The start of the slide

I have been calling Frank every couple of days now; e-mail is prohibitive because it is at the top of two flights of stairs.

The conversations are much more broken than our visit -- the lungs have closed up even more and every conversation is shorter and shorter. The pill dosage has increased; the haziness is setting in.

Every conversation breaks my heart a little -- the act of me trying to find out how he is sets him back a little more. 6,000 miles away and getting farther by the minute.