Back to business

I returned from a great respite in Dallas on Friday, hooked up to my Edgar Cayce "Baar" wet cell and began to move toward hopeful improvement, or at least stasis, on my road pockmarked with ALS. I'm altering my diet, having enjoyed baked salmon, raspberries and apple juice rather than my beloved potato chips, Prairie Farms French Onion Dip and Pepsi. I don't  plan to explore the fringe zone of dietary plans, but finding a happy medium is within my reach. Everything in moderation, I say.

I promised, back in July, that I would present myself, warts and all, with truth and transparency. Until recently, those truths were palatable for me and sharing them seemed adventurous and relatively easy. Now, things become more complicated. Now, the implications of ALS are staring me in the face, are more personal, are more difficult to deal with publicly. That being said, I also promised, last week, to lay you out on a slab with cornball ironies and obtuse sarcasm, warped humor and gag inducing garlic in the toothpaste revelations. This is where we are today. Not at a crossroads- I passed that intersection a long time ago- but at the precipice of a long, winding hill, bumpy and dangerous, laden with ALS bombs and tripwire. I can navigate this highway to hell better if I allow myself to laugh at the perils rather than succumb to them. Amy says, and with good logic, that I must shed my angst and worry at all costs, to find joy in everything I experience, to eliminate the mindset of negativity. This is really nothing new, she's been telling me this my whole life. I just never listened.

While I have a hard time following the "don't worry, be happy" mantra of Bob Marley (maybe I need to score some peyote), I can find myself amused, which is a form of happy, by eliciting gapes and cringes by way of "over the line of propriety" exposure of my day to day peculiarities involving my ALS. Let me present a couple teasers. This post does not require a "reader beware" warning- you'll know when you find yourself witnessing the dark side of my humor - just you wait......

Briefly- If you have ALS, as you may have concluded is my dilemma, and if your left arm and hand is a half paralysed, weak, barely functioning twitch ridden spaz machine, and your right hand and arm still function at about 80% but are heading down a similar path, and your legs are running on brain activity run amok, never, ever, while wearing a robe, buck naked underneath, tied rather loosely because it's the best you can do one handed, sneeze while holding the water canister for the coffee maker, filled. I did. I sneezed, and when you sneeze having ALS coursing through your body, EVERYTHING SNEEZES! Legs buckle, arms flail- literally flail-; any excessive head movement can throw you to the ground in a heartbeat. Balance is a myth and anything you're holding becomes a lethal weapon of mass destruction- upon yourself. I caught it on my face, I caught it on my chest, water sloughing beneath my loose robe, toward and past my boy parts, down my legs, my spastic legs, flung afar as I recoiled. Water was EVERYWHERE! I lost my grip on the canister but somehow, miraculously, snatched it out of the air, preventing more woe had it hit the floor and broken. I'm sure, had anyone been around, that my Chevy Chase shtick would have included a flashing of all my glory. As it was, Amy only heard the calamity. Lucky for her.

This concludes my teaser, promising many more sordid tales to follow, and I again promise- I don't make this shit up.