Getting Up

I'm up. I didn't want to get up today. I really just wanted to stay in bed, not bothering to do anything today, not even bothering to get dressed. I just wanted to stay in bed, resting, taking it easy, sleeping. You see, the effort of getting out of bed, the effort of sitting up, putting on compression socks, pulling on clean underwear and a fresh shirt, struggling into pants; all of that just doesn't seem worth the end result of spending a day sitting in a wheelchair, only to have to get  back into bed in a few hours. It's just to much work.

This might sound a bit like depression and in some ways I suppose it is. After all, I have something to be depressed about. It's not just the ALS. I get to be depressed about my life in general, about not working, about running out of money, about all the stuff that comes with living. It's not that it's all bad for for; lots of good things happen in my life. I'm just saying that I could really be depressed if I wanted to be depressed. I am not, at least not a lot.

It's the whole balance of effort thing. The only thing on my to-do list for today, at least until dinnertime tonight, is to go over to the medical lab and get stuck for blood tests, something so routine that the staff know me by name. I don't even really have to do that today; I could do it tomorrow or Thursday or Friday or Saturday, just as long as I get it done so that the results get to my doctor by Monday or Tuesday. Oh, and I have laundry to do, although I still have plenty of clothes in my drawers and closet. Neither of these chores qualifies as urgent or important; neither brings me a great deal of joy.

I can understand why people let themselves get shut in, why people adjust to the slow lockdown of ALS. The effort to do things is larger and larger while the benefit of the things done is smaller and smaller. It takes a bit more effort each day to get up; it's a bit easier each day to just stay in bed.

Yet up and in my chair I am, sitting with my sore lower back and residual nerve pain from shingles, eating my egg and cheese for breakfast at lunch time, typing away. Did you know I can do this blog on my tablet while lying in bed? I can, but I get up anyway.