It was a really challenging time. I got sick after running my last half marathon in 2011 and it took years before we figured out what was wrong and eventually I ended up unable to work and in bed most days.
Nor is it any accident that those certain people come to the sessions, the ones who did come, just as it is no accident that Philip's mother is also a bedridden arthritic, just as Ruburt's mother is.
Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise.