PHONES AND WATCHES My problem with phones — became apparent about a month after discharge. The hospitalization and preceding sickness scared my mother and sister significantly. So I committed to check in regularly… by video or phone. At one point we were having bandwidth issues during a video call, so I turned my video off. The conversation abruptly ended to be replaced by several repeated “Are you still there?”. I turned video back on, and continued my (choppy) description of my week. There were hints prior to this interaction of an issue: for example when my mother would miss things I said when I was looking away from the screen, or when I would try to ‘check-in’ while in a voiceonly meeting from my car and they would ignore my comments. But these were sporadic enough to be explicable other ways (like simply me not speaking loudly enough). The video-toggle interaction was a blatant confirmation that audio-alone would no longer work for me. From that confirmation point onward, I stopped carrying a phone (even a smart phone) so I would avoid being in a voice-only situation or seem like I was ignoring calls from important people. Instead, I ignored calls from everybody, but made up for it by ‘just appearing’ as soon as possible. This behavior also improved my social interactions: I was always intensely focused on the current situation and had no phone (or watch) to distract me.
❦ I had a special Apple Watch — to support my liver disease cover. Wearing a body-state monitor and alarm after discharge was very common among Stanford patients, and a smart watch could do this quite well. - 39 -
