In case you missed the Substack posts on my near death experience, here it is again. The emails from Embry come first followed by follow up. I am feeling pretty well now though fearful of a fall and am headed back to Kaiser for a number of follow up visits.
Today is January 26 and I am happy to report that I am on the road to recovery. You may have already seen one or both emails from Embry; but for those who did not get these I am including them here in the way of background regarding what turned out to be a near death experience. I will follow with my own take on this ordeal which began on December 14, 2025 in the lobby of the Arena Stage in Washington :
From Embry
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(email January 11, 2026):
I am writing to let you know about a serious medical issue that has been evolving over the past month (or so) that has now led to Joe’s being in the ICU at Holy Cross Hospital. I am not sure when it started and it could have been coming on for some time, but along the way it appears that Joe has had a bad reaction to some of his many (10) prescribed medicines. I became aware that he was not thinking as clearly as usual and his balance and mobility was becoming increasingly “shaky.” The Sunday before Christmas, we were at a performance at Arena Stage and he had a drastic fall backwards hitting his head and knocking him out for a few seconds. He seemed ok (although more shaky than usual), so we went ahead with our Christmas travels up to NJ with Andrew’s family and then to the Catskills with all our kids, their spouses, and all the grandkids to celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary. Since he was not improving, when we returned we went to the Kaiser Urgent Care Center where they diagnosed a concussion (but, thankfully, no damage was detected to his brain from the CT scan). At the same visit they detected that his sodium was very low and should be attended to very soon. They made an appointment with our primary care doctor to follow-up the following week. Another family event had us scheduled to go right away down to NC for my older brother, DG’s, memorial service in Chapel Hill on January 3rd. We went, although in retrospect I know now that Joe was very sick at that point. I was always thinking about the brain scan being normal, and relieved at that, but apparently the real problem was the low sodium. (Although I read the Science Times cover to cover each week, I had never heard of “low sodium” as a high risk factor, but apparently it is a disaster.)
Another unfortunate circumstance was that our primary care doctor became sick himself, and Kaiser cancelled the follow-up doctor visit. They did not allow me to reschedule it until the following week and did not allow me to schedule it with another internist either. This is a point about which I plan to file a complaint to Kaiser. Ok, doctors can become sick or have other emergencies, but they should have a back-up to fill in for them. That’s basic!!! I was communicating with the doctor a bit via the Kaiser portal. They had scheduled follow-up bloodwork to test the levels of sodium and all the other measures, and I took Joe for that. It is possible to see the results on-line and I saw that it was still very low. But still I was thinking the concussion was the main culprit, not knowing how bad the low sodium actually is. I wrote to the doctor to point out the low sodium results. (Shouldn’t he be writing to me instead!)
Thursday night (January 8), after Joe had been lying on the sofa all day, I tried to get him up to walk back to bed (with a walker, since he was so unsteady). At this point he took another fall backward and hit his head AGAIN, and I could not get him up. I called security here, a nurse friend who lives nearby, and 911. The upshot was that he was taken to the Emergency Department at a hospital very nearby to Collington, which is affiliated with the University of Maryland. Of course, as anticipated, we waited around (upright due to their lack of beds) and sat in a crowded waiting room surrounded by potential flu cases, etc. Finally, they found him a bed, did another brain scan (which was clear also, testifying to the hard head of my husband), and were about to discharge him when I mentioned to the doctor that they might want to look into his blood work since he had been diagnosed with low sodium. (This was not a Kaiser-affiliated hospital, so they did not have access to his records.) There was a rather startled look on the face of the doctor, and they ordered blood work (more delays for results, by this time it was 2 am in the morning and Joe was lying down but I was sitting upright in a hard chair). When the results came back the sodium level was still very low, so they immediately put him in intensive care, since treating low sodium is apparently very tricky. I went home for a two hour nap, and came back to find him still in the ER. There was no bed available in the actual ICU, so the ICU doctors were treating him, but he was still in the ER. This went on all day, with Joe becoming increasingly confused about where he was and why.
