Patient Newsletter: September 2026
What she needed from me.
Dear Patients and Friends,
In 2004, my mother gave us six months.
She had just retired as an SVP at Merrill Lynch. She knew nothing about medical billing. She told us she would hold things together until we could afford a real billing company.
Twenty-two years later, she still drives from New Jersey to Exton twice a week and is part of an extraordinary team.
She is 81. She is also the most independent woman I have ever known.
Here is the part I am not proud of. Her office is across the parking lot from mine. Weeks would go by without us crossing paths. I did not walk over. I did not call just to call.
On Sunday, July 5th, my mother was in a head-on collision. Fractured sternum. Four broken ribs. A small community hospital, then a regional trauma center, then a second one.
The trauma team at Paoli was outstanding. Kind, thorough, relentless. I was there too, as a physician: watching vitals, pushing for pain control, catching doctors on rounds. My sister and my niece were there twelve hours a day, getting her out of bed, feeding her, making her laugh.
When it came time for inpatient rehab, we brought her home instead. Her sisters, 84 and 76, insisted she stay with them. My sister and I moved in.
We bought a power lift recliner. We built a schedule for medications, meals, walking, exercise. I slept on the couch next to her, just in case.
What I did not expect was everything else.
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