A very quiet Sunday and a very amazing friend.

Steve came out on Steve-time. He was the only person to visit on Sunday and I am lucky that he came.

I'd told Steve that he could stay inside while the nurse visited and we had our discussion of plans. He always went outside to be out of the way.

Ariel, Steve, and I were the last ones to exchange a conversation with Rich. With the systems shutting down gradually, the verbal communication had left him. He still would open his eyes when spoken to but rarely respond vocally to any questions.

Muscle twitches and movements were random now. It seemed that Rich was reaching and grasping for things. [This is a normal part of the body shutting down the control over muscle movements]

His breathing was comfortable. The nurse and I washed him up a bit and changed his briefs. There is a trick to changing sheets and briefs with a patient that can't assist you anymore. I had no idea. Perhaps I should have been watching YouTube for a tutorial.

The nurse decided that we were low on one medication, so we searched for an open pharmacy. I was exhausted from the long night of watching over a very animated Rich who often tried to climb out of the safety rails and pulled off his cannula.

Steve volunteered to run to town only to come back and tell me that the only open pharmacy in our little town had none of that med. The Hospice nurse at the 'hot' line searched and called pharmacies and found one an hour away that had the meds we needed for early morning.

Steve grabbed his keys and set off for a 2 hour journey to get medications for his best friend.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet. My neighbors to the west [the one who brush hogged the pasture] came over with a wonderful array of chopped vegetables, crackers, and cheese. I snacked on those items most of the afternoon. The rest of the day was spent reading a book and nodding off for short naps between medication doses to keep him from having pain in the struggle to breath.

By evening I felt as though I was becoming an expert at catnapping between two hour med doses. 

I kept moving the cannula back on his face and talking quietly to him. 

I told him that Fred [his beloved mule] was waiting for him as well as his father. I retold the story of our meeting and our long distance courtship and asked if he'd greet me on the other side too so we could one day be together forever.

He settled down and finally seemed comfortable.