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Show 173 It is only as I call the children to lunch - a simple lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, hue, but I have prepared it all - that I notice the odd catch in my voice. And as I shift in my wheelchair to get the milk from the refrigerator, I feel a heaviness in my legs. As if they are weighted. It is not right. I am pushing back from the refrigerator, setting the milk on the countertop, trying to flex my still weakened legs out as straight as they will go, testing. I can barely budge my feet from the foot-rest. And what success there is in this challenge is coming from the muscles higher up my leg, compensating for those now apparently inactive down below. This is wrong. I have been trying all week to stand, working on both strengthening my muscles and loosening the contractures here and there, caused by so much unrelieved stiffness. My muscles are also weak from having been so very stiff for so long. But this inability to move now is not from weakness nor is it from stiffness. This is very different and it is very wrong. My children are hoping for lunch and I must not disappoint. I am placing the milk on the table as I look around the table at each of them. I simply cannot fail them now. I call on the oldest to say the prayer over the meal but I am silently praying for a different kind of sustenance. |