Paul Gossard

Dr. Nicholas Sama assembled a team of highly skilled, professionally trained medical personnel to perform a delicate operation on my left femur. The operation was an enormous success and I will expand upon that in a moment, but I want to reference a traumatic experience that I suffered 65 years earlier that Dr. Sama’s team also cured.

The year was 1960. I was a 10-year-old boy who had been living in post-war-France on an American Army base. The Army policy with respect to colds and flus was to remove tonsils and adenoids before children entered their teenage years. Nine of my classmates and I were placed into a green Army ambulance and taken to the main Army hospital 150 miles away from our home base. We were told that the operation was easy, fast, and virtually painless, and that we could eat as much ice cream as we wished after the operation.

The morning of my surgery opened with my best friend being taken first. When he returned, he was screaming in pain and vomiting blood caused by “ether,” which was the primary anesthesia used in the 60s. By the time my sixth friend was returned from surgery in the same dreadful condition, my fear factor drove my temperature too high for the operation, so my surgeon told me that it had been decided that I did not need the operation and I would be going home the following day. The morning of my supposed return home, I was wheeled into surgery and later returned to the ward throwing up blood and screaming in pain. Later that evening the nursing staff gave me my first meal of salty hot dogs but no ice cream. Ever since that day 65 years ago, I have cringed every time I went inside a hospital and the smell of alcohol would make me swoon.

Then, on July 14th, 2025, Dr. Sama presented me with an option to either have surgery to correct my condition or suffer a worse fate. I chose surgery and am super happy that I did. The entire admissions staff, pre-op team, surgical staff at HSS, and the entire surgical and post-op staff were beyond anything I could ever imagine. They gave me no time to fret or worry. They functioned as a well-choreographed team much like the Bolshoi Ballet. Inside their scrubs, they were professionals with tremendous medical knowledge. Aside from those surgical garments, they were 100% real people with complete knowledge how to care for real people not just real patients. Each member of every team functioned with precision of their purpose and in total command of the other team members purposes as well. Their communications skills were remarkable with each person demonstrating a positive attitude of the expected results of my surgery.

I awoke without pain. I was treated with kindness throughout my stay, including the meals which were delicious (please tell me where to buy that meatloaf). Those medical professionals totally erased every sense of dread and fear that I had endured for the last 65 years. I am no longer frightened of hospitals or the smell of alcohol. I pray that the pre-op staff will understand that I was not equipped with a pencil or tablet to write down names other than Dr. Sama, Dr. Royce, and Dr. Joe. I had two days of post-op recovery to scribble down the names of these wonderful professionals who cared for me – RN Alexandra, RN Carine, PCT Nalka and Amanda, and nurses leaders, Lauren and Hilda. Every one of you made that scared 10-year-old boy a fully recovered man and I will forever be in debt to all of you.

If you are a patient preparing for surgical treatment, you may, on my word of honor, put away any fears you might have going under the care of these wonderful professionals. You could not possibly have selected a better team of medical professionals than those that I thoroughly enjoyed.