Hi all.

A large sigh of relief, coming from the general direction of the Trisec compound this afternoon.


One month ago, I was in warm, sunny southern Florida. It's my annual trip to visit my aunt, check up on the condo, and ensure that my inheritance is in order when the time comes.

But the trip was not without trepidation. Just one week earlier, my father had what we presumed was a low blood sugar episode. I found him on the floor of his house when he failed to answer the phone. A few days at the worst hospital in America fixed him up enough to go home. I set up the Life Alert button, fortunately with the extra few dollars for the fall detection pennant. Days later, off I went down the superslab.

Sometime during my trip - I got a call from the monitoring system. It detected a fall, nobody could reach him, and EMS was rolled to his apartment. Some hours later, I finally learned that he had another episode of syncope and collapse and was right back in the hospital. The following day, his care manager called me, somewhat alarmed. During the night, my father's heart stopped, then spontaneously re-started about 4 seconds later. They recommended a pacemaker implant to regulate the condition.

Knowing that Melrose Wakefield Hospital KILLED MY MOTHER, I was reluctant to authorize the procedure, but talking to brother TriSec and also the cardiologist/surgeon, allayed my fears somewhat. This turned out be actually be the only thing that hospital got right.

I got back from Florida, and soon afterwards my father was discharged. I moved in with him until we figured out how to arrange for support as his health was now clearly in decline. But our friends at the hospital somehow made it worse. They messed with his insulin regiman - something he has been on for decades with little change. Instead of control, his blood sugar started climbing towards alarming levels. On his birthday, March 20, his test kit read offscale high. His doctor recommended a visit to urgent care, and the good folks there immediately recognized diabetic ketoacidosis. If you don't know what it is - read that. This is what diabetics used to die of before insulin was discovered. Usually less than one year after diagnosis.

This required an ambulance ride to the superior Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, also associated with his doctor's home hospital, the Joslin Diabetes Clinic, which is the best diabetes hospital on the entire planet. The root cause of all this was a resistant UTI that had spread to his kidneys, and then into his blood. This took two different antibiotics, and approximately four days to begin responding to treatment. This is where I was on the night of March 23, when I felt my father was looking at his last few hours on this planet.

But....things got better. The antibiotics took hold, he started eating again, and regained his senses. He spent ten days with Beth Israel, and then was discharged to a rehab hospital so they could work on getting his strength back so he can live in a more independent setting.

That setting will be Waltham Crossings, an assisted living facility that is no more than ten minutes away from my house. Both Mrs. TriSec and Javi worked there - this was Javi's job all through high school and college.

I was there this afternoon. Took apart his bed and moved it over there single-handedly. I didn't put it back together, but the process has begun. We'll have to sell his condo, but it should fetch a high price as it's in a commuter-friendly city with good schools, has a deeded parking space, and is literally across the street from the commuter rail with a fifteen minute ride into the city.

It's been a turbulent and troublesome ride over the past month. I take no comfort in it, despite that sigh of relief. All I can think about now is the famous quote by Winston Churchill after the battle of El-Alamein.