Several days ago my mother elected to decline all further medical intervention after a botched procedure to drain an abscess left her facing another surgery and little optimism for a positive outcome. She was disconnected from all machines and tubes (except oxygen which helps her breathe more comfortably), all medications and IVs were discontinued, and her vital signs are no longer being monitored. The opinion of medical staff at the hospital was that she would die as a result of this decision, one she took with a full understanding of the consequences. She has been phoning friends and relatives bidding them farewell and has been helping to plan her memorial service. There is just one glitch. I don’t think she is dying. Her color is good. She does not have a fever and she is remarkably lucid. Her pain is limited to the surgical incisions. She is rejecting all hospital food but scarfs down the special meals lovingly prepared by my brother (pureed kale, yams and potatoes). To be sure, she has lost a great deal of weight and is extremely weak and still thinks she is dying. Perhaps she is just rallying for the benefit of visiting family but I think there may be more chapters to be written in this story. I would not go so far as to say that her condition is improving but I don’t believe it is declining either. We will know a lot more in the days to come. In between hospital visits, Mark and I checked out the hospice facility we are trying to line up for her. The hospital is likely to discharge her soon and we need to have a care plan in place.

Fresh off a plane from Ireland where they were visiting family for the last two weeks, my nieces, Sophia and Rose caught a second wind and decided to bounce on the backyard trampoline with Nicolai. Both girls are looking more like young women than the “gerbils” I have chased about on prior visits. They are as strong as they are beautiful and a joy to be around. Earlier in the day Kyle, Maya and I flew into Minneapolis where we connected with Nicolai who flew in from Colorado. From there we picked up my brother and headed over to the hospital where my mother is a patient. Every time my brother’s implanted cardiac defibrillator shocks his heart back to life he is not allowed to drive for 6 months. He is currently in one of those periods which will last until September. We spent several hours with my mother whose condition I will report on tomorrow.

It has been 10 days since I last visited with my mother who is in Minneapolis recovering from surgery. When I left, she was in good spirits and able to ambulate with the aid of a walker. At age 90, she was well on her way to a full recovery. When her white blood cell count remained elevated, a CAT scan revealed a tangerine sized abscess in her abdomen, a manageable consequence of her surgery. During a procedure to drain it, her surgeon accidentally perforated her bowel. Faced with the prospects of a third surgery to address the perforation and a less than desirable best case outcome, my mother has decided to forgo any additional medical intervention. It is not impossible but highly unlikely she will recover. Tomorrow morning Maya, Kyle and I will fly to Minneapolis where we will meet up with Nicolai who is flying in from Colorado. There we hope to spend time with her, reminiscing about better days and sharing our love for her. As much as I agonize over losing her, I respect and admire my mother’s decision to die on her own terms, just as she lived her life.

“Building a road to space so our children can build the future”. That is the mission statement of Blue Origin where Maya has accepted an internship beginning this fall. Based in Seattle, the company is developing reusable sub-orbital and orbital launch vehicles and a flexible lander capable of delivering a wide variety of small, medium and large payloads to the lunar surface. Its capability to provide precise and soft landings will enable a sustained human presence on the Moon. Maya was required to submit a headshot on a white background so my services in the photo studio were requested. Prior to taking the photo, Maya, Jeanine and I watched the US women defeat the Netherlands in the finals of the FIFA World Cup. Not normally known for our interest in watching soccer on TV, the three of us, joined occasionally by one or both of the boys, enjoyed watching the US games together.

This morning I played in a soccer match against the English National over 60 team. We were originally scheduled to have 20 players available, half from my Concord United team, half from neighboring teams. Given my cracked rib, I brought my camera gear and planned to photograph the game rather than play in it. When only 13 players showed up, I was needed on the field and wound up playing for a good 70 minutes in the sweltering heat. With the score tied at 2-2 in the second half, I scored a nice goal to secure the lead when their goalie mishandled a header. Unfortunately, they responded with two subsequent goals for the win. We enjoyed a great barbecue with them after the game and I was pleased to have earned my first cap (goal scored during international competition – see better definition here). It is a trivial accomplishment compared to Nicolai’s 17 caps but one I am am happy to have made. In other soccer news, the Concord Journal ran a nice story about our championship victory last week.

At just over 2000 feet high, Mount Wachusett is really more like a really big hill. Even so, it is a popular ski area given its close proximity to Boston. It is flanked on one side by a number of very pretty lakes which I thought would make for a nice foreground. It proved a pleasant distraction after I spent nearly the entire day repairing the dust collector in my workshop. It is a massive 2HP cyclone which stands 10 feet tall and weighs several hundred pounds. It is so tall that I had to position the top mounted motor in between joists of my 9 foot high shop ceiling. Even without a cracked rib, I would be hard pressed to lower the motor and fan assembly without assistance. Working alone, I had to devise various rope and pulley based schemes to lower one section at a time and to hoist them back in place once the repair was completed. It took three hours to disassemble and lower the system to the ground and four hours to put it back up. The repair took about fifteen minutes. Not a very satisfying ratio of overhead to actual repair work but I was pleased that I could bring a $3000 piece of machinery back on line with a bit of ingenuity and elbow grease.

Pictured above are the Thacher Island Twin Lights (aka the Cape Ann Light Station) located near Rockport. These are the first lighthouses built in the US to warn of danger rather than to demarcate the entrance to a port. More than 500 shipwrecks lie below the waters of Cape Ann. Thacher Island is also where the witness protection program got its start when notorious Boston hitman Joe “the Animal” Barboza, who agreed to testify against the New England mob in 1967, became the first participant along with his family. A movie entitled “Thacher Island” telling his story is being readied for release. Today, Jeanine and I took a road trip to the Cape Ann peninsula where we lunched on the patio of the Beauport Hotel before meeting up with one of our friends whose mother owns a spectacular home in the area. We also visited the Paper House and the Ten Pound Island Lighthouse.

