11/09/2025
This week, AI, telehealth, & caring people kept my father home.. taught me what ‘home hospital’ really means.
Like many of you, I know what an embolization is, in concept.
But how do patients experience it?
That part, I imagined… I didn’t truly know.
This week, I found out.
The first 2 days after the procedure, my dad was awake, even cracked a few jokes. Then, suddenly, he slumped.
He called me in the middle of my workday.
He hasn’t had the strength to pick up his phone, let alone see or dial my number, in months.
I froze.
Every instinct screamed to drop everything and rush home.
But I fought the urge to act like a son first, and instead, thought like a physician.
I logged into the camera I had placed by his bedside (thank you, Tele-ICU training, it’s true, seeing the patient is everything).
I called his caretaker to rush over.
My family took his vital signs & texted them to me every few min.
Talking to him made my panic worse, his voice was so weak..so unlike him.
But his heart rate wasn’t fast.
His blood pressure was perfect.
I called his radiologist “the weakness was expected, not the chest pain”.
Chest pain.
Not sharp. Not burning. Not crushing.
Pressure, at the base of the neck & abdomen.
I recognized it “atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response”.
I called his cardiologist who hadn’t seen him in months.
Most would have said, “I can’t make a judgment until I see him.”
That’s medicine’s new language: what cannot be done.
But I’d chosen well.
She’s “old” school, the kind that treats the patient, not the process.
“Send me the transmission from his loop recorder. I’ll tell you what’s happening remotely.”
I thanked my instinct that I had one placed 2 years ago.
Within an hour, we knew he was stable.
His home health nurse started IV fluids.
The chest pressure?
It wasn’t his heart failing.
It was the tumor dying, right under the diaphragm.
The embolization was working. Ai helped me think that one through.
By evening, he was carefully sipping a date shake, weak, but smiling.
The next day, labs came back: no infection. No renal issues. No hospital needed.
This is the new era of care.
A camera.
A loop recorder.
A vital sign monitor.
A network of humans who don’t give up, who find a way.
It wasn’t easy. 10 calls for labs. 6 for IV fluids. Endless holds “we’ll call you back.”
Not because people don’t care, but because the system doesn’t let them care efficiently.
Hospitals keep trying to convince families to take loved ones home at the end of life.
But they’ve built no system to support what happens next.
When symptoms start, panic sets in, “We can’t find anyone till Wednesday” families lose faith in home care.
That’s what we must fix.
the infrastructure of trust.
Not just the discharge checklist.
This weekend, my dad is doing better.
He’s asking for breakfast. He’s making jokes again.
He’s not cured.
He’s not even strong.
But he’s home.
Where he’s supposed to be.
5 weeks.
5 weeks out of the hospital.
And counting.
