I'm sorry. If I had been paying attention to my work rather than thinking about my response to your email, I might have taken time to look more carefully at one patient's computerized record, and might have seen that the uncontrolled diabetes with which the patient had been admitted had not been measured or treated since the admitting resident handed the patient's care over to my intern and resident. I learned this only when the Endocrine Consultation Service, on which my resident was relying to tell him what to do, got around to see the patient in the late afternoon, and send me a horrified message. That is what is on my mind. Fortunately, no harm was done, and there is no family to find out. For what it is worth, and that may not be very much, I do not consider you or your life a failure. I am sorry that it has been socially so difficult, so taut with controversy. I am not sure that others' lives (Maurice's, Alex's, Peter's, Robert's, your father's, Onkel Fritz's, my own) have been easier or more successful by virtue of having been more conventional. I think that under the circumstances of your life, the controversy has been necessary to your survival. I would write more, but I am getting messages from the endocrinologists saying that the patient should be moved to the intensive care unit. -----Original Message----- From: Ernst J Meyer Sent: Monday, July 17, 2023 7:27 PM To: Klemens Meyer Subject: Schicksal a) Thank you for your reply which I promise to keep confidential. b) I will say nothing further to Nathaniel about this matter, unless and until I receive a reply from Nathaniel. c) My mind recapitulates the social tensions and controversies which have absorbed my own life: the hostility of my sister and of my father, the envy of Stuart Atkins and the rejection of Elliot Perkins, the Harvard professors who so disliked me, my failure in Graduate School, my distress in Medical School, my spiritual collapse during my internship, my "subverting my parents' relationship with the Board of American Missions", my controversy with the Town of Damascus concerning the Reynolds Street sidewalk, the offense which I caused by publishing without institutional approval a paper about eye movements and a periodical "Glaucoma Letter" of my own, my 10 year long legal controversy with the Infirmary, my two legal controversies with the Town of Nantucket aggregating 14 years in duration, and the "professional" financial and social failure of my trying to write for 65 years ... and counting. d) I acknowledge that I have been, and am. a failure, e) I acknowledge that my advice to Nathaniel may have been in error echoing my own flawed existence. f) If and when Nathaniel replies to me, I will first write to you what I propose to answer, and ask for your advice.