A thousand years ago, at a time when my cell phone was called a mobile phone- a device that was bolted to my truck floor and wired to my horn, had no voice mail and would ring/honk incessantly until I climbed down off a roof, jumped inside and answered it- I went on a personal crusade to lose some weight and get fit. I worked out at Landmark Spa and stopped eating hamburgers. I have never shied away from lifting and pedaling, but neither have I found it habit forming, rather boring in fact, so my diligences have always been sporadic and brief. I also pushed too hard and established a level of performance so high that I lost interest very quickly. As is typical with most, if I pushed hard and lifted heavy on any given day, a couple days later my muscles screamed for mercy as the shredded muscle tissue rebuilt.
Push ahead- now I have ALS, and any kind of regiment of workout to tear down and rebuild my muscles would be both ludicrous and dangerous. Nowadays, a task as simple as walking can overwork my confused and overstimulated legs. I grow limb weary long before I become winded. I have inadvertently put this claim to the test, and the result is irrefutable and ugly.
Wednesday I described my experiences with the physical therapist, concluding that if I fall, I can't get up. If you recall, I did some stair work that wore out my legs. Little did I know what damage I had incurred- until last night at 2:45 am. In bed.
I awoke, as usual, with my struggles to reposition myself and, as usual, I needed to pry my left fist open, and as I began to dislodge my fingernails from my palm, the inside of my left forearm seized up like someone had cinched a Vise-Grips on my tendon. As a result of this pain, I tensed up from head to toe and blew out my left calf. Again. I thought my bellow and spittle would surely wake and spray Amy, but it did not. I needed her to pull my foot forward to stretch my calf. Writhing and hollering, acting out of shock and idiocy, I made the ever so painful mistake of letting go of my left arm and swinging it toward her, instantly unhinging it and unleashing the childbirth agony (my male perception) that is so profound as to remain in my head forever, so clear that I can easily relive every such experience without effort, only to find, through the red haze, that she wasn't in the bed, wasn't in the room. Anybody who has claimed tha one pain supplants another (including me) is wrong. One pain is a note, two become a song and three is a cacophony of shit. Anyway, Amy hears me, comes running up the stairs in a panic and scoots a pillow under my left shoulder, grabs my left foot and pushes it toward my shin, relieving some of the pain. My forearm hurts no longer- or it does and I don't care- and the pain in my shoulder subsides, my calf is releasing. Amy is near tears- she can't catch a break at 3am- and I hit upon a moment of depression and defeat. Only a moment.
I know some of you reading this are aware that I switched from past tense to present tense within the same paragraph. Let me explain: As I write, the story takes on a life and changes my thought process in such a manner as to force me to relive the experience, whereby I jump from relating what happened to describing what is happening- past description to present experience. Even though a literature teacher would argue tha this is an incorrect method, I would argue that true emotional involvement makes for better literature than pure correctness. Emotional reality, in my opinion, always trumps structural or literary rules.
All of this calamity was brought on by my efforts to tax my muscles to the breaking point- a simple task with ALS as an accelerator- and today I must lay back, keep my feet up and enjoy life. That is my plan. Oh, by the way, the remainder of last night was a sleeping/waking effort not to strain anything. Today I'm sore as hell. I learned my lesson- oh boy did I.
Push ahead- now I have ALS, and any kind of regiment of workout to tear down and rebuild my muscles would be both ludicrous and dangerous. Nowadays, a task as simple as walking can overwork my confused and overstimulated legs. I grow limb weary long before I become winded. I have inadvertently put this claim to the test, and the result is irrefutable and ugly.
Wednesday I described my experiences with the physical therapist, concluding that if I fall, I can't get up. If you recall, I did some stair work that wore out my legs. Little did I know what damage I had incurred- until last night at 2:45 am. In bed.
I awoke, as usual, with my struggles to reposition myself and, as usual, I needed to pry my left fist open, and as I began to dislodge my fingernails from my palm, the inside of my left forearm seized up like someone had cinched a Vise-Grips on my tendon. As a result of this pain, I tensed up from head to toe and blew out my left calf. Again. I thought my bellow and spittle would surely wake and spray Amy, but it did not. I needed her to pull my foot forward to stretch my calf. Writhing and hollering, acting out of shock and idiocy, I made the ever so painful mistake of letting go of my left arm and swinging it toward her, instantly unhinging it and unleashing the childbirth agony (my male perception) that is so profound as to remain in my head forever, so clear that I can easily relive every such experience without effort, only to find, through the red haze, that she wasn't in the bed, wasn't in the room. Anybody who has claimed tha one pain supplants another (including me) is wrong. One pain is a note, two become a song and three is a cacophony of shit. Anyway, Amy hears me, comes running up the stairs in a panic and scoots a pillow under my left shoulder, grabs my left foot and pushes it toward my shin, relieving some of the pain. My forearm hurts no longer- or it does and I don't care- and the pain in my shoulder subsides, my calf is releasing. Amy is near tears- she can't catch a break at 3am- and I hit upon a moment of depression and defeat. Only a moment.
I know some of you reading this are aware that I switched from past tense to present tense within the same paragraph. Let me explain: As I write, the story takes on a life and changes my thought process in such a manner as to force me to relive the experience, whereby I jump from relating what happened to describing what is happening- past description to present experience. Even though a literature teacher would argue tha this is an incorrect method, I would argue that true emotional involvement makes for better literature than pure correctness. Emotional reality, in my opinion, always trumps structural or literary rules.
All of this calamity was brought on by my efforts to tax my muscles to the breaking point- a simple task with ALS as an accelerator- and today I must lay back, keep my feet up and enjoy life. That is my plan. Oh, by the way, the remainder of last night was a sleeping/waking effort not to strain anything. Today I'm sore as hell. I learned my lesson- oh boy did I.
No comments:
Post a Comment