Help! I've Slumped And I Can't Sit Up

I have company coming for lunch. It's sufficiently difficult these days to entertain that I was going to skip my blog, using the time to prepare. Unfortunately ALS had other plans for me. While I was getting a couple of things out of the freezer to prepare for my guests, I leaned down to reach for something on the bottom shelf, only to discover that I can no longer raise myself up from that position, even with the use of my arms, such as they are.

The combination of loss of my upper core muscles, the lower ones having failed me some time ago, with weakness in my arms overall, means my trunk weight is too much for me to lever vertically having slanted it horizontally. It means, officially and definitively, that I can sit up but not bend over.

Before anyone starts asking any foolish questions, yes. I had my seatbelt on. These days it goes on as soon as I get in the chair. So it was not so much a case of "I've fallen and I can't get up", as it was a case of "I'm bent over and I can't sit up". My body was bent with only the seatbelt preventing full collapse to the floor.

This is not just one, or even one group, of muscles which are failing here. It is the combined failure of my lower core, my upper core, my back, my shoulders, my upper arms, my lower arms, and even my hands. We forget sometimes that our movements are an orchestration, many muscles working together to perform one task, or a sequence of tasks. Basically I am now dead from the neck down, excepting shoulders. You can write your own joke here.

How did I recover? In that bent over shape, I manoeuvered my power wheelchair over to the table. Then, after several attempts using the table, I managed to get myself leaning mostly sideways. I then pushed myself with weakened arms far enough back so that the armrests on my chair would aid in reducing slumpage. Then I used the table as a push point to force myself backwards along the armrest, finally sliding into sufficient position that I would sort of slump upright instead of sideways or downwards. Centering and stabilization was accomplished using my weakened shoulder and neck muscles. I am once again vertical.

Now, company will be here in 20 minutes. Screw it. They're going to have to help with making lunch. I'm done.