Paula,

I love your logical way of thinking but my concern is the expense to do the right thing for the sham group. With my luck, they will decide to have us as a seperate group
(19 real 1 sham) and guess who will get the sham? Incidentally, at my facility, 4 got the real treatment and only 1 got the sham, me!!!

I pride myself on being very perceptive and felt that the folks who knew post-surgery were behaving in kind of an awkward fashion. In fact, the surgeon literally ran away from me after making sure I was OK. A year later, he laughed and said it was his only placebo. I had misinterpreted this behavior as confirmation that I received the real treatment. Guess I over-thunk it!!!