More on the noodly right.

The realization that my right hand and arm are worsening creeps into my head and forces me to take a good hard look at this idiot disease. The fingers move independently, each dancing to music I can't hear and want to stop. My shoulder seems to ache with the burden of supporting this increasingly heavy and cumbersome limb. Stretching doesn't help. My hand feels thick and ungainly. The muscle in my forearm is practically nonexistent and my bicep is shrinking. When I try to pinch my thumb and forefinger together, there is that faint tickly feeling--an absence of strength I've never felt before. I wonder how long I have until this stupid arm just hangs, a useless appendage. And the twitching, constant, constant, making me nuts.

The ring finger on the right hand has started to rebel, too. It thinks I can't see it ever so slightly holding itself aloof from the middle finger, that I don't notice the way it trembles when I try to hold my hand out. Soon, too soon, it will be like my dumb pinky.

My right thumb is probably the most noticeably changed from even a week ago. The skin around that muscle is wrinkled and shows all too clearly the deterioration. My skin is like a loose glove over an old, worn out claw.

Driving home tonight I passed a company where I had once been interested in working. I wondered "what if I'd gone to work there" and "what if I'd exercised more as a kid" and "what if I'd never smoked." Then I recalled reading and hearing that ALS doesn't result from something you've done or not done, it just is. By that reasoning we who have fallen prey to this insidiousness have nowhere to look, nothing to blame. I can't believe that. There has to be some reason, what is it?