Rest It All

My arms are feeling particularly weak today. I found myself nearly unable to wash my hair in the shower, struggling to lift my arms and hands up above my head. Right now, as I type, I am resting my arms on the armrests of my wheelchair, unwilling to make the non-trivial effort to lift them onto the table, or anywhere else for that matter.

I know why today is a bad arm day. Yesterday I was very busy. I started a new batch of wine, something which requires handling wine concentrate, squeezing skins and seeds into a cheesecloth then putting it in the wine, stirring, pushing the primary fermenter under the shelves where it lives while fermenting. All of this wore out my arms, along with the normal challenges of ALS. In addition to the wine, I did part of my laundry yesterday. I say "part" because my HCA, Sam, got it started for me, even getting it into the dryer. However I had to finish it, checking on it a couple of times, unloading the dryer, hauling it down the hallway into my apartment.

All of the things I did yesterday impacted my arms. Given that it can take days for me to recover from a high level of exertion, it's no surprise that my arms remain exhausted today. The weakness extends from my very fingertips as I write, all the way up into my shoulder muscles. I can even feel the weakness in the muscle remnants of my core body, and even into my thighs, muscles long ago dead.

I suppose the most distressing part of this weakness is its visibility. I can see the atrophy in my arms. I can see the loose skin where muscles used to stretch. I feel the weakness as I try to pick up even something as light as a cup of coffee. I don't know how much longer this is going to go on. It saddens me to watch it, to see myself slide like this.

Today should be a take it easy day for me, except that I have laundry to fold and fruit to slice. I should check the mail too, something I haven't done since Monday. Or maybe not. I can ask someone else to check my mail. I can leave the folding until tomorrow, when someone from Home Care will fold it Really, what I need to do is rest; arms, body, mind, all of it.