The next day, there were more clues that something was seriously wrong.  I lost my way to my dentist's office in Montgomery County and never found it.  I also had trouble finding my way back to my office.  After returning from a speaking engagement in North Carolina that week, I found it difficult to locate my office in the 13-story building where I have been a tenant since 1964.

My wife, Geraldine, and I went to spend the weekend with our daughter, Zelda, and her husband, Christopher Caldwell, and their children in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass.  When Geraldine noticed that I was having trouble following her in the Boston airport, she suggested I go to a hospital emergency room.  The CT scan at Salem Hospital showed a brain mass.  I left the hospital and went into seizure the next day.

I suffered another seizure in the ambulance, the second of three that day.  I was admitted to the high-quality Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where a biopsy showed a large, grade-IV tumor.  In answer to my question, the oncologist estimated that I had six months to a year to live.