ALS blesses me with myriad muscle spasms; some playfully jiggle a given body part, others painfully seize and wrench.
In the early days, I was the recipient of more than one spontaneous orgasm, when my clitoris was jiggled. Regrettably, those freebies were shortlived and few in number. They were, by far, the most pleasurable and the most memorable. Most often, my fasciculations, the technical medical terminology for these muscle spasms, range from unnoticeable to annoying to painful. Luckily, for me, the painful ones are short in duration, but they can be quite acute.
For example, charlie horses, or muscle cramps in the legs, are intense and used to awaken me screaming.Now they are de rigueur. Since I, literally, cannot move a muscle voluntarily, I can only breathe through the pain. Another troublesome spasm hits me deep inside my left ear, it's what I imagine, a red, hot poker feels like being plunged into your ear. Yes, I actually get the sensation of extreme heat to enhance the experience.
I used to think I was going to die from heart failure. It took me awhile to explain my troubling, new symptom to the on-staff doctor. It felt like my heart was out of whack, skipping and hiccuping. When I self-reported, I thought I was shedding new light on a new symptom, what I learned was that the smooth muscle of the heart was not affected by ALS. In fact, I was feeling smaller surrounding muscles in spasm. So much for my grandiosity. Back to run-of-the-mill ALS. Ho-Hum.
Now, I can get back to imagining I will merely disfigure my face when my jaw relaxes during REM sleep, slipping down over my bottom lip, then a muscle spasm hits, and POW! I clench my jaw, levering my mouth shut and bite my face off. It could happen. In fact, I'm not imaginative enough to invent this. It happened to me. Well, not the disfiguring part. I did bite myself.
ALS has been educational for me. I've learned that I have muscles in the darnedest places, thank you to fasciculating muscles doing their swan songs. A single muscle between my breasts brought me some comic relief when my breast jiggled at a gay caregiver, during a clothing change. For months I gave everyone the anti-finger. What is the anti-finger? When a muscle contracts drawing my middle finger down and under my hand in a single, decisive, dramatic motion, while the others remain relaxed and upright, on the pillow. You know, the anti-finger.
Some spasms pack a wallup, taking my breath away; others knock, knock, knock, daring me to ignore them. Then there was the time when I kept waking up in the night out from the depths of sleep, convinced I was being touched by an angel. Who's to say I wasn't?
In the early days, I was the recipient of more than one spontaneous orgasm, when my clitoris was jiggled. Regrettably, those freebies were shortlived and few in number. They were, by far, the most pleasurable and the most memorable. Most often, my fasciculations, the technical medical terminology for these muscle spasms, range from unnoticeable to annoying to painful. Luckily, for me, the painful ones are short in duration, but they can be quite acute.
For example, charlie horses, or muscle cramps in the legs, are intense and used to awaken me screaming.Now they are de rigueur. Since I, literally, cannot move a muscle voluntarily, I can only breathe through the pain. Another troublesome spasm hits me deep inside my left ear, it's what I imagine, a red, hot poker feels like being plunged into your ear. Yes, I actually get the sensation of extreme heat to enhance the experience.
I used to think I was going to die from heart failure. It took me awhile to explain my troubling, new symptom to the on-staff doctor. It felt like my heart was out of whack, skipping and hiccuping. When I self-reported, I thought I was shedding new light on a new symptom, what I learned was that the smooth muscle of the heart was not affected by ALS. In fact, I was feeling smaller surrounding muscles in spasm. So much for my grandiosity. Back to run-of-the-mill ALS. Ho-Hum.
Now, I can get back to imagining I will merely disfigure my face when my jaw relaxes during REM sleep, slipping down over my bottom lip, then a muscle spasm hits, and POW! I clench my jaw, levering my mouth shut and bite my face off. It could happen. In fact, I'm not imaginative enough to invent this. It happened to me. Well, not the disfiguring part. I did bite myself.
ALS has been educational for me. I've learned that I have muscles in the darnedest places, thank you to fasciculating muscles doing their swan songs. A single muscle between my breasts brought me some comic relief when my breast jiggled at a gay caregiver, during a clothing change. For months I gave everyone the anti-finger. What is the anti-finger? When a muscle contracts drawing my middle finger down and under my hand in a single, decisive, dramatic motion, while the others remain relaxed and upright, on the pillow. You know, the anti-finger.
Some spasms pack a wallup, taking my breath away; others knock, knock, knock, daring me to ignore them. Then there was the time when I kept waking up in the night out from the depths of sleep, convinced I was being touched by an angel. Who's to say I wasn't?
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