Dear Alex,

Thank you for your visit last Friday, for your e-mails and for
your telephone calls. Peter was here yesterday, Sunday afternoon,
and Janet will come tomorrow, Tuesday, morning.

This morning the decubitus ulcer over Margaret's sacrum, now an
ellipse 3.5 cm by 2.0 cm, appears to be stable. It seems to be getting
neither larger nor deeper. The lateral malleolus of her left ankle
has turned a non-blanching red and appears on the verge of breakdown.
I shall do my best to protect it.

Margaret's confusion seems to be deepening. Yesterday she addressed
Peter as "Henry Vestal", a  name which she dredged deep from her
fragmented memory. Henry Vestal was a retired farmer who was employed
to mow the meadow on "the Knoll", the estate in Damascus on which we
rented a house in Damascus from 1957 to 1961. We had no relationship 
to Henry Vestal at all except for the memory of his monthly appearance, 
a Norman Rockwell character, sitting on his mower drawn by a team of 
two horses.

I observe a remarkable discontinuity between Margaret's lost memory and
her retained ability to reason. Yesterday, after barely recognizing
Klemens, she asked him: What kind of work do you do? then responded
to his reply that he was a medical doctor with the question: Where
is your office?

From an irregular, relatively weak and rapid pulse (rate 100) which 
I have been taking at intervals, I infer that Margaret's heart has been
in atrial fibrillation at least since last evening, and the ensuing 
discomfort is possibly the cause of her recurrent moaning "Oh no, oh no," 
as she lies motionlessly in the bed next to which I am sitting and 
typing this sad story into the computer.

Love, Jochen