This past week we confirmed that my Dad’s disease has changed in to Acute Leukemia. There are treatments for this, however, they only provide quantity of life not quality of life. My Dad has always been an active person and really isn’t interested in prolonging his life if it just means laying in bed in pain for feeling sick from the treatments. I...

Yesterday we left the house at 8am to go to the doctor for a blood test to see if my Dad needed blood. After getting the blood work we sat in the doctor’s office for about 2 hours waiting for the results. He did need blood and platelets so we head to the hospital next door arriving there around 11:30. Since his platelets have to be HLA typed now so that he...

Just about two years ago my mother died. In her last two weeks it was very hard. One day when I was talking to my daughter I told her that my mother was dying. She said, no she’s not, “she’s living, everyday that she is here she is living, she’s not dying.” It didn’t strike me until later how wise she was. Even when there is just a...

Over the past several months I have been driving my Dad back and forth from Kentucky to the Cleveland Clinic through the states of Kentucky and Ohio. During those drives I have had the wonderful experience of hearing about my Dad growing up on a farm and many of the jobs he did on the farm – milking cows, delivering milk, plucking chickens, planting tobacco...

It has been a while since I have written. That’s because I got punched in the face in the figurative sense last month. My father has been feeling bad for quite some time. His doctor ran some additional blood work and thought that he had Leukemia so she ordered a bone marrow biopsy. I flew out for that and it was extremely painful for him – it took them...

The Italians really know how to enjoy food. Everything we ate for the two weeks we were there was so fresh and amazing. They just don’t serve things that aren’t fresh. Opening a can is an afront to their senses. The tomatoes seemed more flavorful. The wine lighter and less proned to causing a hardcore “buzz”. And I don’t believe I have...

I just finished reading a great book about leadership – “True North” by Bill George. He is the retired CEO from Medtronic. Each chapter of the book had a section of questions in the back to help guide you in your own journey to becoming and authentic leader. The Chairman of the Board of our company spoke about this book during his speech accepting a...

I was listening to NPR today to a story about declining honey bee populations and the possible implications on the food supply. There may not be enough bees to pollinate the crops this year. About 30% of the food consumed by US consumers requires bees for pollination. This was an interesting story. But it is a story I recall hearing every spring for at least the...

We are reading this book for our book club at the office. It was written in 1938. I was thinking it was not going to be very good or very relevant to today. Amazingly it was not. Much of what Madame Wu struggles with is very relevant today. She’s looking for purpose. She is weighted down by her responsibilities in the household of more than 60 people. She longs...

I read an article over the weekend in Discover Magazine, May 2007 called The Plastic Brain. The article is primarily about a professor at the University of California at San Francisco named Merzenich and his theories about how to “fix” the brain and reverse the toll of aging on memory. He says his program works by reversing the “negative...