P12: Tactics

Left grip is 47 pounds (42, 47, 45), right grip is 97 pounds (92, 95, 97), left leg balance is 6.58 seconds, and inhale volume is 4600 mL.

Here's what I do: I take the antibiotic and most of my other supplement pills, then I take a shower, and then I take the probiotics (the good bacteria). My hope is that the killer wave that sweeps through my guts is then followed by a friendly wave. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if my gut now sports good bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.

Yesterday my son and I picked out some stepping stones for the dirt strip next to the driveway. There are twelve, and as I drove us home I played math games with him like "If there were twelve stones in two stacks of six in the cart, and I put them in three equal stacks in the trunk, how many stones are in each stack?" By the way, when you have an ALS-addled tongue, the forgoing is really hard to say. Then he helped me pick up the old, crumbling "stones" they used as decoration when selling the house to us. I laid out the new ones. Then (and here is the impressive part), later in the afternoon, I dug pits for four of them and sunk them in the hard wet black clay (so that some dufus with ALS would not trip on them). This was hard work. I was conscious, during the whole job, that I did have ALS and would have to be careful about this or that motion. But the thing that struck me, when I was done, was how little the ALS got in my way of doing this job. I know that this is subjective, and I'm glad to have the metrics to shade it with some reality, but for the past few weeks I have felt strong, able, and more hopeful and confident about the future than usual. Almost smug.

By the way, on February 20th I stopped taking creatine (as part of my three-weeks-on, one-week-off rotation. I have forgotten to resume it. Now I am kind of unsure whether I should. I mean, it does stress the liver, right? Maybe this good energy I am feeling is because my liver is happier now?