Whenever I have to go to a hospital for medical treatment, the admissions process always asks me what my “occupation is,” and I always do an internal walk into my distant past. For six years in the 1980’s I was a Patient’s Rights Ombudsman at a major Chicago hospital. In our weekly meetings about possible “problem cases” I often heard that a certain patient’s chart was pulled for review solely because the patient had self-identified as an ‘attorney.’ Accordingly, whenever I was admitted to a hospital, my initial declaration was that my occupation was “Mediator” which never drew the same Risk Management attention as “Attorney” always drew.

With this backdrop guess what God brought me last month? But first, guess what I am doing in 48 hours? A total knee replacement surgery caused by my left knee being “bone on bone” after decades of running 10k’s and a couple of…