Worst Thanksgiving Ever Trilogy

By Michael Mangold

What would you do if your child was abducted in a foreign country?
What would you do if your spouse used the police and courts to persecute you?
How would you survive in a foreign country without money, access to funds, or the support of family and friends?

Now together in one book, "Worst Thanksgiving Ever Trilogy" combines Dr. Mangold's three accounts of his trials before, during, and after the abduction of his son Benjamin by the American embassy in Nicaragua one Thanksgiving weekend. It starts with "Mythomania: A Psychodrama" which describes what it is like to live in a Miniature Sick Society and how that sickness also pervades our own society. Fighting a losing battle against government agents at all levels while simultaneously battling forces at home Hell-bent on destroying him, Mangold "won't let the bastards win" and ends the book with his "Treatment Plan" which outlines practical steps he feels are required to heal these institutionalized illnesses.

"My Worst Thanksgiving Ever" is the true story of Dr. Mangold's tragic Thanksgiving in Managua, Nicaragua searching for his son Ben who was abducted by the U.S. embassy there. Dr. Mangold endured multiple muggings during his search and was eventually imprisoned in an Immigration detention center while the embassy flew in his ex-wife to pick up Ben. Michael Mangold M.D. and Ben were pawns in a cosmic chess game between U.S. government officials and Mike's Nemesis. All he had was a handful of Córdobas and the truth against an unlimited amount of money and power.

"Desperately Seeking Cereal" is the sequel to "Thanksgiving." Alone, broke, and abandoned by family and friends, this true story relates how Michael Mangold MD survived being homeless in Nicaragua by using his wits and at times doing the "unthinkable.” With help from unexpected sources like a Roman Catholic priest in Estelí and Mormon missionaries in León, Desperately Seeking Cereal also describes how those who are entrusted to serve the needy and desperate often do so at a cost. If at all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Mangold
• Release date: Dec 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370145218

Michael Mangold

Winding down my career as an ER physician, I went to Nicaragua in 2013 to teach medical English to the med students in Puerto Cabezas. Our plans changed when the medical director of the school could not obtain funding so I was forced to look for other sources of income in Managua first, then San Juan del Sur, our adopted home. While in SJdS I published three eBooks on Amazon: "How to Think Like a Doctor," "Cómo Pensar Como un Doctor," and "Barefoot Doctors." I wrote all three with the intention of bringing quality medical knowledge and practice to underserved areas of the world. My "mission" was cut short over the Thanksgiving weekend that year when I was mugged five times that Thursday and Friday night. The first two weren't so bad but by the fifth mugging I was left for dead. Why would any sane gringo be out after dark in a large Central American city? I was trying to find my son Ben, who (as I later found out) was being hidden by the American embassy there. Find the full story in my new book, "My Worst Thanksgiving Ever."

Book preview

Chapter 21: A State of Sickness

Chapter 22: PTSD

Chapter 23: Mythomaniac

Chapter 24: The Spin Nurse

Chapter 25: Wrists and Rights

Chapter 26: Bi-Polar

Chapter 27: The Cuckoo’s Nest

Chapter 28: Conclusion

SEQUELAE

Treatment Plan

DEDICATION

To my beautiful daughters Teri and Ami.

Some of my most cherished memories are of when we sat on the floor in the living room of our home in Lake In The Hills and packed the medications and medical equipment for The Medicine Cabinet together. Remember how we listened to my record albums and sang along to songs like All My Life’s a Circle by Harry Chapin? You are my everything and I dedicate this book to both of you for being such an important part of my life.

Think of all the good we did together! We will never know the number of lives we saved, the amount of pain we relieved, or the broken bodies we healed. We saved the the world one small, repackaged pill at a time. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.

I have no doubt that you two will pass that servant’s spirit on to my grandchildren.

Love, Dad

PREFACE

Mythomania: an excessive or abnormal propensity for lying and exaggerating.

Mythomaniac: noun or adjective; a pathological liar.

"This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s lifelong habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

‘Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-f**ker,’ the campaign manager protested. ‘Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.’

‘I know,’ Johnson replied. ‘But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.’"

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72

As I have said, those who are evil are masters of disguise; they are not apt to wittingly disclose their true colors - either to others or to themselves. It is not without reason that the serpent is renowned for his subtlety.

M. Scott Peck People of the Lie

PROLOGUE

The Midwest was in the middle of a heat wave and drought that Independence Day . It was so hot and dry that our Township banned outdoor fires on the 3rd. The closest large municipality, Milwaukee, set a record high of 102º Fahrenheit on the Fourth. I was inside our Mansion On A Hill in my recliner drinking a cold Diet Mountain Dew when I heard a loud rush of noise, comparable to a speeding semi-truck passing in the opposite direction, except it was constant and getting louder. I looked out of the kitchen window and saw that the chicken coop was on fire. I yelled for my wife Angie to call 9-1-1 and I rushed to put it out.

