Wednesday 4 April 2012

Dystrophy

It started with a weakening of the fingers. He hardly noticed it at first, always putting it down to a cramp from extended periods of writing. But the cramp never went away, and soon he could feel the trembling in his fingers when he pushed himself too much. He tried to ignore it as he continued to write, his mind running ahead of him at a hundred words per minute but his hands trailing along at an average of sixty words. Still he pushed himself, grimacing in annoyance as his writing speed continued to slow. He felt awful for the words that were lost in limbo, which faded away and were forgotten by the time his hands reached them.

Then his arms grew stiff, and he had to stop every half an hour to rest and stretch. He grumbled at this one; every time he had to limber up was time lost, words lost, inspiration running away. Reluctantly, he agreed to type out his stories on the computer, though half his enjoyment was sucked away by the unfamiliar clickety-click of the keys, instead of the scratchety-scritching of his fountain pen. The bright screen hurt his eyes, no matter how dim the technician tried to make the screen.

As time progressed, it was head that grew heavy with thoughts that wouldn't form properly, leaving words. Sentences that do not. Lapses in paragraphs. Sometimes. Work out no sense. Finally. Gave up.

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Dystrophy
a disorder in which an organ or tissue of the body wastes away/
defective nutrition/
any condition of abnormal development, often denoting the degeneration of muscles.

19 comments:

  1. This actually sounds like me when I spend too much time on the computer, yipes! Nice build-up to this piece.

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  2. Hi Anna, that was a great post! Thoroughly enjoyed reading that!

    This is me, Duncan D. Horne, visiting you from the A-Z challenge, wishing you all the best throughout April and beyond.

    Duncan In Kuantan

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    1. Thanks Duncan... great to see you around :)

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  3. VERY nicely written. If there is a sequel to this, perhaps he can dictate his words and have his granddaughter edit.

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  4. Love this! The intentional errors in the final paragraph was genius!

    J.C. Martin
    A to Z Blogger

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  5. I can imagine this happening. How terrible and the tension you create Anna is amazing.

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    1. Thanks Wendy.
      Sorry to read you're not participating in A to Z!

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  6. I loved the entire read, but this was the line that made me choke up:

    "He felt awful for the words that were lost in limbo, which faded away and were forgotten by the time his hands reached them. "

    This would be one of my biggest fears. Thank You for sharing!

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    1. It's quite a scary thought, isn't it?

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  7. I loved that sentence the previous commenter highlighted too... bravo! great piece.

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  8. I liked this quite a bit. I liked how the paragraphs kept getting shorter and shorter.

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  9. I encouraged this patient with this dystrophy condition before. It is really deteriorating disease/ailment.
    Do check out my D at GAC a-z

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    1. Ouch. I hope your patient is doing well (or at least not deteriorated too much further)

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