The Rockport Paper House’s walls, doors, and furniture are made of varnished newspapers—roughly 100,000 of them. 215 layers of paper were stuck together with a homemade glue of flour, water, and apple peels to make 1-inch-thick panels for the walls.

All the furniture, including a clock, desk, and chair, is functional and made entirely of paper. The only exceptions are the piano, which is only covered in paper, and the fireplace. The house has stood intact for over 80 years, with no more upkeep than the occasional varnishing. What’s more, the walls and furniture are still readable, displaying headlines such as “LINDBERGH HOPS OFF FOR OCEAN FLIGHT TO PARIS.”

My mother appears to be on the road to recovery thanks in no small part to the lovingly prepared food my brother has been making for her now that she can eat again. She is scheduled for an additional surgery tomorrow to remove a tangerine sized abscess. With any luck that will be the last procedure and we can look forward to her full recovery.

I gained access to an initial set of photos from last weekend’s Tough Mudder. These memories will last for a lifetime. The pain of my cracked rib should abate in a couple of months.

Ordered on September 18 of last year, I picked up my new Audi e-tron after work today. Thus far it has met my expectations and should help make my 2+ hours of commuting each day a little more tolerable (think front seats with built in massage function).

My very first car, a Triumph Spitfire, was also blue although that would be hard to figure out from the black and white photos which remain. With every new car purchase I pause to reflect on my former cars and their significance to me. Here is the list in chronological order.

• Triumph Spitfire (blue) ; first love
• Triumph GT6 (yellow) ; second love
• Alpha Romeo Spyder (white) ; first true love
• Alpha Romeo GTV (red) ; spare parts for above
• Porsche 944 (red) ; first properly engineered car
• Porsche 944 (black) ; more of a good thing
• Nissan 300 ZX Turbo (red) ; the summer fling
• Lexus SC 300 (gray) ; first grown up car, hated it
• Mercedes SL 500 (green) ; passion reignited
• Mercedes ML 320 (silver) ; first family car
• Audi A3 (silver) ; my second true love
• Audi Q5 (silver) ; my off road darling
• SmartCar (blue) ; first attempt at social responsibility
• BMW i3 (orange) ; my electric mistress, forever a convert
• Audi e-tron (blue) ; TBD

For the second season in a row my soccer team, Concord United, won the Division 1 Championship for our age group besting the other 27 teams. Regulation play resulted in a 0-0 tie. The ensuing penalty kick shoot out ended with a score of 4-3 in our favor. I played despite a cracked rib and sore muscles from yesterday’s Tough Mudder and finally managed a good photo of the whole team. The winning PK by our stopper is shown below.

In other soccer news, Nicolai worked with the New England Revolution MLS team to have an amputee soccer demonstration (3v3 no goalies) during half time over their game this evening. The American Amputee Soccer Association flew in a couple of players for the event and they all stayed at our house last night. Here is an Instagram recording of the demo including a goal and subsequent forward flip by Nicolai.

Today I participated in the 2019 Boston Tough Mudder Classic. Billed as a 10 mile course with 25 obstacles it was closer to 8 miles for which I have no complaints. Pictured here is the 3-story cargo net Mudderhorn, the last and one of the easier obstacles with the Tough Mudder Village in the background. Organizers emphasize that this is not a race but rather a challenge. The goal is to complete the course and as many obstacles as you can with an emphasis on using teamwork to get everyone through. I successfully completed 24 of the 25 obstacles and helped teammates on the team oriented ones. I was unable to get all the way across the Funky Monkey inclined horizontal ladder which required more upper body strength than I could muster. The consequence is falling into a deep pool of water which at this point in the course is a welcome way to wash off all the caked on mud that you have accumulated. Below is a video from the Los Angeles version of this event which shows most of the same obstacles. The Gauntlet was by far the hardest one for me and the most satisfying to complete. I finished in a little over 3.5 hours and was completely spent by the end. My arms were so fatigued that lifting a can of Coke was a challenge. I have several cuts and scrapes and a broken or cracked rib. Am I glad I did it. Hell yes! Would I do another one. Not likely!

Pictured below are two of the easier but muddier obstacles. I went back after a shower and change of clothes with my camera to grab a couple of pictures. Crawling under the barbed wire is not that difficult but your knees take a beating on the embedded gravel and rocks. This trick is to lift your body up on your toes. Easier said than done. The net which is staked to the ground is very heavy. Ten steps in and you are exhausted. The trick is to work with teammates and to walk backwards. Doing so allows the netting to ride up more easily and once it is elevated teammates can pass under it with less effort.

I was able to visit my mom one more time this morning before my flight back to Boston. She is making slow but steady progress every day. Because she is unable to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time (general discomfort from being connected to so many tubes and nurses doing blood draws or other checks throughout the day and night, she now show signs of ICU delirium. She has wild and vivid hallucinations which can be very disconcerting. We are told this is not uncommon and that they should abate once she is able to get more sleep.

While In Minnesota I am staying with my brother Mark and his darling wife, Marie. This is my first time to see their new home. It is located within walking distance of the kids school and is quite spectacular. I helped my brother with some shop projects in between visits to the hospital where my mother is making slow steady progress. It is clear that her road to recovery is going to take some time. So far it has been two steps forward and one step back.