Hi Friends,

I visited Bill on Sunday afternoon. He was much more coherent than the last time I visited and that was heartening. I brought him a card signed with messages from Pomona students and his face lit up as I read each message from students who had worked in his lab or taken his class. The messages would have lit up anyone's face: "best class I have taken at Pomona" "I loved your stories" "You made everything so interesting" and so on. His students love him!

He asked me how my research was going and he seemed to follow most of what was going on. He looked the happiest when Sophie and Olivia arrived for a visit.

I was disturbed by how much weight he has lost and by his weakness. He has lost his voice and is back to speaking in a whisper. He no longer is strong enough to walk and I don't know if he can even sit up on his own. These are all things he was doing a week ago- I was told. Fortunately, Kris arrived while I was there. Bill needs an advocate and I have no standing with Kaiser because I am not a relative. Kris and I spoke to the speech pathologist, who seems very competent, about the weight, who was managing the case, why his feeding tube was shut off and so on. We arranged for Kris to talk by phone Monday morning with the MD who is managing the case. I hope she can push them to investigate why he is losing weight when he is supposedly getting 2,000 calories a day. Kris was great- really persistent.

If you visit Bill, do feed him small ice chips and make sure he swallows. He is supposed to put his finger on his Adam's apple so he knows he has swallowed. He is not real cooperative-- except with the speech pathologist who is fabulous with him- she insists that he swallows and tells her when he does. When I fed him ice, it mostly ran out of his mouth. So be firm about him swallowing. He does not seem to know whether or not he is swallowing and it takes real effort for him to swallow.

He enjoys the visits very much and I do not think the nurses give him the practice swallowing that he needs. So do visit if you can.

Best
Debby