The coop is so far from the house that the two connected hoses ended about 15-20 feet from the fire. Yelling over the roar of the fire I shouted to our son Ben to grab the hose-end nozzle and throw it to me. I was downhill from the house and saw Angie put the other two children Jon and Savannah, into our S.U.V. which was partway down the driveway. She then shouted something to Ben who had picked up the nozzle to throw to me. He dropped it on the ground. When he turned from his mother to face me, he shrugged his shoulders and started walking towards the vehicle. I yelled again for him to throw me the nozzle. He stopped, looked at me, then faced Angie who said something to him. He started for the S.U.V.

In unbelieving desperation I turned back towards the fire which was so hot that I had to back up a few paces. Placing my right thumb over the end of the hose, I tried to create a stream forceful enough to reach the coop. It was hopeless. Goodwife Angela convinced Ben to abandon me in the midst of an emergency. Later that day, after they took off for God knows where, she told him something that was confusing and schizophrenic-like in its reasoning. She told him that he was a Hero.

Chapter 1

Snake Oil

It is a three hour drive from West Bend to Black River Falls, Wisconsin. My passion is working in medically underserved areas so the length of the drive meant little to me compared to the satisfaction of serving. Fifteen minutes before 8 o’clock that warm Spring morning, I pulled the Grand Am into the parking lot, turned off the engine, grabbed my duffel bag, and headed into the hospital.

I walked into the ER and announced my presence to the nurses and the doc I was replacing. He said that there weren’t any patients so I went to the call room to change. The call room at Black River Memorial Hospital is adjacent to the doctor’s lounge. I dressed in my scrubs, grabbed a cup of coffee, and sat down on a couch in the lounge to drink it. At 8:30 am the E.R. nurse called and said that I had a patient with a fever who was ready for me. I went to the Emergency Department, evaluated the patient, and ordered a Complete Blood Count or CBC to be drawn. During the exam, an overhead page announced that there was someone in the doctor’s lounge who wanted to see me. When I was done with my examination and after I wrote the order for the CBC, I headed there, curious about my visitor.

I opened the door to the doctor’s lounge and there were two men in black suits waiting for me. One was skinny and quiet. The other was nerdy-looking, with a smarmy expression on his face. He was of medium build and looked like a snake ready to strike. He also did most of the talking.

Doctor Mangold? he asked.

I am. Can I help you?

Yes, replied Mr. Smarmy Nerd, pulling out a flashy police-like badge. I’m special agent Brandon Bielke with the Criminal Division of the Internal Revenue Service. I want to talk to you.

Chapter 2

New Year’s ER Shift

God, I was tired.

It was Monday morning, January 1st and I was just getting off of a 72-hour shift in the Emergency Room in Whitehall, Wisconsin. I was not looking forward to the three-and-a-half hour commute home to West Bend.

I had been away since 3 am the morning of Friday, December 29th. I missed New Year’s Eve with my family and spent it alone instead at Tri-County Memorial Hospital. My only companions that night were two nurses and a Radiology tech. Since it is a rural hospital in an underserved area of Wisconsin, the patient flow that weekend was low and I managed to take an occasional nap during my shift, but my sleep was fitful and shallow.

I ate some ice cream that the Med-Surge nurse had given me, filled my Thermos with coffee, got in the car, and started home. It is a loooong drive. To stay awake, I cracked open the window even though it was below freezing outside, cranked up the radio, and began to caffeinate myself. I often joked that I should just have a nurse hook me up to a coffee I.V. I was that tired.

Even though West Bend, Wisconsin is southeast of Whitehall, I first had to drive northwesterly to Northfield in order to get to Interstate 94. The interstate heads southeast out of Northfield and as I was passing Black River Falls, my cousin Ray called me on my cellphone. His voice was shaky and he sounded worried:

Mike. This is Ray. My dad’s in the hospital and he’s not doing very well. Can you help me?

Which hospital?

Waukesha Memorial. The doctors say something’s not right.

I’m headed home at the moment, Ray. I can’t help right now but I’ll detour to Waukesha, stop in to see your dad, and find out from the staff what’s up. Are you at the hospital?

Yes, but I’ll be in and out all day. When do you think you’ll get here?

Between 11 and noon. If you’re not there I’ll give you a call so we can talk. See you then.

We hung up and I continued my drive. I stopped once at a McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin and to pee. Coffee goes right through me so in my travels to rural E.R.’s around Wisconsin I would carry a wide-necked bottle to use as a urinal. It sufficed for the rest of the trip.

I arrived in the Intensive Care Unit at Waukesha Memorial Hospital just after 11 am. Ray’s dad Ray was minimally responsive. His wife was at his bedside, as was his daughter Dee Dee. I gave hugs to the women, squeezed older Ray’s hand to let him know I was there, then went to the nurse’s station to find out more information. When I came back to the room I called my cousin Ray to ask him to come to the hospital. There was something important I had to tell him.