I had been having conversations all day with the ER social worker, who seemed pretty clueless about whether and when Joe would be discharged (to the actual ICU, to another bed in the hospital, home, or where?). So I assumed that a discharge was not imminent. I went home for dinner, watched the news, and went to bed for a long 9 hour restful sleep. When I woke up, I checked my phone to find multiple messages: one from the hospital saying he was being transferred to Holy Cross Hospital, one from Holy Cross saying he was there, and several from Joe sounding very confused about where he was. I called him, and he was still not sure where he was. (He thought he might be in Arizona!) I called Andrew, who has a tracker on Joe’s phone, and he confirmed that, yes, he was at Holy Cross Hospital! I packed up and headed around the Beltway to Holy Cross. It is a good hospital, and it’s in the Kaiser network where he is being cared for by Kaiser doctors, who have access to all his records. He is in the ICU there. When I arrived at 9 am they informed me that I had to wait for an hour, because visiting hours to the ICU are strictly enforced and begin at 10 am. (WHAT!!??) So I got my Starbucks Chai latte and sat there. I called Joe, and he cheerfully reported that he now knew where he was and it was Holy Cross Hospital. I said I was also at Holy Cross Hospital!
So that’s the long saga about how Joe ended up at Holy Cross. He does not seem to be getting a lot better yet, but we are hopeful that he will slowly start to improve as they gradually get the sodium level up. They have taken him off almost all his prescribed meds, which appear to be the combined culprits. Piecing the various evidence together, it seems that one or more of the meds led to the sodium problem, which led to confusion and unsteadiness on his feet, which led to the two falls, which finally took him to the ER where, thanks to my suggestion, the doctors began to treat the real underlying problem.
I have been studying the health care system most of my adult life, but I am now studying it from a whole new point of view!
Embry Howell
Second email (a week later)
I want to thank you all for your notes, prayers, and calls expressing concern. It has meant so much to me and Joe. The support we are feeling from friends and family has kept us afloat through a difficult period, while he has battled a serious medical issue. Happily, he is much better and on the road to recovery now.
It has been hard to keep in touch with everyone individually, so pardon my using a “mass email” to get the information out. I think most/all of you know that Joe had two falls, injuring his head (but not seriously, with no “brain bleed”). It turned out, however, that he had a more serious underlying problem that may or may not have led to his falls. He had a serious medical condition that we were unaware of for quite a while. At the time of his second fall, which occurred in our apartment, I dialed 911 and they sent an ambulance. The ambulance took us to a nearby emergency room where they diagnosed his dangerously low sodium level and put him in intensive care to treat it. He was then transferred to intensive care in another hospital, Holy Cross. After several days in intensive care, where–over several days–they slowly increased the sodium level. When it was close to normal range, he was moved to the regular floor, and at last, today, he has come back to Collington where he is now in “respite care” in assisted living for a week or two, while he gets his strength back. He is so glad to be back to this wonderful community, and I am so glad to have him nearby. What a relief!
Joe asked me to bring him his computer tomorrow, so I imagine he will be happy to get an email from you. Or I will continue to forward your good wishes to him. You even may see a blog post coming your way before long!
My post on this ordeal will follow soon. Stay tuned…
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Here if my follow up:
I am writing this post on Tuesday, January 27, in the wake of a major snow and ice storm here at Collington. It has been over a month since my first collapse in the lobby of the Arena Stage Theater on December 14.
Embry’s post tells an accurate story, at least as far as I can remember. During most of this time I have been in the midst of a heavy brain fog. I remember very little, but what I do remember, often is not correct. I have told people I was in various places, including several resorts in Arizona. I do remember the first fall vividly and I think accurately but have no recollection whatsoever of going to Kaiser’s Urgent Care, of being in the University of Maryland emergency room or of the collapse that resulted in a 911 call and an ambulance ride. Zero. I do remember, however, seeing visions of all four grandchildren who were in the room with me at Andrew’s house in the middle of the night and dressed in various costumes and floating around like ghosts. I remember very little about driving with Embry and daughter Jessica–they would not let me drive–to Embry’s brother’s memorial service in Chapel Hill or who I saw there. There were numerous reports of my acting very strange.
