Last night my grandfather called me while I was sitting at the dinner table finishing an amazing dinner with my family. It was my recent favorite dish that Laura puts together for us, Cacio e Pepe Broccolini with Crispy White Beans and Burrata. It's not unusual for my 95 year old grandfather to call me out of the blue, but calling at this hour was not like him. Quickly I realized that something was wrong as we started the conversation.

"Peter, I am not doing well." said my grandfather. I am not my Uncle Peter and he's called me this before, but this time he was out of breath and sounded extremely weak. I tried to get a sense of what was going on as quickly as possible. I asked him about if he recently ate, if he had just woken up from a nap. He didn't answer the questions coherently, but he did say he wanted some ice cream. Now, I had something and knew he was low in sugar and going into diabetic shock. I am in Atlanta, Georgia and he is in Santa Ana, California. Even if I could race over there to help him, they wouldn't let me through the doors at his nursing facility because of our current REAL pandemic. I started texting my Uncle Peter, the person my grandfather was asking for in the first place. I told him to contact the facility. I got Laura to call the facility from her phone as well as I continued talking to my grandfather as his voice grew weaker and his words became incoherent.

I stayed on the line, talking with him, telling him that I am here with him. I could hear him breathing. Laura got through to the nursing home and within a few minutes a lady walked and was immediately startled.

"Oh no, Mr. Davis!" I could hear her exclaim. She rushed to his side, started talking to him and asked another nurse to get assistance. They needed to get him examined as he had fallen.

My grandfather stopped communicating with me, but the phone was still on and I listened in for as long as possible as people came into his room. Despite the fact that all was calm and very collected given the situation, I was on edge, unable to do anything but listen. His care taker asked him a series of questions to see if he knew where he was. He didn't, in his head it was 2001 and the President of the United States was Bush. Now, my grandfather is known to be sarcastic, so I honestly didn't know if he was messing with them, but given the situation, I assumed he wasn't this time.

Finally the paramedics came in and started running some quick blood sugar level tests. Since he is has diabetes, a drop in sugar levels can be extremely dangerous. I heard one of the paramedics tell the staff, he's at 33. Later I learned from Uncle Peter that he is normally at 130, so 33 was extremely low.

So far today, no news. I will call his facility to see how he is doing, but as I left the conversation with my uncle in California, he said he had it "under control".

This is a long winding way to get me to the topic I started this post with, "Distractions Happen". It is inevitable that emergencies like this will occur in my life and others. This type of distraction is high in severity and high in needed action. I must trust those involved, his nursing home care takers and the paramedics to be confident, prepared, and do the right thing. I cannot do much physical care from over 2000 miles away. I must trust the professionals.

Distractions aren't always this severe or needing of action, yet we fall into the gap of tending to them like they are emergencies. This is where we fatigue our ability to react, be empathetic to situations, or compassionate human beings. Being able to place distractions on a severity and necessity scale helps bring clarity to how much attention you should give the distraction at hand.

Sketch from this morning about this distraction with a rudimentary matrix.

With energy,

Shelton