Minority report

As I walked from the dining room to the stair glide this afternoon, I lost my balance. Silly me, I thought I could catch myself using my left arm. My inadequacies were made very apparent when my left arm slid OFF the arm of the couch and I fell ON the arm of the couch (a la train from Bayeux), looking rather like an ungainly Leaning Tower of Pisa (I was going to write Pis-ass, but doesn't it look awful?). Fortunately my ugly couch has almost as much stuffing as I do, so there were no bumps or bruises. Equally fortunate, John was nearby and was able to pull me to a standing position pretty quickly.

My balance has not been perfect for some time and, in recent weeks, seems to have gone south. My friendly and ever helpful patient services coordinator from the ALS Association, Ellen, is getting me some transitional equipment. I'm told I should hear something by Wednesday.

Anyway, I was walking to the stair glide because I was going to the Fredericksburg ALS support group meeting. (Before today I attended the Annandale group meetings, initially because they were on Sundays and did not conflict with my work schedule. I didn't go yesterday because Becky was up.) It was a good meeting led by a very knowledgeable and helpful woman who knows veterans issues inside out, which means nothing to me but I'm in the minority here. Not only was I the only non-veteran, I was also the only woman. The other women present were spouses of the ALS patients. As it happens I met one woman at a Pampered Chef party eons ago at the home of a mutual friend; another woman was one I've seen at Mass over the past 20 years. It just goes to show that Fredericksburg is a pretty small town. Considering how small it is, we have quite a lot of ALS here.

Update: some of my equipment is going to be DELIVERED tomorrow.