 - 9:27And it was just,
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9:27 - 9:30it was amazing, because these guys are high-fiving him
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9:30 - 9:32over how good I turned out, you know? (Laughter)
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9:32 - 9:35And it's my zipper, and I've still got the staples in
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9:35 - 9:36and everything.
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9:36 - 9:39And
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9:39 - 9:41later on, when I got out
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9:41 - 9:47and the flashbacks and the
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9:47 - 9:51nightmares were giving me a hard time,
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9:51 - 9:53I went back to him
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9:53 - 9:57and I was sort of asking him,
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9:57 - 9:59you know, what am I gonna do?
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9:59 - 10:04And I think, kind of, as a surgeon, he basically said,
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10:04 - 10:06"Kid, I saved your life.
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10:06 - 10:08Like, now you can do whatever you want, like,
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10:08 - 10:10you gotta get on with that.
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10:10 - 10:12It's like I gave you a new car
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10:12 - 10:14and you're complaining about not finding parking.
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10:14 - 10:18Like, just, go out, and, you know, do your best.
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10:18 - 10:22But you're alive. That's what it's about."
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10:22 - 10:28And then I hear, "Bing-bong," and the subway doors
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10:28 - 10:34are closing, and my stop is next, and I look at these kids,
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10:34 - 10:36and I go, I think to myself,
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10:36 - 10:38"I'm going to lift my shirt up
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10:38 - 10:39and show them," — (Laughter) —
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10:39 - 10:42and then I think, "No, this is the New York City subway,
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10:42 - 10:45that's going to lead to other things." (Laughter)
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10:45 - 10:49And so I just think, they got their lecture to go to.
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10:49 - 10:53I step off, I'm standing on the platform,
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10:53 - 10:56and I feel my index finger
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10:56 - 10:58in
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10:58 - 11:02the first scar that I ever got,
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11:02 - 11:05from my umbilical cord,
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11:05 - 11:08and then around that, is traced
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11:08 - 11:11the last scar that I got
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11:11 - 11:13from my surgeon,
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11:13 - 11:19and I think that, that chance encounter
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11:19 - 11:22with those kids on the street with their knives
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11:22 - 11:25led me
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11:25 - 11:28to my surgical team,
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11:28 - 11:32and their training
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11:32 - 11:34and their skill
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11:34 - 11:38and, always, a little bit of luck
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11:38 - 11:41pushed back against chaos.
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11:41 - 11:45Thank you. (Applause)
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11:45 - 11:54(Applause)
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11:54 - 12:00Thank you. Very lucky to be here. Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- A story about knots and surgeons
- Speaker:
- Ed Gavagan
- Description:
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One day, Ed Gavagan was sitting on the subway, watching two young med students practicing their knots. And a powerful memory washed over him -- of one shocking moment that changed his life forever. An unforgettable story of crime, skill and gratitude.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 12:21
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for A story about knots and surgeons | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for A story about knots and surgeons | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for A story about knots and surgeons | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for A story about knots and surgeons | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for A story about knots and surgeons | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |