When I reached my brother Bill, a doctor at Ft. Lewis south of Seattle, he happened to be in Alaska, sent by the Army to give someone up there a vacation.
He told me he had spent several days doing colonoscopies in a fishing village on the Bering Strait. He was surprised at the amount of colon cancer he had seen in people just in their forties.
I poured out my stories about Mom to him.
"It's instutional care," he said. "Next--next--next. Assembly line."
He volunteered to take over care of Mom by hiring caregivers in his home near Tacoma--if his wife agrees to the plan. And after his last child leaves for college this coming September.