Today, I sit in a surgical ICU beside my favorite Jack as he recovers from a five-hour operation to repair a massive aortic aneurysm. For me it has been a journey into the medical system as an inexperienced consumer rather than in my usual position as a seasoned provider. This journey to an urban referral center has produced some disappointing surprises for Dad, and especially for me. For the past two days, my beloved Jack has been called "Harold" (his first name; Jack is his middle name). Of course, there is nothing wrong with "Harold"—it was what he was called in the army—but Dad never has been "Harold", except to those who really don't know him. Telephone callers at our family home who asked for "Harold" were always red flags that the caller was a telemarketer or insurance salesperson.

Dad doesn't correct his physicians or the office receptionists—he is from the old school, where it is impolite to question or correct your physician. Once he was an almost ideal "Jack", strong, athletic, quietly confident, and imminently trustworthy, but his recent renal failure and dialysis treatments, his stroke and his constant tremor have robbed him of his strength, mobility, and golf game, but not of his will or love of his family. Part of the reason he agreed to undertake this risky operation at his advanced age was because his wife and sisters still need his protective support. With so much at risk, he faced his life-threatening challenge in a city far away from his home and friends and in a place where he is greeted as "Harold".