The Blog of the “Anonymous Patient” is designed to ask you, the reader, to act as the author’s therapist. Each entry is an honest depiction of the author’s state of mind and emotion. What would you advise him to do?

I’ve seen death several times now. I saw it first in funeral homes with relatives of relatives. I then saw it in the faces of my parents, both in hospital beds. I saw their faces weathered and twisted by its destructiveness. I saw the comic horror done to them. I lived it and endured it, like everybody does.

My friend is dying. I found out a few weeks ago. He has a condition I don’t completely understand, but it has to do with auto-immune issues and has caused a progressive weakening of his internal organs culminating now in his heart beginning to fail. He lives with both a defibrillator and a pacemaker but apparently these are no longer enough. He’s been brought home from the hospital and is in Hospice care. That we know is a signal that there is no hope of curing or staving off the condition. He’s dying.