I Woke Up Feeling Good

Yesterday was a tough day. By the end of the day I had gone through 4 pairs of underwear, one pair of jeans, one bedsheet and two towels. Late in the afternoon my body finally began to settle down. Kate, her friend Marg, and Dion were over for Sunday dinner. I made an Arab style chicken dish. Kate brought a potato-vegetable dish, and Dion supplied us with Peach Cobbler. My stomach seemed fine with all of this.

Kate and Marg had to do some work with their wine; they are making a batch here under my supervision. By the time they were done and everyone left, it was 10:30 PM, and I was beat. I decided to head to bed, after one more round in the bathroom. Just to be sure I could sleep, I took a Zopiclone. It worked. I was out rock solid until 8:30 AM this morning. Even then, when I first awoke I said to myself "too early" and rolled back into sleep until my Monday HCA arrived at 10:15 AM.

That's when it happened, the oddest of things. This morning I woke up feeling good, really good, better than I have in a long time. I don't know if it was the 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep, or the knock-out power of the Zopiclone, or the exhaustion in my body, or a combination of all those things and more. All I know is that this morning, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I woke up without resenting the fact that I was awake; I woke up ready and willing to get out of bed, to start my day.

It's been forever since I felt this way, since I woke up looking forward to the day. This is not to say that the impact of ALS is gone; it's still here, here for sure in all its frustration and pain. After only a couple of hours of waking time I am already exhausted and ready to sleep again. What's important here is not that ALS is still with me, but that, including ALS, I woke up this morning feeling good. I'm not sure how it happened, but I'll take it!