Breathing with difficulty

11 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

Lords day. Awake betimes, returned into the world by my back pain, it difficult to find a position of comfort. Rose, and before I could summon him, early comes the Messenger again to me, this morning from one of the maydes who cares for my mother, with a concern that she is unable to move my father from his bed.
After breakfast, to my parents’ house, where I did find my father very weak, unable to take breath with ease, and being so poorly he could not stand. So I did send a message with some urgencie by the magick screen to the Malady Service 111, and shortly comes a reply, viz.: that a Physician will call, who comes in a little over two hours. My fathers mind set against the Hospitall, as much as he could speak, we did discuss the nature of his illness, which was not clear but seemed not the Covey, and contrived to keep him at home, for fear he might spend the day on some dank corridor at St. Thomas’s, with Physick for his chest and an injunction that his own physician see him tomorrow. I was dismay’d to see him so frayle a man, always thin but thinner now, so that there is nothing surplus on his bones, neither muscle nor fat, and I wondered when he last eat.
  At supper comes the mayde who came last night, to visit my mother, who did tell me that yesterday my father saw her off at the door, being well enough and having some concern for her, it being a snow and hard frost, with ice upon the streets. After, with one arm wielding my crutch, and my free hand hauling my bag behind me, I up the stairs to the spare room to lay out my clothing, which I have brought enough for three days, and that done, waking my father to give him a caudle and his Physick, and praying that God see him through the night and that the morning find him improved. And so to bed.