MD Surviving Life

The Art of Resilience
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-966786-85-6
Verlag: Ballast Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

Reihe: Surviving Life

This book will restore your faith in life. It might even save it. Surviving Life: The Art of Resilience is not 'based on a true story.' It is a true story. More precisely, it is a memoir of dozens of Dr. Tom Schneider's true stories: from devilish schoolboy hijinks and death-defying heroics during his time in the military to medical miracles and a heated disagreement with his boss, the US surgeon general. In this updated version of Dr. Schneider's second book, including a bonus epilogue, discover the authenticity of Dr. Schneider's storytelling voice-the way he writes to you and only you-and the humorous wisdom only someone who has truly survived life can give you. In the final few chapters, after reading Dr. Schneider's astounding stories, when you think you there's no way he can provide you with more value, you'll learn the basics of human health and wellness-from someone who learned them the hard way. It's a wonder that Dr. Schneider lived to write this book. That he did is a testament to his fighting but humble spirit, as well as his desire to live up to the true meaning of his profession. The word 'doctor' originally comes from the Latin docere. It does not mean 'to heal' or 'to cure.' It means, instead, 'to teach.' Surviving Life will teach you something about life, death, and the human spirit on every single page.

Dr. Tom Schneider is no ordinary man. Raised in a borderline abusive family and brought up in a no-nonsense Catholic school environment, he managed to retain his sense of humor and mischief throughout high school and college. He served as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, then, despite an average-at-best work ethic when it came to scholarship, decided to give medical school a shot. That shot turned into a career that became his true calling and would span the rest of his life. With a humble, common-sense approach to health and wellness, he practiced medicine at the likes of Bethesda Naval Hospital, Harvard University, and the National Institutes of Health. He can hardly operate his cell phone, but he could remove your spleen with a ballpoint pen. He's put that pen to its more traditional use in A Physician's Apology, published in 2013, and his second book, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, now newly published with a bonus epilogue as Surviving Life: The Art of Resilience.

Autoren/Hrsg.

MD,

Leseproben

Chapter One

The Agent Orange
Country Club

“Some things never leave you no matter how hard you cry.”

—Me

I should have known back on May 23, 1945, that the first slap on my bottom by the delivering doctor would be only the first of many to come. The day I got shot down wasn’t the first time—and wouldn’t be the last—that I would have to rely on my grandmother’s prophetic words. But it was one of the most memorable moments. Like your first kiss.

It started out as a regular sweltering day during the height of the Vietnam War in 1969. The day sucked from the moment I tried to scarf down some dry scrambled eggs and sausage from the mess hall. A far cry from my grandma’s favorite bacon and biscuits that I remembered from boyhood back in Rutland, Vermont. But the dehydrated eggs were at least filling for a quivering stomach. I’m not sure how Clint Eastwood can look so cool in his tough-guy scenes because I sure as hell never could.

The war in Vietnam was an everyday nightmare. I was a navy pilot flying combat missions over South Vietnam in an F-4 Phantom. Frightened and scared weren’t sudden emotions that crept momentarily into each and every day. They were the status quo, but of course no one could admit that, not even to themselves. Ever been so cold and wet you felt the weather in your bones? That’s how deep the terror went. But you learned to swagger and hang a Marlboro cigarette off your lower lip. Your face and swaggering walk said to all your crew and fellow pilots, “Yes, I am a true badass!” The only one who knew it was all crap was you.

Thunderous noise, bells, whistles, and blaring loudspeakers made up the cacophony of aircraft launches from a carrier. No way to hear your stomach’s gurgle from the dry eggs and sausage. But the smell! No one who has lived an aircraft carrier life ever forgets the smell of JP-4 jet engine fuel wafting through the air. It was a narcotic. It enhanced your fear but kept bringing you back, like a wicked lover.

As for me, once I was airborne and had glanced down at the aircraft carrier falling behind me, I was always taken by how small it was, getting even smaller as I climbed to altitude. Did I actually have to land back on that little postage stamp? It reminded me of the Revell plastic models I had built as a young boy. But it wasn’t plastic, and it wasn’t a model. It was home. It was another gut-wrenching gauntlet to deal with after the mission.

When we returned from a mission, all of us had learned to walk and look like members of the aforementioned badass club. I don’t know what my comrades did when on board and back in their cramped, smelly cabins, but as for me, I hit the “head” for a mandatory and uncontrollable bowel movement. I’m not sure that even the real Clint Eastwood could fake it. Then, time to hit the rack after a dinner of mystery meat and mashed potatoes from an ersatz gourmet buffet.

The glamour of a navy pilot at war was a crock of crap. And what a mind game. We were playing a political game for men who were cutting into a filet mignon at the 1789 Restaurant in Georgetown, DC. All of us knew of hostile hit sites to attack in Vietnam, but we were ordered to stand down. Politics, corruption, and money all ruled the war, and then there was my favorite aspect. The morass, with a pulse of Agent Orange. This delightful toxin was used as a defoliant. The bad news is that it never leaves the universe; it’s still in Vietnam. Over time, it is responsible for diabetes, cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, and a host of other lovelies. Why was it my favorite disaster of the war? Because later that day I would have the joy of taking an unscheduled swim in a rice paddy laced with Agent Orange. The real karma of that? I had probably dropped that toxic poison. And it would come back to haunt and scourge me for the rest of my life.

