P11: Water method man

Left grip is 50 pounds (47, 50, 47), right grip is 95 pounds (94, 95, 91), left leg balance is 10.13 seconds, and inhale volume is 4600 mL.

We get water delivered to our house in these five-gallon jugs. I don't think it's necessary, since we have some of the cleanest drinking water in the country, unlike the broth of chemicals and sewage that you drink. Anyway, the jugs weigh 40 pounds, and it's always been my job to bring them into the front hall. When my son weighed less than the jugs do, he made it his job to lower them onto their sides and roll them into the kitchen. As I have previously noted, I am basically a walking, plucked chicken who talks, programs computers, and generates an intense kavorka field,¹ but not a burly strongman. So waaaay aforn I had ALS, I rarely carried these jugs into the house one-handed. Usually I used two hands. I recall doing it one-handed once, back then, and being surprised that I could. Anyway, I fell down onto the carpet yesterday while trying to do my inhale test, in that comical way in which you don't get hurt. And later I tripped on the rug and spilled cereal on it. I have been working on this notion that you can get clumsier and more disabled even as your muscle strength increases. I mean, look at my chart: My left grip strength is way up from when it was at 33 pounds, and yet I'm falling all over myself like a one-man Three Stooges² episode. I believe that the one-legged balance test will ultimately show whether I have just gotten stronger, or whether I have gotten more functional. After all, there is a lot that goes on amongst the brain, nerves, and muscles when it comes to balancing. If we see a marked improvement in balance, I will be prepared to say that this beta-Lactam stuff is working. (OK Mike, or it could be the glyconutrients. Or the acupuncture.) Yet, the one-legged balance metric I have been doing is tricky, because it seems that one can benefit from practice; I think my early, lower scores were simply due to unfamiliarity. What all this leads up to is that I brought the water jugs into the house yesterday, and made a point of seeing if I could do it one-handed, with the right hand. Indeed I could. But the knees were wobbly, and so I let discretion be the better part of valor, and brought two of them in using a process of hops. I made the jug hop, I didn't hop. But I had carried the first one up three steps and across a distance of over 12 feet, using just one hand. Huzzah.



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1
Seinfeld reference. What a great TV show that was!

2
No, I never really got into the Stooges. Like I said, I prefer Seinfeld. And no doubt Kramer was an homage.