Love those blooms Rick,
Can't add much to Carol and Linda comments. My neighbor is a PhD in something like botany but he loves plant bugs and diseases. He grows Epis but his major is orchids. Anyway, like rest of us he has branches go DRY and brown so we cut them off and new growth usually follows. Not a problem.
What he does not like is branches going mushy. He tells me it is a bacterial infection that can spread from plant to plant. He gave me some specialist fungicide a couple of years ago when my plants were infected and told me to give all plants a heavy spray. After a couple of treatments the rotting on the branches stopped spreading and after some time the infected parts of the branches dried and could be removed.
So Rick, when you say the branch is going soft is it starting to rot and is it spreading down the branch. I would probably take a sterilized knife and cut off the infected part of the branch. A photo would help us see what is going on.
