For more than 20 years, my best friend Tom McGill has suffered excruciating back pain. He was a very funny smart guy who could insult you so profoundly that you usually didn’t catch on that he was insulting you. I should know because he started insulting me back at Mira Loma in the 60’s. He and I would go back and forth, him being the benevolent Democrat and me being the sleazy Republican. He used to always come over for dinner and hang out with our family where he would continue to insult me. Anyway this pain in his back limited him so much that he was not able to make it over to our house anymore. I would talk to him when I could reach him and he would explain dealing with the pain meant he had to get prescription painkillers. Well in the last few years it became more and more difficult to get these so Tom started having an extremely difficult time. When he would go in the doctors would only address the same thing and nothing else. Well yesterday he finally thought he needed some help and he decided to go to a care facility. I called someone he knew and she came and got him last night and brought him to her house. Soon after she had to call 911, and she called me at 4:00 AM telling me he was in critical condition. His sister then called me at 7:00 to tell me they had found what appeared to be advanced cancer. He died by 4:00 PM today. To me it is so sad that he lived with this pain that he had to plead doctors for care and if they had really listened they just might have found the real problem and my friend would still be coming over for dinner.