Chapter 3

A Physician’s Job

My first E.R. job was in Chilton, Wisconsin. I was married to Cookie at the time and would commute 165 miles from our home in Lake in the Hills, Illinois twice a week for 24-hour shifts. I applied for the job while I was still doing my residency in Psychiatry and Cookie got pregnant with our third child, Mickey. I knew that I couldn’t afford to take care of a family of five on a resident’s salary so I left the program and took on the burden of the four, three-hour commutes and two long shifts each week. Even though it meant leaving the security and ease of a psychiatrist’s life, I have never regretted that decision.

I do have a few regrets in my life. My biggest is that I didn’t stop at my parent’s house on my way to medical school the morning my father died. A second is that I misinterpreted Cookie’s grief when her father died five years later. Instead of being there for her, I backed away. That distance between us eventually grew too far.

But I try to learn from my mistakes. I have learned that it is not just technical proficiency and medical knowledge that make a good doctor. My job is to not only save lives and heal the sick, but to provide support, empathy, and compassion.

Physicians are also educators. The Latin root of both doctors and educators is docere which means to teach.

I save, heal, support, and teach. That sums up my mission in life.

Chapter 4

On A Mission

Working only two days a week gave me plenty of extra time to do good.

The United States government refused to accept the Rwandan Civil War as a humanitarian crisis until it was almost over in the Summer of 1994. That Spring, Congressman Mel Reynolds of Illinois worked around that problem and recognizing the seriousness of the tragedy, gathered medical equipment and medications and personally brought them to the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire. He asked for donations and by then I had enough connections that I was able to supply him with a dozen large boxes of supplies. That was the start of my non-profit group, The Medicine Cabinet.

Our two oldest girls Teri and Ami, were my first volunteers. I would collect samples of medications from clinics and the three of us would repackage the meds into pill bottles, label the bottles, then put them into shipping boxes. We also repackaged any equipment I could scrounge. Hospitals are notorious for disposing of perfectly functional used medical equipment and I was more than happy to take their throwaways. As I explain in My Worst Thanksgiving Ever, Before its unfortunate demise at the hands of the I.R.S. 12 years later, The Medicine Cabinet sent supplies to Mexico, Uganda, Russia, The Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guatemala, and West Virginia. A shipload also went with Senator Paul Simon to Somalia. The Medicine Cabinet was my baby.

I was also the Medical Director on three mission trips to Mexico. The first two occurred while I was still married to Cookie and were sponsored by St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church of Barrington, Illinois. The clinics were in Isleta and San Ysidro, Mexico and we served the poorest of the poor. Some of my patients walked 40 miles to get to the clinics.

We knew that getting medical equipment and medications into Mexico was risky because some of the Mexican border guards would seize supplies and sell them on the black market. So every morning at our home base in El Paso we would hide whatever we could under the seats of the vans before departing for Mexico. I would put a leg splint on my right leg and carry crutches, trying to fool the guards into thinking that I needed them. When we returned to the States each afternoon, I was miraculously healed, sans crutches and splint.

Governments are notoriously the biggest obstacles between humanitarians and their good works. It’s not just the corrupt Mexican border guards. The United States has more than its fair share of politicians and bureaucrats who sincerely believe only THEY know what is good for people and damn anyone else. How many people have needlessly suffered and died because of that attitude? Far too many, including some of the poor of Sierra Leone.

I go into more detail about the Sierra Leone fiasco in my book Bridges but the short version is that before we were married, my second wife Angela and I took our son Jonathon, Ami, and Angie’s son Jacob to Washington, D.C. to drop off a load of medications to a man from the consulate of that African country. When we got there, we couldn’t get a hold of him. We didn’t know it at the time but his son ruptured his appendix and the Consul was incommunicado at a hospital in Washington. We tried in vain to reach him for three days and before we left for Wisconsin, we convinced the hotel receptionist to let us leave the boxes there, reassuring her that the Consul would come to pick them up soon. She let us, but forgot to tell her boss. When the manager of the hotel discovered them, he called the police who then called the Drug Enforcement Agency. The D.E.A. confiscated the medications and secured them in a locked compound. There wasn’t a single controlled substance in the lot so it was much ado about nothing. Except that the medications never got to the people of Sierra Leone.

Chapter 5

Global Contractions

My last mission trip to Mexico was with a Christian outreach group called Global Expeditions. Their mission was to take 1000 high schoolers and support staff to Tijuana, Mexico and build 24 houses for the pobres there in one week. Our mission was to provide medical care to the high schoolers. We also saw and cared for some of the locals.

The mission base was at a large ranch owned by one of the wealthiest men in the region. While the high schoolers and staff lived in tents for a week, the rancher let us stay in his house. It was terribly hot under the Baja California sun but the house was built to funnel the prevailing winds and so remained relatively cool. Despite the heat it was Paradise, and I was living my dream.

Angie and I were married by then and she still had her professional license, so she acted as my nurse. We trained Ami as a Medical Assistant on the trip and she did an excellent job, even though she was only 17. Jon, Ben, and Savannah also came along. Savannah was 6 months old.

Ben was a big hit with the crowd. He made friends with Peter Furler of the Contemporary Christian musical group The newsboys. The band joined the mission and stayed all week