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What I do remember is this: my first recollection about Holy Cross is that I was alone with three emergency room doctors. The three were talking about my condition and seemed not to know or care that I was listening to every word. This encounter I assumed happened after Embry had alerted them to a possible low sodium issue. Without her intervention I am pretty sure they would not have even checked the sodium. Suddenly, the youngest of the three doctors burst out with this comment: “Jesus Christ, I have been practicing medicine for over 20 years and have never seen a living patient with a sodium count of 111. It is supposed to be 135.” Another doctor said, ”You have never seen one because they don’t exist.”
“Excuse me,” I replied. “Do I look like a corpse?”
The oldest of the three doctors looked stunned, then regained his composure and told me, “ Mr. Howell, you have a very serious medical situation, but it is not too late. We can bring you back but it is going to take time, three to five days and we have to treat the low sodium by giving you salt tablets. Using an IV would kill you.”
Three or four days later when the sodium count cleared 130 and was continuing to rise, the three departed. The senior of the three smiled and commented when telling me goodbye, “You dodged a bullet. You are going to be fine.”
The next chapter of my ordeal began after the three doctors left and I was moved from high level emergency care on floor one to floor four where I was placed in a tiny room in Holy Cross Hospital with one small window and a very large, wide screen (low definition) TV, which produced a blue picture. Let me tell you, if you were not already depressed when you entered my tiny, dark room, a few hours of watching blue television would get you there very quickly. During this three or four day period I remained in solitary confinement except for visits by Embry. I do not recall seeing many doctors but had a pleasant Kaiser physician occasionally stop by and a bunch of different aides pop in and out to take my blood pressure and sodium count, which was still rising at 312, close enough to get me discharged in three days. I did not count the number of aides but did take note that all of them had African names and strong accents. This same demographic applied to the aides I had in the “respite care” wing of assisted living at Collington where I stayed for a week to give Embry some rest and more time for my body and mind to heal. I asked some folks at Collington if they checked immigration status and got a fuzzy answer. If Trump wanted to bring hospitals and assisted living communities to their knees all he would have to do would be to unleash his thugs to beat and arrest all the support staff in every long term care facility and hospital in the country. In fact, since there has not been a lot for me to do but “rest and try to recuperate,” I have watched a lot of MS NOW and CNN and am stunned at the brutality happening in Minnesota. This can’t be happening, I keep telling myself. This is not Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, this is the United States of America. Yet not only is it happening here, but it is also getting worse by the day. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” has allocated more than a billion dollars to expand the masked goon squad into the thousands, beating people until they are unconscious, leaving small children alone and crying, and asking questions later, then putting the survivors into vast concentration camps now under construction, to be owned and managed by private prison companies, and never seen again. This can’t be happening here.
I also actually watched Trump’s speech in Davos, live. I kept thinking that this had to be a skit on Saturday Night Live, but no, it was happening in real time. It is becoming increasingly obvious that this guy is not playing with a full deck. He is out of his mind. But will any Republicans step forward and say enough is enough? Forgive me, I know I am not telling you anything you do not already know. The question for us is what we are going to do about it. We all will be judged by history.
Well, the good news is that I am finally back in our cottage at Collington with Embry. I am so glad to be back and to have dodged a bullet. Frankly, I had no idea how close I was to death. For that matter, I knew I had experienced a couple of concussions due to passing out and falling over backwards but had no idea what caused the blackouts and no idea that it was anything so serious. Some people have asked me what it felt like to be told I had come so close to death. First, I felt that if I had died I would have been cheated because I am not ready to call it quits. Second, it would not have been fair to those I love. There would have been no chance to say goodbye to family and loved ones, no time to settle up with the Divine. Just “poof” and it would be over, a lifetime of 83 years and 11 months–albeit it a few years longer than my life expectancy of around 67 when I was born. Plus, no one–friends, family and loved ones– would have been prepared for the loss. Well, thankfully that did not happen. But it surely stops me in my tracks to ponder how close I came and what might have been. So I am rejoicing that I have been granted a reprieve and have some more time left to squeeze a few more drops out of this old lemon. Expect to receive more blog posts.
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