Odd but true: adapting to life with ALS requires forgetting some of the details of life before ALS. I know that my body once knew how to run, how to climb a flight of stairs, how to chop an onion and stir it into a sauce. But now those actions seem so beyond me, they are nearly unrecognizable as functions I once performed.

The closest thing I can come up with to describe this a bit more generally is the experience of giving birth. After Scarlett was born, I was smitten and amazed, but I was also honest. Childbirth had been horrible. Literally, that is the word I used to describe it for a few days, until my body somehow sloughed off most of the memory, filtered it through a baby powdered light, and returned it to me, all soft and desirable. I know there was pain, but that’s a theoretical knowledge. In reality, I thought, it wasn’t so bad. I could do it again.

The point isn’t that childbirth is terribly painful and everyone who thinks it isn’t is kidding themselves. The point is that our bodies (or maybe just our brains) adapt. Read More>