James had a bad night, waking regularly and somewhat panicked. He asked for the aide to wake me, but thankfully she did not. For the next 3 nights we have his favorite helper Emmanuel, who is from Ghana. He is very sweet and patient with James, even when James tells him only I know how to do something and asks me to explain it.

We had a lot of visitors, with overlaps leading to 4 at once briefly. For the first time, James took a nap in the hospital bed in the middle of the afternoon while 3 of the visitors where still here. They talked about how much James had weakened over the last few weeks and asked how I’m doing. I got a little teary while talking about how quickly James is declining. He is reasonably coherent for visitors, but he can’t walk around the corner from the breakfast room to the bathrooom without a lot of support. His right arm is weaker every day. I had him sign his mail-in ballot and he struggled to do it. He practiced for a while on another piece of paper.

We figured out that he likes smoothies, even though he had never had one before this week. I’m asking visitors to bring one each day. Tonight he had a fruit and kale one with some pretzels.

He likes me to write an agenda for his days and nights, with the latter consisting of the name of the aide and his pain medication schedule. I then photograph it on his phone.