I Fell Off My Bed

I fell off my bed this morning. This was no soft slide sideways. This was a full on, force forward, body weight pitch to the front. Fortunately, thanks to an unusual conflation of circumstances, my manual wheelchair was in just the perfect position to block my fall, my head bouncing onto the armrest and my arms grabbing the wheel, luckily locked at the time, to hold myself into a seated jackknife position. Once steady, I slowly worked myself back into a vertical position with only a slight headache for a moment, and a pull on the soft tissue injury in my left shoulder, the one that just doesn't want to get better after the hotel tumble. One thing leads to another.

The reason for the fall is simple; Christmas. In order to get ready for Christmas decorations, I have moved my power wheelchair into my bedroom. It will come out once Christmas decorating is complete. Dion is coming over today to help with my Christmas lights. My hope is that Kate will come today and help me decorate my tree. Once that is done, the power wheelchair can go back into the living room.

With the power wheelchair in the bedroom, there is less room for my manual chair and my commode chair when I get up in the mornings. So what I have taken to doing is putting the manual chair beside my power chair, parked like cars in a lot, nose in towards my dresser. Then I can bring my commode chair close enough to transfer for morning needs. That is what I did this morning.

I got the commode chair, put the transfer board in place, then, using my left arm as a brace against the M-rail, I started to slide down the transfer board. Then my left arm buckled completely. My legs used to do that. Put under strain they would buckle. Now it's my arms. When my arm buckled, my hand came free of the M-rail. My head, hitting the armrest on my manual chair, gave me just enough pause for both hands to grab the manual wheelchair wheel. Fall arrested.

Now all I have to show for this effort is more soreness in my left shoulder. And a continuing mistrust of my own body. That's living with ALS.