George's last years were marked by increasing physical and mental decay and withdrawal from public affairs. Privately, a senior aide to the King confided to his diary: "A more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist ... There have been good and wise kings but not many of them ... and this I believe to be one of the worst." By December 1828, like his father, George was almost completely blind from cataracts, and was suffering from such severe gout in his right hand and arm that he could no longer sign documents. In mid-1829, Sir David Wilkie reported the King "was wasting away frightfully day after day", and had become so obese that he looked "like a great sausage stuffed into the covering". The King took laudanum to counteract severe bladder pains, which left him in a drugged and mentally handicapped state for days on end. He underwent surgery to remove a cataract in September 1829, by which time he was regularly taking over 100 drops of laudanum before state occasions.