For the few of you that read my blog, I apologize for the long delay. My wife had a seizure at the end of July that ended up with a few days in the hospital. There was no diagnosis at that time. We went home, things were stable for a couple of weeks – and I went to Cincinnati to attend a conference. While I was at the conference, there was a repeat causing me to find a flight home ASAP. This time there was a diagnosi of inoperable brain cancer. That was another stint in the hospital followed by about 10 days in a rehab center. Then home again for a couple of weeks, and then another “event” and another week in the hospital.

I spent much of the time in the hospital with her, going home late at night to get a few winks and take care of pressing things on the home from. It was exhausting to say the least. During all of this I was unable to find the time, or the brain power, to do much of anything except take care of the things that needed immediate attention – mostly my wife’s adventures. We are finally home once again, wondering when this will all repeat. She is getting daily radiation treatments and chemotherapy, which really makes her exhausted. It is still very difficult, but right now a little calmer (partly because she is so exhausted).

This week we are trying a new process of hiring a care giver to be with her for the mornings, giving me time to catch up on other things – including writing this blog. I finally had time to dig through the pile of papers that have been growing on my desk and see a number of past due bills and things like that. Hopefully I will be able to get to some of those tomorrow or the next day. It seems like there isn’t much going on, but the day is full of things to do – video appointments with doctors, two hour trips to get radiation therapy, meals, once a week in-home visits from the physical therapist, the occupation therapist, the speech therapist, a nurse, trips to get weekly lab tests, difficult and time consuming medication taking because she can barely swallow the many pills each day, visits from friends and neighbors (wonderful, but exhausting for her and time consuming). We have action packed, full days of doing nothing.

I am beginning to write a short paper on the system safety aspects of the hospitals that I noticed while hanging out with my wife for hours and days at a time. This paper is going to be published in the next issue of The Journal of the System Safety Society – I’ll post is here also for those that might find it interesting. I write a short (2 or 3 page) article for each issue of the journal. The topic varies depending upon what has caught my attention at the time – this time it has to do with some problems that I identified with the hospital system(s).

Mainly I am writing this blog just to let people know I am back (perhaps – depending upon the future events concerning my wife’s illness).