My flight that day was routine. Not! No such thing. My radar intercept officer (RIO) and “backseat” navigator or, kiddingly, GIB (guy in back), was Ben Baron. A good-looking guy from Sacramento, he was actually the brains for our flights. I just pulled the stick forward and houses would get big. Stick back, and houses got small. Ben scanned the sky and radar for bogeys (enemy planes and hot sticks or missiles). Great guy, and I more than miss him today. Smooth air and ceiling and visibility unlimited (CAVU). Quiet day. Ben could snooze. He didn’t.

BOOM! My starboard wing was gone. A nicely placed ground-to-air missile had found its mark. Me. Whoever said that “Charlie” (North Vietnamese soldiers) needed glasses? Damn, they were good and so committed. And we were going down. “Eject, eject, eject!” I shouted into the mic. All I recall after that was floating down into a rice paddy. Actually, we called the parachute ejection “hitting the silk elevator,” and I don’t remember any of it. Landing waist-deep in rice muck woke me from my stupor. Years later, I would learn that my stupor had been shock. We had been electronically warned of hot sticks launched in the zone, but we had been here before, so we merely took another chance for “eyes on.” There’s also a protective delusion that happens to pilots. When you hear that someone has “bought the farm” (died), the immediate mental Band-Aid is that “it couldn’t have happened to me.” It sucks for him, but I have luck and skill on my side. Insane thinking, but I swear it’s real. How else can you wake up in the morning and strap on your bird (plane), fly hard, and come back to land on a pitching deck of an aircraft carrier at night?

It’s hard to describe the next twenty-four hours. I so wanted to be John Wayne with an “I eat nails for breakfast” look on my face. Instead, I shook. From training habits, I checked that my locator beacon was on to allow Jolly Green or Dustoff helicopters to find and rescue me. I also remembered to collapse my chute, making it more difficult for Charlie to spot and capture me. It was about 1600 hours (4:00 p.m.), and I remember looking around for Charlie. Ben, my GIB, was nowhere to be seen and would eventually be labeled missing in action (MIA). Ben would have been within two miles of me if he were alive. But not a sound, not a flare, nothing. Ultimately, he beams to this day on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. We lost so many in that war, and I still don’t know why. But in the years to follow, when other wars and battles flared, someone always asked me how I felt about them. They expected me to say, “Let’s get ’em.” But my response was always a very simple question: “Ever been in a war, friend?” That’s your answer.

The temperature was excruciating in Nam, and that day was probably no exception. I say “probably” because I was shaking and chilled. Shock. I took my helmet off and put a smoke flare in my hand as I dunked down to neck-high in the rice soup. And now came the fun. Wait and shake. You’d think I might remember every thought in my head that night as the interminable minutes crawled by, but I can’t. Home, wife, God, family, childhood? I hadn’t a clue. The beauty of shock and panic is their ability to cover you like a warm blanket in winter. But their evil never leaves completely and erupts without prompt in an evening dream.

In a blink, the night covered me. I do remember how spectacularly the night sky was lit up with stars. I would have preferred that it be filled with a rescue helicopter. No such luck, and I couldn’t stop scanning the sky to look for help. It’s only now, years later, that I can admit how much I cried that night. Truth be told, I still have occasional private cry nights these many years later. The dream is always the same. I eject, but the chute doesn’t open, so I spread my arms open like wings and try to fly my body into the rice patty. I awake abruptly before my touchdown on the rice pond. My bed is usually soaked in sweat, and I always apologize to my wife in the morning. Even my psych-shrink sessions haven’t eliminated the episodes. Christ! It’s been more than fifty years.

But here’s the thing. During my rice bath in Agent Orange that night, I regressed for a while. I bargained with the Man Upstairs. “Please, God, send help. Send some Green Berets in. Anything. I’ll start believing again. I’ll put down my Marlboros and Chivas Regal. I swear I’ll be good.” Throw in a gallon of real tears, and I hoped maybe the shaking would stop too. God, I was glad no one could see me so broken. My father would have been disgusted.

He would have recommended a lap around the beads (rosary beads). I so wanted to hear the whop-whop of helicopter blades coming toward me.

This sounds corny, I know, but I swear it’s the truth. Sometime in the early morning, with the sun starting to rise and my panic rising as well, I got pissed. What the hell was I doing here? This sucked, big time.

“Well, screw ’em and the rest of my friends back home having a Schlitz right now. You want me, m----f---ers? Come and get it. I don’t need any goddamn helo. I’ll walk the hell out of here!” Ain’t it great to be young and naïve? Hell, I couldn’t walk a yard an hour in the muck I was standing in. It’s not as if I could try hitching a ride on Highway 95 back to the carrier.

That’s when my grandmother’s words came back to me. They made me feel like a true badass. If only the shaking would stop. But the shaking was the real me,...